Mfw all my friends are graduating with honors

Go for a well-rounded humanities education, so don't ignore philosophy, history etc classes.Also, focus more on taking classes with certain professors than the particular subject matter of the class. A brilliant professor makes all the difference, and you should attempt to engage with them as frequently as possible.

I got a 2.6 in high school but I got into a pretty good school that gave out scholarships to public school kids (had a 1900 on the SAT though). Now I have a 3.5 there and made the Dean's list because I have a better work ethic than I did before. I really only got through high school because I had to, like you said.

I wish I joined the peace corps though honestly. Might give that a shot when I finish my undergrad.

Don't do English, but do things that are useful for English. Find the most flexible humanities department you can. Something like Comp Lit or History of Ideas or Western Civilization or something. Your undergrad degree doesn't matter if you want to become a professor, and humanities grad programs are notorious for accepting people from whatever undergrad.

I say don't do English because you will meet some very dumb people who don't have even the vaguest notion of how to work out a text. If you want to someday teach literature then do lots of philosophy and history courses. Philosophy will actually teach you how to read and will give you extremely good ammunition for doing actual work with literature. You might like the cultural side of things too so history is also nice. Definitely pick up a foreign language and work it to fluency also.

My teachers always said I was "bright, but didn't apply himself." Which was simply not true. I applied myself very dutifully to my studies, and I am now very proud of my achievements. It's just that, instead of paying attention to a 50 minute lesson which I could imbibe by reading the Wiki article in 2 minutes, I was always dicking off at the back of the classroom, reading Thomas Aquinas and Heidegger under the desk so the teacher wouldn't notice me not paying attention.

You have done absolutely nothing wrong to simply get through. It is more important to achieve at what you value than what your teachers value (something that your teachers never teach, obviously).

i got Fs and Ds in high school and dropped out senior year.

I did decent in high school. I just finished my first year of college and am on academic probation after failing two major classes with a

I've always had a head for numbers, and I was fortunate enough to be able to coast through high school. But I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with myself afterward. I worked for a bit and saw friends working and realized that life isn't what I wanted for myself. My brain "turned on" and I'm now going to be entering a PhD program for mathematics. You gotta work your ass off if you don't want to spend your whole life working your ass off...if that makes sense.

If that is all you have to make you feel better than I hope you can at least juggle.

I was a straight-B student in high school. I got a 3.666 my first year in college lololol. Took some time working, came back to get a phd in american lit. I read more than average b in the d but in honors classes, too. I do think folks these days read more, and there's more accessible stuff for them to read. leave the scholarship for the college assholes; it's enough in high school to crack a book and maybe learn to read moar.

3.0 GPA and 21 ACT score
National averages.
In my defense, I didn't care enough to spend any time outside of school on schoolwork.

I only took one class in spring so my gpa is 2 right now. Lol I got a C. I'm a junior transfer.

Op allow me to blog a bit.

As someone in your situation last year I understand the feelings you are experiencing. I would not blame yourself. I was heavily depressed in highschool, if you have been suffering then that is no excuse. It does help to explain things however. I know the fears of not actually being intelligent. It's especially corrosive when everyone around you thinks you're "smart" but you don't feel you do or achieve any of the things a traditionally "smart" person does. I would say just work to free yourself from the need for outside validation. Work to free yourself from your own created structures and fears of inadequacy. Our abilities as humans are limited, and that is not something to be ashamed of. Let it humble you and continue to work to understand the knowledge you have and the knowledge that interests you. Free thought, and the building of your self is more important than your worry over not graduating with honors. Do not throw yourself into academia looking for the answers. The novel Stoner actually hits on what I'm trying to express a little better than I am. Look up Schopenhauer's essay on free thought as well. Or better yet don't actually.

Tldr, don't fall prey to feelings of inadequacy. Work for your own understanding, not the perceived recognitions of those around you.

I had the opposite experience from most people here. I did very well in high school: >5.0 weighted GPA, lots of honors, involved in extracurriculars, the whole deal. I also enjoyed it, because I loved what I did and was surrounded by family, friends, and teachers that cared for me.

