Help me. I need advise. I feel insanely lost.
Hello,
As the title suggests, I am insanely lost. I don't know what to do.
To give some backstory, I am an incoming sophomore at a non-target. The only reason I went to college was to get into banking. I have a genuine interest in IB/PE as a career field. But I want to break in more than anything.
My issue is, is I have absolutely zero drive for school. I don't care to try and I struggle with focusing. During my first semester, my GPA was decent. ~3.5. In my second semester though I struggled a lot. I had gone through a lot of personal shit and so it ended with a 2.0. My cumulative is at a 2.8 now.
To fix this, I decided to take summer classes for the classes I performed poorly on. The only problem is that I am being extremely lazy again. I am also trying to transfer to a better school, which of course requires a high GPA. But I am expending a lot of time into my non-profit and it's extremely stressful (really good for transfer).
I know how valuable my academics are and it's the "foundation" of even getting an interview.
My question is to other people who struggled to focus on school, what did you do?
I can focus on things I enjoy (the nonprofit and I had a decently successful business in the past) but for the life of me, no matter how much I try to focus on school, I just can't.
How do you expect to survive ib if you can't even get through college classes...
On a real note, I don't think most people like doing work, just toughen up. Maybe you're low on vitamins or something, you should get blood work done if it's this bad.
It's not that I can't get through them, I just HATE school. It's just hard for me to focus. On your vitamins note, I will check it out. I got prescribed Vyvanse towards the end of my sem lol
Become a cop, Delaware pays recruits 80k starting salary and after 35 hours of work you’re basically in OT territory. Better to retire with a comfy pension and $3-4mm net worth than go out like Jonathan Kaye know what I’m saying? Plus you get to have cool gadgets
>>> “But I want to break in more than anything”
>>> “I have absolutely zero drive for school. I don't care to try and I struggle with focusing”
Pick one. Banking is a brutal job that requires a lot of sacrifice before and during. You very clearly don’t want it enough.
I do. Like I said, it's the only reason I am attending college. It's just super difficult for me to focus because I feel like its a waste of time learning about useless shit. But nonetheless, I will try again to gamify school and focus.
Let me get this straight... you're at a non-target with a 2.8 GPA, extremely lazy, with absolutely zero drive for school?
Throw IB/PE out the window, this is not even competitive for Big 4 accounting, TAS, or corporate banking. You would struggle to get interviews for commercial banking.
You need to do some serious soul searching because the harsh truth is that corporate / professional services would absolutely not be something you would find success in based off everything you mentioned. There is no "2.0" GPA in corporate... that would get you fired.
I 1000% agree. Hopefully, with my plan, I can fix my GPA. It's just hard to focus on school for me. I can dedicate a lot of hours to other things (non profit or my previous business for example) and I'll do extremely well with it / make shit happen.
I've just never been in tune with school. Never has been my thing.
I was asking for advice on if anyone else has struggled with focusing on school, what they did to get through it in a successful manner.
I was like you but at a Target - everything they’re saying is spot on. What they’re saying by “there is no 2.0 GPA in corporate” means there is no inconsistencies in the job. You can’t be a 4.0 for two months on the job and drop to a 2.0 two months later. That’s how you get put on a PiP and you get fired. Banks want consistent professionals who are good from day one all the way until they call it a quit. You need to ask yourself if you can be that person, if you can’t, then find another job - not shaming you but you need to find another job.
I empathize with the ADHD I have it, it sucks but this isn’t an ADHD issue it’s a consistency issue and you not wanting to do what you have to do to get the job which is, waking up, and being consistent everyday.
When I broke into IB it was a rude awakening. You’re dealing with difficult assholes on a daily, you have six different people yelling at you for deliverables, and if you make a mistake they don’t care. No one cares, and it’s a difficult job. It’s difficult politically and physically demanding.
No matter what job you get out of college and beyond, there will be plenty of times where you are asked to do something really dumb, boring, irrelevant, etc. but you’ll still have to do it because your paycheck relies on it. Your job in college is to prepare yourself for the real world, and even the irrelevant stuff is still relevant because it pays the bills. Working hard in college pays the bills in the future by giving you access to better jobs.
Agree, if you wanted it bad enough you would work harder. Quit being a lazy fuck and grind your way into a banking role, or not.
Choice is yours alone, and nobody on this site can flip that switch for you
You are too lazy to even get the minimum GPA to not get auto-rejected by a bank, but you want to break into IB; which requires far more sacrifice and hard work than maintaining above a 3.0?
I also struggled in undergrad. My trick was to actually take high school seriously and get into a top Ivy, so I would still get opportunities at top banks.
In your case, you go to a crappy school and have crappy grades. Double whammy.
So I would suggest you just graduate, work in something adjacent to banking, and try to get into a top business school so you can break in as an MBA associate.
Hey! I used to have the same issue.
Now, the problem still exists but I take copious amounts of adderal to mitigate the symptoms of being a bum. This summer I’ve had to pretty much learn advanced stats and multivariable calculus (for reference I got a D average in calc 1+2) and understand most of John c. Hals book - did it and it didn’t feel strenuous.
I like to think that the only trade off is 5-10 years from my lifespan which I think is better than ruining my life because I just can’t figure out how to focus
Wtf dude this is horrible advice to give someone
First of all it’s not necessarily advice I’m just sharing my experience. Second of all no it’s not?? I genuinely believe my life is better off with adderal and I’m confident that it can help others as well
You don't need to turn to Adderall or other drugs. If you want it as much as you say you do, that should be enough. You should be willing to do whatever it takes, if that means grinding through a lecture for 1.5 hours or doing a few hours of studying for meaningless courses, that's what you have to do. Just keep your end goal in mind and ensure you always go back to it. You need to tell yourself, "this is just a necessary step for me to get into banking".
It might be possible that you have ADHD or some other related attention or health issue. Have you looked into that?
incoming sophomore non-target here as well
ngl if you put in the work even with a gpa like that the chances are still existent. Join the finance club, come up with a good story about your gpa if ever asked, find mentors, read books, know your technicals, and make good connections. at least try to keep it above a 3.0 tho.
being lazy is not an excuse. you just don't want it hard enough.
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