Did you ever fail a year in college or school? Interview...

Yeah I found it through google.

Hey, spidergal, I don't have a story of my own to add, but I just wanted to say that its not a real good idea to put your email address out on the internet. I'm not an expert or anything but some very savvy guys have told me that there are automatic programs that find email addresses on the internet and then you wind up getting tons of crap email. I'm not critcizing, I'm just trying to be helpful. Anyway, this is a very interesting topic and I have been reading peoples stories. Jeez, you guys are honest!

I basically failed my entire high school career because I didn't give a ****. I was playing in bands or just running wild all night and I slept in school. I also resented and hated the teachers and administration... the whole system really. I dropped out and got a GED.

Later in life my second wife's mother, who hated me with a venomous hatred, said I was too stupid for school so I enrolled at a Community college and finished my first year with a 4.0, which was ridiculously easy. I told mom in law to suck me off and stick my gpa up her ass and never returned to school.

Vinny, thank you so much. Oh, you opened my eyes, boy! I can't thank you enough...


Kidding, Kidding.

Vinny, that's just a spooky email I use to subscribe to forums, and that's the one I give out on forums for things like this. I know about the automatic programs. They are called spiders, and if you want one- there are scores of them available for free on http://www.download.com/ !!

Sorry, there, spidergal. Point taken.

Gunnar, your story is very interesting. It's pretty clear that you were originally doing just fine in school taking subjects of interest. If you read other people's stories here, you can see instances where they had trouble with subjects they weren't interested in, or weren't good at, or had poor teachers for - and some changed majors, or came back to school years later studying different subjects.


I never failed a class, but I got a few D's in my university years. And yes, those were in subjects where I was forcing myself to take a series of couses to fulfill a dream of what I wanted to be, a physician. Never mind that very few women were accepted into medical school in those years, and that I worked nearly full time in a school that highly discouraged that. I simply wasn't sharp enough to get possible med school admission grades while working, and maybe not sharp enough if I hadn't been working.

I did graduate, but, ha, no honors after my name. I will say that with courses I liked I often got the class' highest grade... and sometimes those classes were even in science. Confusing to my sense of self, for sure.

Years went by while I worked. About a decade after university, I started taking studio art classes at night. at a universty extension school. I ended up taking something like 54 classes in studio art - absolutely loved every minute of those classes.

Then I tried to figure out how to make money out of drawing or painting, instead of what I then did for a living, working in a laboratory. So, I took a drafting class, and that happened to be in a program for landscape architecture, which at that time I had no idea about. While I took the drafting class, I also took an elements of design class - not knowing what the hell "design" was. Well! That was even more fun than drawing, and drafting. So, at age 40, I ended up taking 4 more years of classes at night, very intense schedule, doing homework in the wee hours of the night and morning, while I worked full time in the field of landscape architecture, and was married, cooked, etc.

The landscape architecture field turned out to be very satisfying, and so much more right for me than being a scientist or physician would ever have been - it fit so much better with my aptitude. Back in my early university years, I had no clue that I could be creative at all... not until those night classes in art in my thirties.

Oh, and, predictably, I got great grades in all those art and land architecture courses.

So, Gunnar, I am thinking you need to get back to things like geography and history. Then, if you have the odd course or two you struggle with, it won't be a whole package of trouble, just the odd course or two.
You could benefit from some career counselling - there is probably some testing available there to help you figure out your aptitudes and what could be interesting careers.

If your parents won't support the change, or you, you may have to do it slowly yourself, working and taking classes as you can.
Anyway, good luck......

Thanks OSSO, I appreciate the advice, now I just have to build up the courage to tell my parents. It's really great reading all these replies in this topic makes me feel better, seeing that many other people make mistakes etc too.

This a topic that will keep me wanting to refresh the page all the time for new replies

Well goodnight.

How did you tell your parents and how did they deal??

Glad to see this thread show up again.

Phoenix will probably see it if we keep bumping it up..