I absolutely hate asking for help/support...

I think that you would benefit from taking a break. Obviously you know the value of a good education, and you appreciate it. But, you need to relax at some point. You're about to enter a higher level or education and you're starting another four years of heavy coursework. This summer is your chance to unwind before you start.

You need to talk to your mom about this. Tell her you need some time to be you. This is your last real chance to be a kid, or at least before people really expect you to act like an adult all the time.

You have every right to be happy. And, if taking some time to do stuff besides schoolwork makes you happy, then you should do it. Also, if your mom wants you to do well in August, she needs to give you a break after high school. Make sure you tell her that you don't want to feel burned out before you even start.

 

I think taking a break would be by far the best thing for you to do at the moment. If you work too hard and don't take any time to be yourself and have fun, it's so easy to burn out, and if that happens, it won't do anybody any good. Taking a break would mean you'd be able to start college with a clear head and refreshed, as opposed to being tired and frazzled.

 

Dont worry. I also am currently suffering from senioritus.

Dont take a college class this summer. Enjoy your self. Maybe you could compromise and take a fun class. Like I think I am going to take some photography classes this summer.

 

I agree with everyone, there is nothing bad about taking time for yourself, espically senior year. If you work to much you'll break down and really suffer, so its good to have time to oneself every once in a while

 

I know a lot of people who have taken time off and they are already ahead of me lol. Take a break, its your college career and nobody else's.

 

Be sure to tell her that the more she forces you to do something and the more things she takes away to reach her goal is actualy making the situation worse. One thing that can make a dreary task worse is being told you have to do it, and letting it be the only thing in your life. You do so much better when you enjoy what you're doing, and to enjoy what you're doing, you need a break from it now and again. It's not "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", it's "all work and no play causes Jack to have a breakdown and screw up everything."

 

its your life your future. not hers. taking a break before college is not going to kill you or ruin your life. if she doesn't understand that then tough horse shit. is she the one moving to a new campus? no. is she the one going to be doing all the course work? no. Is she going to be the one working on a future career, living your life, paying off the eventual loans in your name? no, no, no. Don't make her push you anymore. You seem to do a really good job of doing that yourself. I think if you've got the movivation to push yourself, you'll do it. If something is important to you, you'll find a way to do it. That's your responsibility,, no one elses. Taking a break will give you time to get that motivation that you need. Take a break. Take a breather. And tell your mom to suck it.

 

Have you ever watched "Dead Poets Society?" Your mom sounds a lot like the character played played by Kurtwood Smith (Neil Perry's father).

Seriously, you need to take a break. We see it in the corporate world all the time where people work and work and work and never take a break, and after awhile, it starts to show up in performance AND in health. A once vibrant person gets so worn down that they look like hell and work about half as fast as they once did. Human beings are not robots. We are susceptable to stress. We require rest and diversion.

Tell your mom something else, too. Colleges may look at test scores and GPAs when they're deciding whether to accept you. But JOBS do not. No employer is ever going to ask what your GPA was or what you got on your SAT or ACT. They WILL ask what activities you did, how much you volunteered for stuff, and things of that nature. Employers want a balanced person, not a (to use a gaming term) character sheet with a bunch of stats.

And yes, when people get stressed out beyond a certain point and snap, well, there's a reason I mentioned "Dead Poets Society."

 

Did your mom attend college? Did she work non-stop through school? She 'thinks' she knows what's best for you, but I'm not convinced she does.

Life isn't a race.

In the grand scheme of things, it wouldn't matter if you took a whole year off - never mind a summer. MOST college students will start in the fall, not in June. Sure, some will be keeners I guess. But you don't need to take a summer course to get yourself ready for college. That's what highschool was for! It isn't necessary to stay in class all year long.

I know it's a slightly different world out there right now, as I'm 20 years older than you are, but I NEVER took summer school. I had my summers off until I was 16. Then I worked in the summers until I got a full time job when I graduated from university. And THEN I got my professional designation while I was working full time.

