Re: School and stress

School is not for learning. Dropping out of high school was the best decision I ever made for my education (and to eliminate stress).

David

On Nov 11, 2011, at 1:14 AM, Nathan McCorkle <nmz787@gmail.com> wrote:

> So I've been terribly stressed by school my whole life, from the time
> I was 4 or 5 years old I've been chronically late arriving to school.
> I don't dislike learning or hard work, but mornings have always been
> hard. This latter comment is potentially due to genetics (my parents
> are both 'night owls'), but there is a lot of evidence that it could
> just be environmental conditioning (i could hear the clothes
> washer/dryer sometimes when falling asleep as a child, my father is a
> musician and is accustomed to working nights and being active then)
>
> When I was in 1st grade at a Catholic school, I remember being caught
> reading a story in the back of the work book, and though I had
> finished my classwork I was 'off task' according to the teacher.
> Sometime in that era discontent with school began to breed.
>
> I've been struggling for 4 years in College now, trying not to drop
> out... I feel my workload has been too diverse for the amount of time
> I have to devote... What I mean is, when I get into something, a
> context switch can be very difficult. So while some people can study a
> few subjects each day, I'd rather spend all day for days on end
> studying one thing... and come out with a very detailed understanding.
> This is nearly impossible to do in most schools (I've heard Evergreen
> in Washington State has an academic system that ties different
> subjects into common themes).
>
> So with about 12 classes between now and a bachelors degree for me, I
> still contemplate quitting. I rushed to prepare for Open Science
> Summit, over-exerted myself, and just never recovered from the stress
> and jet-lag until it was too late. While I didn't really come to
> College for a degree (if there was a Biotech master-apprentice
> relationship I would probably have opted for that instead), my logical
> sense tells me to put my hacking aside and basically, not have a life
> for the next 6 months while I finish this up.
>
> I really don't want to give up doing the things that I can get lost in
> time with... but I don't see a middle ground. I've been really
> stressed for about a month, the last two weeks I was so apathetic I
> think I only attended 2 or 3 classes (sometimes I have that many in
> one day), and slept between 12-18 hours a day, with a 12-16 hour
> waking period... so my bed time has been shifting 2-3 hours forward
> each day.
>
> Any tips for how to put my hobbies/what I call 'living' aside for the
> next 6 months?
>
> --
> Nathan McCorkle
> Rochester Institute of Technology
> College of Science, Biotechnology/Bioinformatics
>
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