The Art of Dropping Out: Finding Happiness in Failure
Safe choices will limit all of your potential to grow
I had already consumed my third cup of coffee for the day, cried in my school’s bathroom twice, and it was only 12:14 pm. As I wiped the tears from my face and tried to make my skin look less red and blotchy, I had an epiphany.
I could drop out.
A crazy thought. A scary thought. But also oddly comforting.
So let’s start at the beginning.
I was staring down the abyss of post-grad life, not knowing what my next steps were, and terrified of the prospect of having to do something other than being a student. Like most college students with a decent GPA and zero big plans for the future, I decided to go to graduate school. More specifically, I chose to go to law school.
Maybe it was that I found safety in doing something that my older sister had already accomplished. Or it could have been that I secretly wanted to live out my own Elle Woods fantasy. But as someone who majored in Psychology and had taken a grand total of one political science class during undergrad, I ignored every red flag in my path and set my sights on becoming a lawyer.
$2,000 on applications and an LSAT prep class later, I found myself getting acceptance letters into programs that six months prior, I had no idea existed. So when I ultimately decided on a school, it felt like a massive weight off of my shoulders. I had a plan. Was it a good plan? That didn’t matter. What mattered was I knew what I would be doing for the next three years. That gave me three extra years to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
But, almost immediately into my orientation, I knew that I had made a colossal mistake. About 5 minutes into day one, the dean of the school made an announcement that went something along the lines of “Look to your right. Now look to your left. Odds are one of the three of you will not make it to graduation.” Most people laughed and rolled their eyes. I started to panic. That probably should have been the first indication that I was one of the sad, pathetic students who would not see graduation.
The next three months felt like wandering through a battle zone. I became addicted to caffeine. I gained 30 pounds. I dreaded waking up every morning. And I measured the success of my days based on how many times I cried.
I wish I could say that I pushed through it, that I proved myself wrong, and that things got better. But that would be a lie.
Three months after stepping foot onto campus, I gave up.
As someone who prides herself on success, and who up until this point measured her self-worth almost entirely on her academic performance, the thought of giving up terrified me. I let myself suffer through three months of utter and complete turmoil all because I didn’t want to fail. It wasn’t like I was failing out of school; all in all, my grades were pretty standard. But my emotional and mental health was plummeting further every day. As I stared into that bathroom mirror, I realized something startling. I no longer recognized myself. I wasn’t eager for the future anymore. I didn’t have a shred of self-confidence left in me. I was irritable, self-deprecating, and terrified of letting anyone know just how out of control I felt. So at that moment, I decided to finish out the semester and walk away.
And that’s what I did. Walking out of my last final, feeling the cold winter air hit my face as I glanced at the buildings knowing it would be the last time I saw them, I felt free.
So was my whole experience a loss? A year and a half later, I can thankfully say no. If there was one thing I learned from those four months of hell, it was this.
It is okay to walk away from something that does not make you a better you.
I have begun living my whole life in this way. Relationships, jobs, friendships, if they do not make me feel like a more fulfilled person, I don’t let them occupy space in my life. Learning what I didn’t want, both in a career and in life, helped me to understand myself in a deeper and more meaningful way. I feel more in touch with my body and my mind.
Months of overwhelming stress and self-hatred helped me notice when my body is trying to tell me that something is not right. I call it my self-intuition, and it has made living my day-to-day life so much better.
Also, my story is a cautionary tale. More people online are owning the fact that they feel a strong urge to go to graduate school out of fear of the unknown. After spending our entire lives basing success on how well we do academically, it can feel very easy to choose graduate school out of fear of doing something else. But all this will do is lead you to turmoil, regret, and a whole lot of debt to repay.
My advice is simple: Do not choose something just because it seems comfortable.
Making safe choices will limit all of your potential to grow.
So now, with some time removed from the situation, I can genuinely say dropping out was the most liberating choice I have ever made. Your failures do not make you “a failure.” If anything, they help you learn from your mistakes and become the person that you have all of the potential to be. You owe it to yourself to live every moment of your life furthering your own well-being and happiness, because ultimately without that you have nothing.
Most importantly, it’s perfectly okay to say, “this does not serve me anymore.” Letting go may be scary, but it can free you from stagnation and propel you into a life even better than your wildest dreams.
