higher education griping sorry
one week into yet another attempt at university and i already feel like i'm gonna fall apart from stress which is probably a new record. to be fair this time i'm trying to be a stemlord instead of finishing my ba, which i could more or less bludge through to begin with (except for poetry units where i tried and still got a C because i don't "get" poetry lol). and i could certainly go back to my ba but it is a bit like, well, what's the point? what am i going to do with it? you need a masters for any Real job in the arts, and i do not have it in me to do a masters, if nothing else because my life has progressed to the point where i absolutely have to work full-time to support myself. i work admin jobs, a ba isn't going to get me a Better admin job.
what you can do with a cs degree is more obvious but if i'm freaking out already let's be real - what are my odds of actually getting it?
i want a degree out of a mix of lingering parental expectations - despite being exceptionally low contact with my family and kind of freeing myself from their expectations in all other respects - and, i will admit, sunk cost. student debt in australia is significantly less burdensome but it is still debt, and the idea of having all the debt with nothing to show for it really gets to me as a mark of failure.
and beyond that... i don't really like to talk about adhd (or even privately regard it as a disability in myself) due to the varying uncomfortable attitudes about it online (from people trying to be supportive but ultimately reducing it to cute quirkiness to ostensible leftists being like yeah it's just people lying who want meth) and also being a late diagnosis means i'm still kind of untangling the lifetime of berating myself for being stupid and trying to actually build habits etc but. i did stumble on that study or meta anaylsis or whatever about the horrifically low degree completion rates of people with adhd and while the numbers vary between studies it is around, like, single digits or low 10s of % completion rates - significantly lower than students that don't have it anyway. so i suppose i am fighting an uphill battle but i don't want to believe that i am.
i wouldn't regard my adhd as severe but also i have been fired or had to quit every job ive had but one because i kept making memory and executive related fuckups. (i have been at my single successful job in varying capacities for seven years now. i keep coming back to it because i can't do anything else.) my atar was so bad when i graduated highschool that i could not enrol in university at all, when usually just passing every subject is enough to at least get you into a ba. (this was, in part, because i went to a terrible regional school, and scores tend to be weighted downward for students at schools like that so it's harder for them to get into university, lol) (i later did a trade school bridging course to let me go to university). my poor impulse control has gotten me into and kept me in personal debt even as i try desperately to claw my way out of it.
the point is even if i do not consider my adhd severe my completely shot executive functioning has massively impacted and continues to impact my life. and i clearly belong to a demographic of people that struggle with both staying in work and staying in school. but i can't accept it. i have the capacity to learn! i wouldn't call myself smart, but i can learn! i know i can! so why do i keep bouncing off university when i know, on paper, i can do it... i want to defy my "fate", but... should i just finally give up and accept i'll be burdened by debt for the rest of my life with nothing to show for it? do i resign myself to just-getting-by admin jobs?
