Notes

Dear Ge,
I really just don't know what to do at this point at all. On one hand, I feel like I deserve to take the next two years and spend them at CSM. Filling out college applications in Fall 2019, while taking on a full courseload, for sure seems daunting and too soon, especially because it's only a few months away from right now. I feel like I can take these two years at CSM to simply fully grow, develop, and maintain a solid work ethic. There are plenty of opportunities in the Bay, and I certainly feel that it would be a crime not to take advantage of them, as I have evidently failed to do so within the past four years. On the other hand, I hate wasting time. I can't imagine what I'll do this summer if I don't take classes during the summer. I hate wasting time, andI hate the idea that there will potentially be large gaps in my timeline that I'll need to fill. I don't want to keep working a crappy minimum wage job, especially throughout the summer, like all of the kids going off to four-year universities in the fall. But I also don't have any opportunities lined up for myself either, meaning I'll have to cold-email all of those people and hopefully receive just one positive response. But I don't know how to handle that. I don't know how to handle telling them I'll be able to work full-time in the summer, but only part-time when school starts up again. My schedule will change, but so will the perspectives on my position. In summation, if I take summer courses, I feel like my experience will fly by devastatingly quickly, and I'll repeat the same mistakes that I did the first time around. I won't properly understand how to grow from my failures, particularly because of the shoo-in process of the TAG. I just feel like it would be so rushed, and in the end, I would produce pieces of work that I wouldn't be proud of, just like my essays the first time around. I know my essays were dogshit. I know I should've started sooner. I just don't know why. Again, I definitely overestimated myself, and my ability to get things done in a timely and fashionable manner. All around me, people were researching programs, colleges, majors, and scholarships on their own, and I did jack shit. I don't know why. I don't know why I felt like I didn't need to do any of that. I don't know why I thought people were supposed to tell me exactly how to do things. I kept preaching about self-direction and being intrinsically motivated, but clearly, I was much too egotistical to focus on the present rather than the achievements of my past. I kept patting myself on the back believing it was I who had a chip on his shoulder, when in reality, all of the people around me recognized the need to do their own due diligence and carried it out with extreme poise and dedication. I thought I was special, that I was different, because I was the only NMSC Semi-Finalist. I greatly underestimated the abilities of those around me, believing I was doing just as much as them, but in reality, I was doing significantly less. During the late summer and throughout early fall, those girls applied to tens, perhaps hundreds, of scholarships, writing essays left and right. I thought I was beyond that. Even worse, I thought they were trying too hard. Evidently not. Going into it at the beginning, I knew what I was getting myself into. The word counts didn't even faze me. I knew I could crank out the essays in no time. The problem is, all of the essays I've grinded out because of my extremely poor procrastination habits gave me false senses of pride, and I desperately needed to have started earlier because I needed to take the necessary time to properly revise and rethink each of my concepts. I was wrong to believe that anyone was going to help me, provide resources; all my childhood, I had someone constantly telling me what to do, and my transfer was the beginning of a chapter of my life in which I took charge. Unfortunately, all of it went to my head, and what I thought of my self-directed talent clouded the actual self-direction that applying actually required. Anyways, if I did choose to spend the full two years before transferring, I''m simply worried about all the large gaps I'll need to fill. First of all, my class schedule will be predictably light unless I decide to enroll in a truly substantial number of extra, relatively unnecessary credits. Second of all, I don't know what company would hire a student at a community college, between all the overachieving high schoolers to the entry-level recent college graduates. I have yet to try, but I need a lot more experience before I can fully dive into the world in which I want to immerse myself. I know that at CSM there's going to be an endless number of shitty admin, shitty classmates, shitty teachers, and shitty circumstances, and I'm not looking forward to those at all, but truthfully, I've had to deal with those for the past three years. I'm certainly not thrilled, and it pains me to think of all the effort it will take to properly manipulate the people that can actually help me out. I can handle all the useless people, with only slight annoyance, but the very fact that I still have to consider the notions makes me seriously long for a high level university in which the school actually caters to the students' needs. I just don't know what to do. Truthfully, I've looked up to you all my life. You're the hardest worker I know, and I love you so much more because of it. Your success story, from your high school troubles to your college work ethic, to persevering through Berkeley and finally gaming the government service, is just one that I absolutely love. But it's yours, and I know that essentially everything will be different in my case. However, that's not all. I've said previously I've looked up to you all my life, and I still do, because on paper, your accomplishments are nothing short of impossibility, but seeing you just a few months ago has seriously made me question the true outcomes of taking on the kind of struggles you have faced with the immense drive that you possess. Seeing you not take care of your body as much as you used to, doing other lazy fuckers' work which can be considered comparable to scraping the slime on walls, and using all these different kinds of dating apps just made me question what kind of person going through your type of experiences would make me. I love you, and I'm trying as hard as I fucking can not to be degrading, but I don't want to go through that type of shit, working for money like I desperately need it that bad or hooking up with crazy black chicks online. I know you're probably all about the delayed gratification, and at this point, so am I, but to what extent are you going to delay finally being just the little bit satisfied with where you are? When you take that extended trip to Europe? I just know you're not the type of person to not pick up a laptop and write essays for little retards while you're on vacation, because you're just too hungry for a life that you dream of that's just as quickly passing you by. I don't really want to be stuck in that same hole. But what the fuck do I know, I might not even be able to TAG because of the mistakes I thought others would warn me of rather than having to find out for myself, because I just felt special or different in some way. I'm not. I'm not even close. I'm not even close to being average now. But fuck that, right? Isn't it always that hard work eventually wins? But does it, though? There will always be those who game the system, who have a step up from all of us, especially me and you, that will have the opportunities that we will never be able to experience. That's why I just have so much doubt in the world. I know how hard you've worked. I know all the sweat and anger you've put into every single fucking thing that you do. But I can't help but wonder, has it really paid off? Will it? Because how I see it, right now, you don't seem happy doing what you're doing, and I certainly can't imagine me being anywhere even remotely close to feeling good about myself if I was in your position. I know now that life's simply unfair. There's really nothing I can do about it. All I can do is play the cards I'm dealt. And this is why, I'm begging, for what I should do. I just have no idea at this point.