Now I'm at college and I feel driftless. Academically I'm doing fine, consistently >3.9 GPA and on the Dean's list, but I just feel so alienated from everything. I miss my high school days.

Damn man, just made me feel. I really felt shitty when my friends got awards in high school and I got exactly nothing. It's all arbitrary nonsense patting yourself on the back.

That's real talk. Things'll always turn around. The people who did better than me in school, idk even what they're doing these days. fuck if I care either

I was on the fast track in Seattle, I never failed a class, and was the best debater on my debate team. I dealt drugs and fought kids.

Then I went crazy.

Now I'm waiting to get better while the other kids from my Highschool go to colleges with 40% and 80% acceptance rates.

Nearly dropped out of high school because I was way too depressed to care at all about grades, now top of my class at college, soon going to a top 10 (internationally) ranked postgrad program

I mean I would have loved to have been an undergrad at some elite school, but whatever, treat college as another opportunity and study consistently every day for at least an hour

>more than halfway through english lit degree in uni
>spend 50x more time reading historical stuff and coding than doing anything work related
>haven't read a book cover to cover in years
Help

Was a prett average nerd for the first three years, getting by on vidyas and fantasy books

Stayed three months in Australia, learned English, got back and lived on my own for a bit. Started drinking and doing drugs, graduating to philosophy books, edgy literature and the classics, Italian, Latin and Greek. Grades started going down, didn't study for the rest of my two years, getting by with more than average grades.

Got into a few literary societies, knowing authors and organizing events. Got a few new friends, started writing more seriously, got into this lovely shithole.

Now I'm here, studying Philosophy at uni in Venice, shitposting while my girlfriend is reading Kierkegaard for a course we both have to write an essay for and I haven't even started. Guess it worked out.

so i've always wondered, why do people like drugs ~and~ philosophy?

>Guess it worked out.
Until you realize you are an unemployable pseud.

because they're pretentious pseuds

>my girlfriend

Someone attracted to either probably has a high Openness personality trait, which likely means they are attracted to both.

At least you're graduating

>tfw 24 y/o & still in college

As far as I'm concerned, it's just the feeling of altering your conscience and filtrating the result through what you are studying/reading. For instance I've been obsessed with Spinoza for the last few months and, drugs or not, I've been able to connect his words to everything I've written or experienced. Drugs improve on this. But this is just my reason.

Not really pretentious, I think, not as many others around me are.

Yeah but I get a lot of this connection ~without~ the drugs. Like I could pick up Plato or Nietzsche or whoever and see the connections. Drugs usually leave me in a state where I'm totally unable to read. Do you read while you do the drugs? Does it not affect your concentration?

Academic accomplishment means little these days when a 75th percentile student can sit in a class with 95th percentile peers for dishonest political reasons, or when you receive a bad grade for independent judgment.

I've had a professor threaten to fail me before because I didn't sheepishly agree with his rampantly sectarian leftist identity politics.

This was all at Americans universities. I've since moved to Spain where people are more concerned with having a good night out at a bar than being militant for black lives matter, or whatever histrionic nonsense is next on the agenda. Somehow it makes me feel infinitely better with my peers.

>because I didn't sheepishly agree with his rampantly sectarian leftist identity politics
That fact that you chose to study a bullshit subject suggests you are a clueless moron.

>he doesn't know American universities force you to take these courses

I did the bare minimum required for success like any rational person.

Here's the secret about high school: it means N O T H I N G. The smart thing to do is to either

1. Go into running start if that's available in your state so you can get an associate degree that actually means something with your high school diploma

2. Drop out at 16, get your GED and go into community college.

I did neither of these things because I wanted to fuck around with my friends for longer. And yeah, my friends mostly got better grades than I did. Grades, from high school all of the way until graduate school, are not a measure of intelligence but of willingness to put up with bullshit. That is what education is truly training you for, putting up with bullshit.

