I guess it’s obvious why I am asking.
I am just too dumb for it. Like, genuinely. I only passed through HS because on final exam from literature the teacher gave me a full answer. Actually, I didn’t even get that, she had to tell me “Write that down!” because I was just thinking “Why are you telling me that?”
In 1st semester I didn’t pass 2 subjects. Now in 2nd one I only got to final exam of 1, which I’ll have to retake and I don’t feel like I’ll pass it either. The only subject I was really interested in passing I didn’t manage to get through due to me being late with assignments.
I am still planning to finish the last one just because I want to get rid of my Firefox tabs and I already spent 32 hours on it. The previous one took me 50 hours only for partially completing it. I estimate full completion at 65 hours, if I did that one, which I may do as well later.
Which isn’t much time, actually. When I do the math based on credits, main part (time until exams) of first semester being 12 weeks, second 13 weeks, it averages out at 61h/week of work (combined lectures + seminars + expected study time and assignments).
2nd semester at 52h/week
1st semester at 71h/week.
Regardless of how I manage the exam, I won’t pass to the second year.
Oh, it gets worse. I found out I was supposed to select my subjects for next year. They only sent us the email about that the day prior (2pm).
I skimmed it, OK, selection starts June 4th, went to check the UI, nothing there. Turns out, the selection deadline was on that same day, at 9pm, so I missed it by 3 hours.
Worse yet, though not applicable to me, the school also “thinks” of foreign students. In this case by notifying them only 12 hours before the deadline as well as informing them that the information in English is outdated (and that’s all they did about it).
Look into the trades: electrician, plumber, hvac…I retired from Walmart last year making $125k/year as a refrigeration tech. The trades won’t be replaced by Ai any time soon. When your ac doesn’t work or your drain’s clogged or you need some power run, ai can’t do it. Although Walmart’s got some pretty slick ai to flag stuff that’s running out of spec.
Honest question:
Have you been assessed for any learning disabilities?
The reason why I ask is that your post is well written. It is grammatically correct, spelling is good and even proper use of commas. Which is well above average for most people on social media.
My oldest has a lot of issues with reading. Fortunately, my wife and I picked up on it quickly and got him assessed. It turned out he was dyslexic (from his mother) with an auditory processing issue (from me). We put him in a program specific to teaching dyslexic people to read. Fast forward to today and he will be transferring to Northwestern in the fall to start his Sophomore year.
There is a lot of assistance and accommodations available to people with learning disabilities. Not all are free, but it’s worth looking into.
I don’t think you’re “dumb”, I think you need learn how to learn.
The best decision in my life was to get a trade/industrial degree after school. I met some great people, I met some horrible people, and most importantly, it taught me to show up every morning with a clean T-shirt and an appropriate greeting. Sounds banal, but isn’t.
Then I went to college, out of a mix of “I don’t want to do this for 40 years” and no good offers in my region. But I still wonder how I would have ended up if I didn’t go. I was happiest in tech support, believe it or not. We were pretty free in what we did as long as the tickets were solved. If the queue was zero, nobody asked where you were on a Friday afternoon. Good times.
Air traffic controller. A shit ton of money for a shit ton of days off and holidays.
My highest degree is from the aviation school so it’s kinda useless outside of aviation.
Same for my pilots friends, none of them went to university/college but rather straight to flying school after the mandatory diploma you pass at around eighteen (Baccalauréat in France).
It is great but the downside is that if we want to change careers we can only become business owners (aka, create our own jobs) because nobody wants us and we don’t accept their “real world” shitty work conditions.
If you’re a foreign student and not fully fluent in English, see if you can find some resources at your university to help. I would expect a UK university to have something. If you have a guidance counselor or a student resource center, those would be good places to start asking.
Taking a long time on homework or missing a deadline due to unclearly written direction in a language you’re not fully comfortable with doesn’t make you bad at university.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear, I am not. I am just usually imagining what happens in edge cases. Since I am in an English study programme (I honestly find English easier in relation to IT) I get the same information the foreign students do.
And I can see how fucking shitty it is.
The problem is they didn’t even translate the instructions to English, and further only gave them a 12 hour window until the deadline to figure things out. Ironically, the instructions highlight to really think about the decisions you make with the subjects selected (some expect prior knowledge you may not yet have). Think about it when? There’s also limited number of students to be accepted for each subject on a first-come first-served basis. Basically, a game of battle royale, but there were no instructions, and the game has already begun.
Currently work for an organization helping people on centrelink / workforce benefits get a job.
I’ve managed pubs, nightclubs and restaurants. Been a dishy and wait person.
Managed a warehouse for consumer pc parts, with the same mob I did marketing and procurment dealing with some big international brands and local distributors.
Worked for a government body (think motor registry but broader) assisting people with forms, really just helping them get across the line before they enter the queue.
Climbed towers and installed mobile equipment / antennas replacing the analog mobile network (3g installs). Installed police cameras in back of their vans along with police radio installs with the same rigging mob.
