I’m a senior who’s 21 years old. I will be 22 in July. I today found out I have to retake two college classes. And it sucks because I see on social media where some of my classmates that I graduated with in high school graduated college this spring. They got their bachelors and are moving on. I feel left behind because now I have to wait until the fall. I just hate the thought of being the last person to do something. It’s the worst feeling. I have to wait 7 months. I have never been good in school! I have always struggled. But it seems so easy for others. I hate the feeling.
Dude (Dudess?). You are so young. This doesn’t matter in a long run.
In my late forties and I couldn’t tell you what year I graduated. I know I fucked up so bad freshman year I had to switch from an Ivy League to an okay school with zero credit to my name, and lost a whole year, I know I got to 90% done with three different minors I ended up hating and dropping. I know I’m successful and happy in my career.
It doesn’t matter a bit.
Also, you’re struggling BUT doing it. That’s way more impressive than cruising through college.Your old classmates who flunked during the last two years probably didn’t post about it on social media. It’s not reflective of reality, just all curation.
Trust me, you’re doing fine. My bachelor took five years to finish, and plenty of people I’ve talked to have had similar situations.
I started uni at 20, changed my degree halfway through, moved to another city and now I’m gonna graduate at 29 🙃
Don’t worry about that stuff, you’re still very young and have a lot of time ahead of you to figure stuff out
(and now I’m sounding like I’m 40)Same, except I also changed my major twice more and bombed out of two semesters. Employers give zero fucks. I was just discussing earlier how none of them even verify my education and I work in a pretty technical field requiring specialized education.
In 10 years you won’t even thing about this.
Just like I don’t remember which of my friends got their drivers license a few months ago before me.
It seems like a high deal now because you’re in the middle of it, but as someone’s few decades out, it’s not going to matter at all. Now that you’re an adult you’re going to meet people of all different ages and different places in their lives.
And most of it end up being because of things out of their control:
They have a physical illness or injury that slows down an aspect of their life.
They suddenly have to care for a parent, or sibling or child.
Jobs are suddenly available or not available, you might have to move cities, or across countries.
Everyone is doing things at their own pace. There is no reason to compare your journey against anyone else, because there are so many factors that got you where you are, and so many that will get your where you’re going, comparisons are worthless.
I don’t know a single person who graduated “on time”. This may differ from country to country, but here the nominal times are just waaaay unrealistic. I’m sure it’s possible, but at least for me I would’ve missed many opportunities, and I’m glad I took the time.
As a music performance major, graduating in four years with no summer classes required 16-18 credits per semester plus about 3-4 credits worth of zero credit courses. The joke was that college was either the worst four years or best five years of your life.
I ultimately switched to an even more difficult degree but graduated after 5.5 years. I had a blast.
I feel like everyone thinks they’re behind in life in general. It’s a really messed up mind set society puts us in.
It might feel like a big thing now but you’ll be fine. I went to get my GED once and failed the test, I thought it was the end of the world. Turns out none of it mattered and I ended up doing pretty well for myself.
No
Colleges in fact often conspire to try to delay your graduation to fleece you. Don’t take it as a personal failing
22 and it’s looking like I’ll be failing units in my second year. It sucks for sure. I don’t judge you one bit though, and think you’ve done extremely well so far. Congrats on what you’ve already accomplished, good luck with all you still have to.
No it’s not. You graduate when you graduate.
I got my first degree when I was 23, first school I got accepted was marketing and sales and I hated it there, took me 4 years before I got kicked out (I had to go to military between years 3-4, somehow administration didn’t register that and got a whole year of missing classes lol). After that I went to new school and graduated in 2 years and last year I got my second degree in my mid 30s. No one cares about your graduation (except parents probably), just take your time.
One of the worst things we do as a culture is setting arbitrary milestones and then shaming ourselves or others for missing them.
Are you expecting to graduate? You’re better off than many who didn’t finish at all. You stumbled, you’re moving forward. You’re going to be fine.
This stuff is SO insignificant in the context of the rest of your life. It took me like 5 or 6 years and 3 different colleges (1 of them twice) to get my degree. It was a waste of money, and has had no impact on where I am now in life; which is actually in a pretty good place. That said, I completely understand how this seems like the be all end all of your world right now. Just realize that that is because of your age, and that will virtually vanish as you progress through life and gain perspective. I also completely understand that all of that probably won’t make you feel any better right now.
I had to retake one of my university units over the summer after failing the final exam. It was the most embarrassed I think I’ve been to tell my parents, as I’d always been pretty solid with schoolwork.
In the end everything ended up perfectly fine, parents didn’t give a shit (I was an adult after all) and it made no difference to my future career prospects at all.
I’d be pretty hard-pressed to name any of my friends who graduated “on time”
I’m well into my 30s now, a couple of my friends are still working on degrees or just graduated.
Changing majors, bullshit scheduling nonsense, life
Shit, there was a whole fucking pandemic that fucked up a year or two of your high school years, it’s pretty damn amazing that anyone your age is graduating even roughly on-time as far as I’m concerned.
Maybe it’ll throw a bit of a monkey wrench into your social life because you gotta skip out on a couple things because you have class. That’s life as an adult, we all got scheduling conflicts all the time.
Otherwise, it’s never gonna matter. You’ll have a degree, that’s the only “important” thing about graduating. Unless you’re looking to get into some highly-specialized, super-competitive field, no one gives a shit how long it took you to graduate, how your gpa stacked up against the rest of your class, etc. It’s like the old joke “What do you call the person who graduated at the bottom of their class in medical school? You call them ‘Doctor.’”
Short answer: no. You can even study two other degrees and be fine if age is your only concern.