Reminds me of a time in undergrad, in Spanish I was in a group presentation with a girl who couldn't string a sentence together. She couldn't do shit in any of her parts so I picked them up and made a dialogue of one person work. She ended up with an A in the class and I had a C, she meticulously did the homeworks and put in hours of study for the tests while I spent most of my Spanish study time shitposting on Spanish imageboards, going to shitty Mexican bars and a couple of cock fights. I didn't learn Spanish in the process that the educator had laid out but I clearly was much more capable with the language

Anyways, just get used to it. Don't fall into self loathing or resentment of your peers (both of which are tough to avoid in college to some degree) over it. Just know that a grade is just a metric and metrics never capture everything.

Probably has more to do with who you're hanging out with in Spain than the political climate. People are "political" wherever you go.

At least you're in college.

>tfw 24 and dropped out without present plans of going back because severe bipolar

Yes but at city universities where there isn't a campus you can avoid the cult-like political climate that swallows up so many impressionable young minds

Not that guy, but here's my experience with drugs.

I've read while high (on weed), but that won't lead to any special insights. Rather, it's the insights of philosophy and literature which you use to explain the experience of drugs that can produce more visceral attachment to, and confirmation of, certain ideas. For instance, I thought Eleatic philosophy was the most useful for explaining what I experienced while tripping on shrooms (e.g. ego death, oneness with everything). There's nothing you can't figure out without LSD, but it can provide a frame of reference for making sense of new ideas.

There's also the likelihood that some drugs (especially shrooms) will semi-permanently alter your personality traits.

Well yeah as I've said I get it without them too, it's just more rational. I either read or just spend time with my friends, what I already know becomes a filter for my experience, in a more immediate, sensible way.

I hope not because I've taken them 6 or 7 times

I dropped out of high school without finishing 10th grade. I graduated with honors in Classics at 19 from a good college and now hold a comfortable sinecure in the state government.

>English

Why? You already read English. If you want to study literature, study foreign literature. Or, better, study Classical literature.

It's all good man, lots of people great and mediocre have had episodes of madness.

>tfw every song on the radio is about you
>tfw everything is bright as if it's painted in gaudy colors
>tfw every word is so implicately meaningful that you can't hold a conversation
>tfw you know the future and the past
>tfw gods talk to you telephatically
>tfw the Russian government talks to you telepathically
>tfw going without sleep for five days
>tfw sending bizarre letters to former professors

It gets better just lay off the drugs/alcohol and take medication as you see fit, but don't get conned into thinking you need to be on Risperidone for your whole life because you probably don't.

I was a good but not straight-A student and went to a top-30 university because I was a national merit scholar, had great SATs, APs and extracurriculars. I got lazy in college and didn't do so hot there but graduated in a tough STEM major.

Had a friend who was a mediocre student, went to a state school and had such a great time dominating all the retards there that he got pretty good grades and is going to a decent law school (not T14 though).

>we couldn't afford that shit
You retard, the Ivies and other schools on their level mostly have debt-free financial aid, and a lot of other schools in the top 100 or so have shitloads of scholarships. It's the mediocre-to-bad private schools that don't do good aid.

> All that stuff is just a leg-up for people that already have the money to go do whatever they want. It helps, but not as much as you'd expect. Undergraduate programs, in any field, don't give a shit about what kind of scholar you are. They just want your money.
They want your money when you graduate, make a lot of money and donate it to them. Tuition is peanuts to schools like Harvard.

this spoke to me, user
thank you

My father fought and lost his battle with cancer during high school, so I spent most of my time doing stupid shit in an attempting to distract my self, and completely neglected my schooling. The only reason I got into a decent college is because I got a 35 on my ACT.

I am an ace racecar driver, but I failed my driving test cause I was too busy popping wheelies and burning rubber while the instructor was asking me to slowly back up and parallel park, I achieve what I value rather than what my teachers value

>I was always dicking off at the back of the classroom, reading Thomas Aquinas and Heidegger under the desk so the teacher wouldn't notice me not paying attention.
Well aren't you clever