post of the month- May

Former Member

Unbelievably, it is June. (Half way to Christmas guys wooo!) So here is your May post of the month.

Three nominations (get nomming for June guys!)

Whispersoftheheart nominated strubbles for this post from this thread:

See it from that perspective: If you kill yourself, then every potential of ever having a happy life is over. If you really don't care then just start living like that. Tomorrow morning you get a subscription for a gym or you go running. You work out so long until your muscles can't do anything anymore except walking you home. Then you start reading. You have ALL the time now to learn interesting stuff, because the alternative would be being dead. Learn something interesting from history, natural sciences, nature. The next day you wake up and your muscles will ache like never before, but you don't give a shit, because it's the pain that lets you know you are alive. Work out again. After you are done, call a relative and have a chat about whatever or learn to paint your fingernails in a funky and cool fashion. Just DO things. LEARN things. Your life is a canvas. If you want the picture to be beautiful then learn and work on it. Sitting in front of it and stabbing it, because it makes you sad since there is nothing on it is stupid and counterproductive. It won't get prettier by doing that.

Will this change be the hardest thing you will ever do? Yes probably, but you know that it can only get better if you change it now. So bring change to it. Self-harming and self-pity gets you nowhere out of this situation where you are in now. Rock your life you have pretty much unlimited potential to achieve whatever you want. You don't know what you want? Then start exploring until you find what you want.

Ninaballet nominated Scary monster for this post from this thread:

Think you've probably hit the nail on the head.

Up until this point you (and most others) have pretty much had potential friends, social life, and entertainment handed to them on a plate. As a very small child you were taken to playschool, toddler groups, and played with kids your mum knew through ante natal. At primary school you had playtime and were probably friends with half the people in your class, you may have gone to a friends to play after school but that was probably at least partly driven by who's parents your parents knew. You may also have done some afterschool activities, which bundled roughly similar people into a group and created friends through that process. You move to secondary school - and everyone is new. There are still clubs and societies, but this time you get slightly more choice over which ones you do. You're starting to chose your own friends more, but the 'pool' to chose from is still being handed to you. Move onto you, and Freshers week is there. The whole aim of it is for people to make new friends. Clubs and societies, similar to school and this time also probably halls/student accommodation - a ready made set of friends and enemies all good to go.

Then you get unceremoniously dumped into the grown up world, where nothing is really laid on for you at all. Some people get lucky, and get it laid on through work. If you join a graduate training scheme, or a job with lots of other similar people and has some social aspect to it (even if as part of the work) then you've got a starting point and it's actually not that different to school/college. If you get a job that doesn't (lets face it, like most jobs are) then you've got to do it yourself. The tactics are pretty much the same as the ones you've had the whole way through life, this time it's just the next leap - and there's no freshers week.

So, what do you like doing? What have you always wanted to try? Who do you think you might get on with at work? Just like at college, you had to talk to people and make new friends, the same is true of adult life. And it's not easy. But lots of people are in the same boat - and it's worth keeping that in mind. The people at your new work, are likely to be in a similar position. The people you see at the gym, etc.

And finally, yellowseahorse nominated Ella! for this post which is part of this thread:

The majority of jobs now are asking for an undergraduate degree as the basis of employment. The degree doesn't have to be related to the job, but Alevels are not viewed as being a high enough qualification to be in a full time job, paying enough money to own a house outright.

It is not up to these "experts" who you keep referring to: you attend university as an adult, therefore you need to take ownership of responsibility and should have done your own research before applying and going.

I agree that having connections is likely to land you in a better position post-university, but again, that comes down to you, not the university. They do not need to make those connections for you.

You can't change the fact that you went to university. You can either accept that for you it wasn't the best choice, for whatever reason and be bitter and cynical for the rest of your life, or you can move on and attempt to build a future from here, using university as a learning experience. It's not too late to get career and debt advice but ultimately the decision in how you choose to take life from here is up to you.

Get voting!