Going to university and everything leading up to it may have been the worst decision of my life. My higher education can be summed up as being a series of closing doors leading up to a path I never wanted. I was never sure what I wanted, and when I started to realise what I did want, I realised I'd left that option behind years ago.
So here I am, 20 years old, stuck in university and hating every aspect of it. And if my own mistakes weren't enough, the university has so far proven to be nothing but completely incompetent, and with such a small course and people talking of leaving, we might lose the course anyway.
I guess I just don't like academia. I like learning about things I care about, those things I learn and study for fun. It's not that I'm choosing to be somehow ignorant, it's just that the university path just doesn't seem to be for me.
I like practical things, I like making things and growing things. My real passion is brewing and my main goal is to raise the funds to start my own meadery. A years worth of regular work should give me what I need to get started without having to go into debt. So one option is to work for a year doing anything and then setting up shop. Other than that, I find most work that doesn't involve offices of pretence to be immensely satisfying. At the moment I work alone in a cold store packing vegetables, but I come home at the end of it feeling accomplished and satisfied, whereas I'm coming home from uni every day feeling like I wasted my time at best, or seething with anger at the worst.
I'm thinking I should have done agricultural college or something, steered down that route. I'd kill for farm work now, but I'm just not knowledgeable enough about the industry to be employable. I know the principles and have experience farming on a small scale, but nothing that is really applicable to a large scale operation, and nothing official. But, I mean, I'm 20, I can't be going back to college.
I've forced myself down this academic route and now I realised it was a mistake. I guess what I want to do is sidestep into the agricultural college path rather than having to backtrack, which just isn't really practical. I'd hate to think that my mistakes after GCSE when I didn't know what I want could now lock me on a road that I utterly hate. Seriously, I need a way out because this is really starting to effect me more than anything else ever has. Every day I start thinking about the future and it makes me feel defeated, because even the best case scenario that could come from doing this course isn't something I want. But frankly, I don't think I could even make the 3 years, and if I did, I'd be a mental wreck.
And alongside all this, I feel like this is the time in my life I'm supposed to be enjoying myself. But I just ****ing can't. I need to sort this out soon or I'm going to be pissing the 'best years' of my life away.