6th January, 2008
Question
I'm a 24 year old girl and have a lot of stress in my life at the moment. I'm from the country, studying in Dublin, and have just lost my part-time job. It seems any job I apply for doesn't work out. My parents have no answers. They just tell me it's my fault if I can't get along with a boss or work colleagues.
College life doesn't seem to be going too great either. I'm going to have to repeat my exams. And I don't have any close friends. They all have boyfriends and a busy social life. I don't know why all of this is going so wrong for me. What can I do?
Answer
It sounds to me as though you've chosen a hard and lonely road, which is giving you great grief. Sometimes we make a mistake, and then battle for years to try and get it right, unable or unwilling to acknowledge the wrong turning that we took. Has that happened to you?
I don't know enough about you to do anything more than guess. Maybe college in Dublin wasn't a great idea, too costly, too far from home, too removed from school and neighbourhood friends. Or maybe the college course was too hard, or uninspiring and uninteresting to you. Maybe it was the right course but the wrong college, too dispersed, too impersonal, too hard for you to fit in. Maybe you tried to please others when you made your college choice. Or maybe you just felt college was the thing to do. It seems impossible to avoid these days, even though going to college most certainly isn't the right course for everyone.
When you feel like a square peg in a round hole in one part of your life - say in your case your college course - then we run the risk of messing everything up. Feeling like an alien in some important part of our lives shakes our self-confidence, our sense of ourselves, our belief in our own abilities. Do you understand? You sound lost, out of touch with yourself, and I know how easily that can happen when we make choices in life that are not wise, not in our own best interest.
Take a long look at why you're doing what you're doing, why you are where you are, and then decide it it's the right place to be. And don't be so alone. If your parents don't understand, or are just dismissive, talk to the college counsellor, or find someone else to confide in like an aunt, or a granny, or an old friend, or a brother.