As 'xequar' said, employers don't care how quickly you got through college. They don't care what your marks were in highschool. But they do care whether or not your a well-rounded individual, who have interests outside of schooling. People that have been involved in student government. People that have strong interpersonal skills - which aren't usually learned by reading a book. Ultimately, they'll care about how you perform on the job - and in today's competitive job market, THAT is stressful. So while you don't have to worry about that, you really should learn to relax.

If you haven't learned how to do that by the time you start working, you'll likely never learn. I think that was me. And when you combined that with my denial over my orientation, my perfectionism, and living my life for others rather than myself - I eventually found "relief" in an addiction.

I don't want to freak you out. But ignoring this stuff and 'going with the flow' can ultimately have some dire consequences - depending on the person. I would strongly recommend getting to know yourself better now, doing things that YOU think are right for you, and putting your mom's influence in it's proper place in your life.

Easier said than done, I know, but you'll need to do it at some point. Sooner rather than later might be appropriate here.

Good luck, and feel free to PM me if you want to discuss one on one.

 

That's awesome! We build things up in our minds to the point where they are WAY worse than reality. I'm glad you took a stand, and made a decision for yourself.

 

A ton of people buy into the idea that advanced education is crucial to having "a good life." And in many respects, this opinion is not incorrect. That being said, though, education does not count as much as I think some people like to believe... in a lot of ways, inequality is still present in our lives no matter how good our schooling was. Education is supposed to be the great leveller of class in our society but if you actually look at how education works, you see it doesn't remotely live up to its promise in this respect.

One of the very worst things you can do is spend gobs of money going to school studying something you aren't into when you don't want to be there. After I came out at the end of my 2nd year at uni, my grades totally nosedived because I actually started prioritising a social life and friends and, as you say, having fun. I was a little concerned, and I'm sure my parents were a little concerned, but the ironic thing is that I did get my degree, and then spent about 10 years working in the field I was trained for (computer science) and now I'm back at school because even though I love computers, I don't want to do computer science for the rest of my life. Most people are going to be working for 30 to 40 years (or more!), so training to do something we're not into? Not a very good use of our time (and, increasingly, our money).

Being able to get a post-secondary education is a privilege, a huge privilege, and squandering that opportunity because you're (legitimately) burned-out would be a real crime. If you keep telling your mother what you said in your very first message, which is that while you still value getting an education but you also want to experience and enjoy life, I think you'll eventually get through to her. Taking some time off can definitely help you come back more focused and with a better idea of what you want to study. On top of that, you might really appreciate, in a way that's near-impossible to do if you've never been out of school, the "student lifestyle" and the coolness of getting to expand your mind.

For far too many people, success is prestige at work and, more importantly, money. But there's a big reason why people say "money can't buy happiness," namely--it's totally true. If I had to choose between being comfortable and happy vs. being well-off/rich and overworked/burned-out, I can tell you it wouldn't be any kind of choice. Having lots of money helps with a certain amount of problems and grants a certain kind of freedom but ultimately, it doesn't help us appreciate life or figure out our place in it. Very few people aspire to poverty, true, but there's a world of space and difference between poverty at one end and wealth at the other. Not having a top-tier career does not mean having to scrape by from paycheque-to-paycheque, but sadly I think that's how a lot of people see life: in very black and white extremes. But then you hear the stories of people who completely downsize their lives and leave their super-lucrative but super-stressful positions at work and you begin to understand that the accumulation of wealth and "stuff" is not all there is to human existence (however much modern consumer capitalism would like us to believe this is so).

If I recall correctly, in Australia there's a tradition of taking a "gap year" between high school and university. This strikes me as an amazingly healthy and sensible thing to do and I kinda wish it was the tradition everywhere, because going from Kindergarten through the end of university with absolutely no break is just not a very healthy way of doing it.

P.S. Why do you hate asking for help/support? It's not like you totally inconvenienced any of us!