Sources Of Motivation

[Guest OneOutOfnOne]

Hello, friends and strangers. Mostly strangers, I guess, I'm too quiet to keep up with online forums anymore.

I have a problem, and have had this problem for a few years now. It seems I've let slip away my motivation to do even the things I once loved doing. It's hurting my school performance and my creative output, and I hate it. I just can't seem to use my time in any way productive. I am rather organized, that does not seem to be the trouble! The difficulty is that I don't feel obligated to do what I tell myself to do. I'm not sure how to go about fixing myself.

In a meeting with my psychologist last week, I informed him that my first attempt at a university degree was an utter failure. I graduated second in my class in high school, then my university grades were awful and I dropped out after two years. He suggested that this was a result of my internal issues with my gender identity. This answer seems too easy for me to accept. I was not fully aware of having gender identity issues until I was already out of school: I had not been thinking about it much at the time. It is possible, I will allow, that, having at last moved out of my parents' house and onto my own, I searched for and could not find a sense of self, and thus fell into poor habits. But I sense that it is much more likely that I could go through a complete gender transition and I would still struggle with personal motivation at the end of it; that it's a matter of lacking mental discipline, unrelated to my sense of self. But is mental discipline related to my sense of self, neither of which I seem to have very much of?

Any thoughts or opinions, or accounts of similar troubles, would be appreciated.

Wistful sighs,

Lydia

[Guest NatashaJade]

Hi Lydia,

I was a really good high school student and when I got to college, all I really cared about were my major classes and I dropped or failed the GE classes I needed to graduate so often that, after 6 years of bumming around two universities, I finally dropped out without a degree when I was 24. I just didn't want to be in school all that much and decided to try something else. Flash forward 8 years and, having experienced the world and having made a decision about what I wanted to do with my life, I went back to school, chose a different major and graduated very successfully 2 years later. I was ready and in school on my terms. Now, 8 years after that, I am working on my second Master's degree.

None of it had anything to do with my gender issues.

So it really comes down to you and your desire to use a college degree for something. If you don't want it right now, stop wasting your time and money. Go do something. If college is eventually something you want, then do it then. There is no shame in leaving it.

Hope this helps!

luv

Gin