Highest qualification I have is year 12, some certificates for safe work / working at heights and some hospo related tickets. Nothing special, just a string of random jobs.
a) I think there are plenty of hints at ADHD in your post. That doesn’t make you dumb, it just means your brain is wired differently that most people expect.
b) Dropped out of my classes half way through my 1st semester for computer science. A few years later, I got an associate’s degree in “New Media Production” or something. Building websites. Hated working with a client for my final project. Went BACK to my original school for a few more semesters. Still never completed my bachelor’s.
I’ve been with the same company now for 20 years in a slew of roles that have led to me being a Salesforce Administrator. For me it’s been about wanting to know more stuff, working hard, and taking opportunities as they come along. I’m not career driven, but hell if I’m not going to apply for positions that I know I can do and will make me more money.
Now I have a kid who is 19 (with ADHD) who just finished her first year of part-time community college and definitely didn’t pass all her classes. She’s moving to Florida soon to work in the Disney College Program. I wish she put more focus on school, but I suppose that’s how my parents felt too. She’s smart and a hard worker, and I’m sure she’ll figure it out eventually.
I drive an 18-wheeler for work. The industry’s been pretty good to me, although it’s taken me several years and plenty of companies for me to find a place where I comfortably fit.
There’s money to be made here, though, especially if you’re willing to specialize. By which I mean, pull a more complicated trailer than a standard “dry van”. Flatbeds, tankers, stepdecks, automotive haulers. Removable goosenecks for oversize freight. The list goes on.
If you want to also go home every night, there’s foodservice, beer/soda distributors, or less-than-truckload companies like ABF or Old Dominion. Some of these companies are even unionized.
Should you decide to go this route, don’t get your CDL through a trucking company, and dear fucking god, don’t lease a truck through them either. Go to a standalone school. Companies will try to recruit you there before you even come close to graduating.
Youre on Lemmy and know what a UI is. Youll be fine.
Find something in network security or sysadmin. Or engineering of some sort. If you can compute, youll be sought after. People are idiots with computers now.
If you judge a fish by how well it can climb a tree, it will spend its whole life thinking it is dumb. You are not dumb, other issues aside.
you be surprised people who have degrees basically are in jobs that is for people without degrees. not everyone with a degree will get a job in thier field, for multiple reasons.
Bacame an electrician, entry level job at a utilities firm, now team leader at utilities firm, went as a stop gap 21 years ago, never left
Pharmacy auditor. Started out in retail pharmacy in a state where pharmacy technicians don’t need formal education (using on the job training instead). Actually started in the retail front end until they needed someone to help back there. Worked my way around the pharmacy, floated in multiple stores for a bit, moved to Long Term Care for a while before landing a work from home job.
Pharmacy Technician is a weirdly useful certification that opens up a lot of doors. I have my current job as a healthcare analytics manager because in college I had a part -time job at Walgreens and they had a spot in the pharmacy open up. Now I manage a roll-up of 16 analysts at a charity hospital, only a handful of whom have formal degrees (and most of them got their degrees on the job so they could qualify for promotions faster).
Dropped out of college and I work as a web developer. I went to a 6 month coding school so I have some educational experience but not a lot.
I went to University for Electrical Engineering, switched to Computer Science after a semester and then dropped out after 5 more semesters. I had about half of the required credits after those 5 semesters, so I guess I was on track to graduate after studying for 5 years (which isn’t bad considering my University’s reputation for being so hard that the town opened a second easier University just for the dropouts, but I was still not very happy and really wanted to do real work)
So I got myself into an apprenticeship program to become a Programmer. There was a special one in my town that got you there in just 1.5 years instead of the 3 years that are the norm for apprenticeships here in Germany (again, University so hard they have an entire sector of special programs for dropouts). Just one day of school per week, the rest is spent at an actual company doing actual work. Finished that one with ease, got hired by the company that I did the apprenticeship with and have been working there for over 3 years by now.
I’m now in the job market for the first time because I want to work for a different company, and I’m seeing that I absolutely did the right thing. Because fresh graduates who only studied but never worked are absolutely flooding the market and no company wants them right now. I had a pretty interesting conversation with a hiring manager for a company I’m considering a few days ago, and they said that most applicants they get are either fresh graduates who are asking for insane salaries without any relevant skills to back it up, notorious job-hoppers who spend like 6 months per company and never get deeper skills and vibe-coders. It’s insanely hard to find normal people with relevant hands-on knowledge because those people are staying with their existing companies.
Anyways, what I want to get at is that if you just want to work in a specific field that you’re passionate about, there’s a chance that you can just go and do that. Ofc I don’t know your country’s market situation or work system, but I bet as long as it is not something highly regulated like Doctor or Lawyer, there could be genuinely good alternative paths into it. And once you have a job in an industry and prove yourself, your academic success kinda stops mattering.
