h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can't trust myself. Fecked myself over again. Wanted to see if I could manage getting back into education. But I've drilled a hole in the bottom of my rowboat again.

So I cut myself to punish these self-betrayals

Oh dearest! Please don't!!!! Never ever punish yourself!!!! Enough of that, now. You don't deserve it - the tough times or the self punishment. If others punish, ignore it, and you should just forgive yourself.

Milla

Awww, hon, I wish I could make it better....

Is your rowboat salvageable, or will you be giving the course a miss?

I've given it a miss so far this week. Wednesday's I'm not expected in anyway. But I may go in and see if I can come up with something that passes for an essay and hand that in and try even harder to salvage the rest of the course...

Retreating I guess is another way of sabotaging myself. It's hard not to think that if I can so completely fail to generate an essay, how am I going to cope with the course as it becomes more demanding, and what am I going to do once it's finished.

I'm a waste of space.

I suppose just take each day as it comes. When I was at college I was agoraphobic and I found the expectation upon me to produce the work pretty unbearable, so I avoided doing it half the time. I had a real clash going on between my interest in the subject and my personal sense of uselessness. I failed to complete a lot of assignments - but I still passed. Not highly, but I passed. Which did a lot of good for my self-esteem in the end.

The fact that you're already forming your own opinions about what you're learning will stand you in good stead, even if you don't do all the assignments. It means you're learning and you're interested.

The thing I found most useful was discovering that I could talk to my tutors about my difficulties with working. Even if the only reason for not doing it is an emotional one, it's good to have a word with them and explain; that way, they know you're trying and they don't treat you like a waste of space.

Have you had any advice on how to actually structure an essay?

I really hate essays. Never any good in school at them.
Strangely, all I seem to do at work is write requirement specifications, test scripts and test reports, write write write. Perhaps the topics being important to me helps. And of course advice and guidelines...

Hang in there! Good advice to talk to tutor/teacher, try to do that...



Milla

In my experience since being a college student, the professors can be a really big help, if you go to them and get to know them they might also be a little more leniant when grading you...

I have mentioned before that I find little of what my psychology tutor has to say helpful.

My history teacher is helpful... My history stuff has been eclipsed by worrying about this stupid psychology essay.

I didn't get into college early enough today... (Haven't got to sleep at a sensible time for a while now.)
If I had of gotten in earlier I'm sure I could have bashed out something resembling an essay, and put things down as experience.

It's a shame your tutor's so unhelpful. Unlike schoolteachers (who function as glorified babysitters), college tutors are there to provide you with a service. If you're not getting the goods from him / her, it's probably worth arranging to see her(?) so you can go over stuff and ask her what the blinking heck s/he's on about. If you don't understand, keep asking. S/he'll probably appreciate it.

Alternatively, since s/he's so shit, is it too late to ask to transfer your course to, say, sociology? At my FE college some people managed to transfer when they were a whole term in: they just said the subject wasn't working for them, and they were allowed to change. This was before the days of graded coursework, though.


Btw, it's just occured to me: with regard to feeling like a waste of space, are you transferring your disdain for this tutor onto yourself? Is this something you tend to do? Just a thought.

"Btw, it's just occured to me: with regard to feeling like a waste of space, are you transferring your disdain for this tutor onto yourself? Is this something you tend to do? Just a thought"

I have done something not unlike that at times. But only with... well with someone that at some I level care about, alot.
So very much not in this instance.

"Alternatively, since s/he's so shit, is it too late to ask to transfer your course to, say, sociology? At my FE college some people managed to transfer when they were a whole term in: they just said the subject wasn't working for them, and they were allowed to change. This was before the days of graded coursework, though."

The Access course I'm doing includes but is not limited to History, Sociology and Psychology. It was the only humanities course they could provide. I wanted to be doing English plus two others, Media Studies and History.

"It's a shame your tutor's so unhelpful. Unlike schoolteachers (who function as glorified babysitters), college tutors are there to provide you with a service. If you're not getting the goods from him / her, it's probably worth arranging to see her(?) so you can go over stuff and ask her what the blinking heck s/he's on about. If you don't understand, keep asking. S/he'll probably appreciate it."

If I ask her to rephrase something she just repeat what she just said. Talks after lessons have not got me anywhere on previous attempts, she remains incapable of commuicated information in a way that is meaningful to me. The thing that changes is an increase in the patronising nasel tone of her voice.

Great. She sounds just what you need! (But thank you for the hilarious mental image!)

My 'A' level psychology tutor was crap, too. I stopped going to her lessons altogether and just got hold of the syllabus and figured it out from there. I got a D, I think.

Sorry to hear she's affecting your other work too.

Finished banging a botch-job essay. Now I need to catch up on the work from the other two components that have suffered for my absenses and spending too much time worrying abou this essay.

To an extent that's what had been doing, using the handbook she gave us on cognitive memory and studied that. The Essay was just a big surprise, and I hadn't done one in so long... So I wasn't confident. There's not one conept in that essay that she introduced to my head, got it all from other sources.

Learned one thing. I don't like Loftus. Some of her research is borderline unethical and some of the uses she has put it to, like getting he police that brutally beat Rodney King off...

for finishing the *&/¤%# essay! For going on with other subjects! For having an opinion on Loftus! (Just don't tell the teacher )

Good job with finishing the essay, even if it wasn't the greatest you did it! So s for you!

Nice one, Nyxkind. Glad you got it out of the way. Hope the other work inspires you more.

Danke...