How To Not Drop Out of College

I joined college back in 2014 — it has been around three years. I dropped out once in the second semester, and now I am on the verge of dropping out again, and now I am only in the third semester (my 3-years B.A. course has six semesters).

Academically, I haven’t made much of progress. Here, I will use my personal experience to talk about the act of dropping out of college: why not to, and how not to.

Dropping out of College: Is it all right?

Gradually, as I progressed through my 3-year graduation course, majoring in English Literature, Journalism, and Psychology, I realised that I had been losing interest in psychology. My personal ideologies — quite irrational in nature — contradicted with what I was learning in the subject, and it resulted in me missing more, and more classes. Now, I am on the verge of dropping out again, for I do not have enough attendance to take the exams.

Dropping out of college could be all right if you think you have something better to do. For me, I think I am a poet, and I thought I could drop out, put a few poems together, publish them, and never look back at college again. But no! It is not that easy.

Publishing requires time and effort. And while I do that, I need to do something. I do not like the idea of sitting at home, eating on my parent’s money, writing a book of poems which will have a hard time being published.

So meanwhile, as I am, as I said, on the verge of dropping out, I realize that it would be quite all right to continue college.

Drop out only when you can’t take the course, or you have something better to do!

How Not to Drop Out

Colleges have attendance requirements — well, at least most of them. Some of them have 75 percent minimum attendance, and some of them have 85 percent. My college has a 75 percent requirement. So the first factor that plays at hand is attendance.

Maintain your minimum attendance

Whatever you do, just make sure that you are well above the minimum criteria of attendance requirement. If you fail to do that, there will be a lot of running around to be done, which I believe no one is fond of. You may have to send in applications, take extra assignments, and everything that may displease you.

Also, good attendance may mean additional marks, but well, not everyone is in the college for marks.

I say it again: just maintain the minimum level of attendance and you will be well out of trouble.

Assignments: Do It

The subjects you study in college have assignments. If you complete them, you get marks and are eligible to write exams. I have personally met quite a number of students who have delayed the act of submitting assignments and are now in trouble — they are not allowed to take the exams in those subjects, and have to pay additional fine to present their term paper.

Drugs?!

They say there’s a right time and place for everything, and that’s college. College students find it easy to come across drug. And if you are reading this and are in college, you know it. However, it is, again, a personal choice. But I must say this: do not let the drug control you.

Make sure you know what you are doing.

Personal Life and Relationships

Some people like to stay alone; some like to have friends; almost everyone likes to fall in love. Keep your relationships clear, be it with your significant other or your friends. Do not burden yourself with a sackful of emotion that lets you skips classes and churns you over emotionally. Emotions, I believe, are the truest things to us. Make good use of it: help others, practice art, and more. Let your emotions affect you positively, and not destroy you. Emotions and feelings are powerful things.

If you take care of these aspects in your college life, you may, I believe, just make it and get a degree for yourself — make your guardians happy too.

They say that there’s a right time and place for everything and that is college. The things, however, you have to choose.

I’d like to read about similar experiences — let me know what worked for you in college and what did not.