Letters to the Editor
-
You just have to break it off.
I don't think there is any way you will be able to think clearly about your future while your parents are helping you in exchange for your continued compliance with their vision for your life. And if you don't share their vision, you have to stop sharing their resources. After being a janitor full time for a couple years and figuring out how to feed, clothe and house yourself on that pay scale, I am guessing you'll start feeling more interested in college again.
You will probably get a lot of letters running you down, but it sounds like you're already doing a fine job of running yourself down. Why? You're not that old. You have plenty of time to figure it out. You just need some space and time, and more faith in yourself.
-
Get a job
part time, finish the degree, and move out. Or just get a job and move out. You're 21, you don't need their permission. They'll live. Mom will get over it. Just make sure you move near public transporation or can walk to work in case they take the truck back.
It's really not that bleak at age 21. Just take steps now to make sure you can't write this letter when you're 27.
-
I have only bad advice for you
Well... you probably shouldn't follow my advice on this one. It will probably land you in trouble, at least in the short term. But if I were you, I'd move out. I'd say to mom, "Calm down, you'll see me again - unless you insist on being such a guilt-tripping bitch that I never want to visit." I'd say to dad, "You're just praying for a reason to cut me off, aren't you? Because then your underachieving son will be that kid who never listened, not your fault, you did your best but look at him. Whereas now, anything I do wrong reflects on you."
Then I'd take my money and go someplace exciting for a year and figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Then I'd come back and declare a major. A major I was interested in, not a default business major, which pretty much guarantees the entire rest of your life will suck balls.
Don't do this stuff. Seriously. You'll be poor and uncomfortable and if you come crying to me twenty years from now saying you're tired of living in a stairwell, if only you'd listened to dear old mom and dad, I don't want to hear it. But it's what I would do, because my self-respect would demand it.
Probably the best approach for getting what you want would be to ditch the self-respect and tell dad that you're afraid of flunking out, poor you, can't handle school right now, must have a year off.
Or alternatively you can stay in school, be patient for one more year, graduate, and then tell them all to blow themselves.
-
27 is the new 18
So 21 is adolescence in America now. The incoming class @ NC State is told that barely a third of the students graduate in 4 years. 66% in 5, almost 80% in 5.5 years. My eldest, after screwing up coming home, doing a few wonderfully productive years in Community college - and don't let anyone fool you - now days the cores courses at CC are HARDER and higher quality than the menu plan of prereqs University shoves down everyone's throat - is on track to finish a 'hard' sciences degree in one more year (#6).
If that what it takes that's what it takes. Better to slog through and figure out what you want than to get 3/4ths of the way through drop out and do nothing.
-
Your parents are, to say the least, part of the problem
From the header, I was expecting a real tale of woe--coming from a loser at least 10, maybe 20 years older than you are now, LW. So take a breath--you've got some time before you really deserve the title the Salon peeps handed you.
That said, well, it sounds like your parents are making it difficult for you to grow up. If they're not going to force you to learn some hard lessons, you've got to seek them out yourself. I don't know what kind of cultural or family background you come from, but even tightly-knit families whose children stay with them until marriage usually ask their adult children to contribute financially. So what's happening sounds kind of dysfunctional. In any case, you certainly aren't happy with it.
Stop letting your parents tell you what you can and can't do. Whatever happens from there, happens. The change is going to be less comfortable and less convenient. But you probably won't feel like a loser anymore.
-
Drop out, move out, and get a job
You are not ready. DOn't destroy your gpa that way. Go teach English in China or Japan, go sign up for some work overseas, hit Career Services. Don't stay. It's not good for you.
You will never grow up this way.
I've seen this with my students. Once you get away and support yourself for a while, you will know what you want and get straight As. I tell parents to let immature students take a year or three off before college. Let them work off the immaturity and not waste the 'rents money. Maturity and discipline is more important than IQ.
The thing about not working while in school is also not effective. My students who work do better and are less likely to be depressed. The non-working students have too much time on their hands and lack structure.
Get away. Follow Cary's advice (I'd say get on with UPS, same thing). Support yourrself. Good luck.
-
You are also on a full scholarship
It's just that your parents are the ones who dole out the money, and if you had been on any other kind of scholarship it would have been rescinded due to your lack of performance.
Apparently you think your friends and older sibling have a better position than you do, but they don't, and that has nothing to do with you currently being a fuckup.
There is this passive-aggressive battle between you and your parents. They have the pursestrings, and instead of just moving out and getting a job you take their money but make sure you don't do what they want. What you really want is to have all the freedoms of adulthood with none of the responsibility. Nothing new there, but if you want to get on with your life you need to either suck it up for a year and graduate or get a full time job and move out.
