For various complicated personal reasons, I'm considering packing my stuff up at college and going home for the rest of the semester. I'd lose a half-semester's worth of work, but I'm thinking it may be worth it. For those curious about some of the details, I transferred this semester to a school 14 hours away from home and have completely failed to integrate socially, so I'm thinking of going back home for the rest of this semester and recharging. I'd resume study at my old university the coming Fall semester. I've got a paid 7 week research position in mathematics this summer at Penn State starting June 28. If I take the rest of this semester off, I'll probably go home next weekend. The issue is that I will then find myself with an immense amount of free time--nothing to do until June 28. I'm wanting the thoughts of anybody who has been in a similar situation. Has anybody here taken a semester of college off? If so, was it a good or bad idea? And for those of you who have suddenly found yourself with a few months of unexpected free time, what's a good way of productively spending this time? As a sidenote, my current school has a most helpful policy: a student in his first semester may drop any and all classes at any point without any consequences at all. So by doing this I will not have anything show up on my transcript; in fact, I don't I'd even have a transcript here at all. I'm about 90% sure I'd be able to get all my old scholarships at my old school back as well (although I definitely need to double-check this).

I ended up doing something similar, although it was not by choice. Turned out not a great move, since socially I was somewhat outside the loop again during my junior year at my old college and senior year was more about school than anything else.

Edit: Lost my "was" somehow.

[Edited by - Binomine on March 8, 2010 1:54:21 PM]

All I will say is that it can take a long time to 'integrate socially' in a new location. Especially if you don't know anybody. I went to out of state college where I didn't know anyone, and it took over a year and before I felt I had some actual friends. And then it was another 3 years or more years before I really started to feel like it was home. You can't just jump into a new place and expect it to be just like home. These things take time.

I took an entire year off because my dad got sick. For me it was good as I met most of my friends when I came back. But to be perfectly honest in your case, just man up and finish the semester. Yeah it sucks to not have any friends but it would be stupid to blow all the money spent on a semester just because you stay home every Friday night.

Just stick with classes and focus on the work. Also take up some new hobby.

Quote: Original post by scottrick49
All I will say is that it can take a long time to 'integrate socially' in a new location. Especially if you don't know anybody. I went to out of state college where I didn't know anyone, and it took over a year and before I felt I had some actual friends. And then it was another 3 years or more years before I really started to feel like it was home. You can't just jump into a new place and expect it to be just like home. These things take time.

The decision to transfer was a very complex one, but I openly admit I didn't anticipate the social integration would be this hard.

Besides, transferring in the middle of the year is different from simply attending a college out of state. If you go to a college out of state, I imagine you still had a lot of orientation activities, and I imagine you got to live in the dorms with other new students who were also needing to make friends, etc. None of this happened at my current school. No activities were hosted to help midyear transfers assimilate. I was thrown into a pool of more than 3,000 students all of whom already knew each other and none of whom were looking to make new friends

Evidently the school is considering eliminating midyear transfer admissions because they've found it has brought too much stress on midyear transfers in the past, but of course nobody told me this until I arrived.

The biggest problem is that this stress has negatively affected my schoolwork. I'm taking graduate courses as a sophomore, and I've discovered I can't handle the stress of graduate-level work and the stress of developing a new social life simultaneously. Graduate courses are really, really time consuming, at least here, and if I want to do well in them I don't have time to spend enough time socializing.

If I had started here as a freshman, I have no doubt things would be different. There would have been countless activities hosted to help freshmen assimilate and I wouldn't have been taking graduate-level courses my first semester that suck up all my time at socializing.

The bottom line is that transferring here was a bad decision. It's affecting my schoolwork and my emotional health negatively, and I'd like to stop this as soon as possible. I'd honestly rather forget about this semester and continue at my old school than finish this semester, get bad grades in critically important classes, mess up my chances for getting into a good graduate school, etc.

Quote: Original post by jtagge75
Yeah it sucks to not have any friends but it would be stupid to blow all the money spent on a semester just because you stay home every Friday night.

On what basis did you conclude I stay home every Friday night? Contrary to what you seem to be suggesting, I actually have tried to integrate socially here.

Quote: Original post by Talroth
Just stick with classes and focus on the work. Also take up some new hobby.

Yes, I have been focusing on the work, and I've become miserable. At some point one has to look out for one's emotional health. Happiness, I've realized, is not something to be sacrificed.

And I'm busy enough with school work and attempting to develop an entirely new social life that I assure you I have no time for a new hobby.

There are many ways in which this transfer could have been more successful. For instance, if I took easier classes I would have more time to socialize. However, the entire point of transferring was to take advanced coursework at a top school. You might be thinking that was a bad reason to transfer, and you'd be right, as I've discovered the hard way. Or I could have transferred in the Fall, when the school does host a lot of orientation activities for both freshmen and transfers. I unfortunately lacked sufficient foresight.

As it stands, I'm drained. I'm losing motivation to continue working, and I have no friends and no time to make friends.

I'm considering dropping my more time consuming classes, finishing the others, and then transferring the credit to my old school and resuming study there from now on. This way I wouldn't lose my work from this half-semester so far, at least not all of it.

Quote: Original post by nilkn
The bottom line is that transferring here was a bad decision. It's affecting my schoolwork and my emotional health negatively, and I'd like to stop this as soon as possible. I'd honestly rather forget about this semester and continue at my old school than finish this semester, get bad grades in critically important classes, mess up my chances for getting into a good graduate school, etc.

If the stress levels are too high, it might at some point, affect even your physical health. I think you are still evaluating very well the various possibilities. The semester cost is the least. If you end up too tired, you'll have no time to refresh anyway. I think you're right in considering a more long-term solution.

At a certain point, one has to consider even the added value in the friends you get/don't get here.
When I've attended university, I spent alot of time and focus on identifying people which could somehow be considered valuable on a professional level. Mostly wasted time. I would be extremely cautious in spending time with people which doesn't seem to pay the minimum interest to me.

Although a little different, during my masters program, I took off a semester, due to burn out. The stress of crazy deadlines, repeated short sighted decisions by upper management, long travel times, a very heavy workload and classes ontop of it, was too much. So, I took a semester off. Sometimes it's good to take a semester. Just know that when you start again, you're going to have to hit the ground running and kick it into high gear to make up for lost time. It's a technique you maybe use once at most and only if really needed. If that's now, I think you can justify doing it. Just make sure you're comfortable with the decision. In my case, I was so burnt out that I could barely think about classes, so I did it for lack of a better option. [smile]