I’m a senior who’s 21 years old. I will be 22 in July. I today found out I have to retake two college classes. And it sucks because I see on social media where some of my classmates that I graduated with in high school graduated college this spring. They got their bachelors and are moving on. I feel left behind because now I have to wait until the fall. I just hate the thought of being the last person to do something. It’s the worst feeling. I have to wait 7 months. I have never been good in school! I have always struggled. But it seems so easy for others. I hate the feeling.
Once you’ve got a job in your chosen career, 99% of situations don’t give any shit about what happened before that.
Exactly. I was in the same boat as OP because my GPA was trash. I probably missed some opportunities because of it when trying to land my first job. But after I got one in my field, I was never asked for my GPA again, or even evidence that I went to college. Employers only want to know what you did in your last job, and only default to grades or diplomas if you have no relevant work history.
Dude (Dudess?). You are so young. This doesn’t matter in a long run.
Your old classmates who flunked during the last two years probably didn’t post about it on social media. It’s not reflective of reality, just all curation.
Trust me, you’re doing fine. My bachelor took five years to finish, and plenty of people I’ve talked to have had similar situations.
Literally does not matter. There’s always going to be someone smarter, harder-working, or more privileged than you. The sooner you accept that and take ownership of your own experience without comparing yourself to others, the better off you’ll be.
No
Colleges in fact often conspire to try to delay your graduation to fleece you. Don’t take it as a personal failing
I graduated when I was 30. Not a problem! (That was 30 years ago)
I graduated at 24 after taking two years off due to…issues. No one worth accepting opinions from will care that you spent any amount of extra time at college.
Just do what you need to do and graduate with your head held up high. Because at the end of it, you do graduate.
I can guarantee you it’s not a big deal. Don’t beat yourself over it.
No one knows when you entered college. You could have taken a year off between hs and college. No one will know that you had to retake classes either. You’re over thinking it. You’re not the last person to do it, you don’t know where everywhere else is at.
Don’t worry about this at all, this is actually a great opportunity.
You have a full year where you are a very competitive intern/research applicant because most of your schooling is behind you.
Not only that, but you can probably take an internship in the spring or fall semester when everyone else is in school. You can get some really primo internships. University of Waterloo is a school you probably never heard of but you find their students in all the big tech companies in the spring and fall because the school pushes them to take a semester off(I think). It’s a great strategy.
This might feel bad, but honestly you’re still killing it. I graduated at like 30 after grinding out years and years of CC. You have great prospects, just stay focused
Short answer: no. You can even study two other degrees and be fine if age is your only concern.
It took me 7 years to get a 2 year degree. I work with one of my best friends who got his masters in that same time. We’re both successful and excell at what we do. It does suck that you have to wait to be done, but one silver lining is you may have a better job market since you won’t be graduating with the vast majority of college students competing for the same spots.
I’d be pretty hard-pressed to name any of my friends who graduated “on time”
I’m well into my 30s now, a couple of my friends are still working on degrees or just graduated.
Changing majors, bullshit scheduling nonsense, life
Shit, there was a whole fucking pandemic that fucked up a year or two of your high school years, it’s pretty damn amazing that anyone your age is graduating even roughly on-time as far as I’m concerned.
Maybe it’ll throw a bit of a monkey wrench into your social life because you gotta skip out on a couple things because you have class. That’s life as an adult, we all got scheduling conflicts all the time.
Otherwise, it’s never gonna matter. You’ll have a degree, that’s the only “important” thing about graduating. Unless you’re looking to get into some highly-specialized, super-competitive field, no one gives a shit how long it took you to graduate, how your gpa stacked up against the rest of your class, etc. It’s like the old joke “What do you call the person who graduated at the bottom of their class in medical school? You call them ‘Doctor.’”
I graduated in 6 years with a bachelor’s. It took my mom 20 years to get her bachelor’s (not continuously). You’re fine.
