Failing community college

[9Rock9]

I feel like my situation is a bit unique. I am taking class at a community college and I'm struggling with the classes.

I've gone to this same school several times before and can never seem to finish. I've lost count at this point.

The only reason I have gone back this time was because I was miserable at my last job and wanted a reason to quit. Yet, I worry I will be back at the kind of job again if I fail.

Like, I know it's not unusual for people to flunk university, but this is a community college. It's supposed to be easier and more manageable.

What do I do?

 

[Reluctant Theologian]

I feel like my situation is a bit unique. I am taking class at a community college and I'm struggling with the classes.

I've gone to this same school several times before and can never seem to finish. I've lost count at this point.

The only reason I have gone back this time was because I was miserable at my last job and wanted a reason to quit. Yet, I worry I will be back at the kind of job again if I fail.

Like, I know it's not unusual for people to flunk university, but this is a community college. It's supposed to be easier and more manageable.

What do I do?

Talk to someone close .. and who is able to have a thorough conversation with you in-person (maybe someone from church / home-group etc.) to check a few things:

• is this the course you really need training/career-wise?
• is the learning-style and level matching your personality and capabilities?
• is something blocking concentration/will-power to finish things in general in your life?
• general health (including mental health) check .. without good mental health it's difficult to find the energy to finish anything challenging
• what hope do you have? what are your next milestones in life? without specific things it's easy to become lethargic

Be blessed brother !

 

[9Rock9]

Talk to someone close .. and who is able to have a thorough conversation with you in-person (maybe someone from church / home-group etc.) to check a few things:

• is this the course you really need training/career-wise?
• is the learning-style and level matching your personality and capabilities?
• is something blocking concentration/will-power to finish things in general in your life?
• general health (including mental health) check .. without good mental health it's difficult to find the energy to finish anything challenging
• what hope do you have? what are your next milestones in life? without specific things it's easy to become lethargic

Be blessed brother !

Well, I am taking an IT course. Idk if it's really what I want to do, but I had to pick something and found it preferable to the other options.

It wasn't too bad at first, but now I am taking a class in C++ programming and I'm at a lost.

I do have ADHD and pretty bad time management skills.

 

[eleos1954]

I feel like my situation is a bit unique. I am taking class at a community college and I'm struggling with the classes.

I've gone to this same school several times before and can never seem to finish. I've lost count at this point.

The only reason I have gone back this time was because I was miserable at my last job and wanted a reason to quit. Yet, I worry I will be back at the kind of job again if I fail.

Like, I know it's not unusual for people to flunk university, but this is a community college. It's supposed to be easier and more manageable.

What do I do?

With the onset of AI, one needs to be careful what they decide about their education and if it will be a needed service in the future. The trades will be in very high demand ... other things not so much .... AI is a game changer in regard to higher education.

 

[Reluctant Theologian]

Well, I am taking an IT course. Idk if it's really what I want to do, but I had to pick something and found it preferable to the other options.

It wasn't too bad at first, but now I am taking a class in C++ programming and I'm at a lost.

I do have ADHD and pretty bad time management skills.

But do you like IT - tinkering around, making something work, programming, etc. ? C++ IMHO takes all the fun out of programming, but it does help to understand at a low level how a computer works. Like @eleos1954 said, why not something more practical that will not be AI affected?

 

[jacks]

Maybe pick an easier major? Perhaps just get a transferrable AA, that just contains general classes. Then you can go to any college as a junior, when you figure out what you really want to do.

 

[asquirrel]

I learned C++ in college. What's bothering you about it? C felt like 'this is how programming is supposed to work' compared to Java. C++ is C's attempt to be java. It can be clear or a headache, entirely down to how the programmer wrote their code. There's clean ways to write C++ that make sense, and there's ways to write C++ that are so arcane almost any human will struggle to make heads or tails of it.

 

[9Rock9]

I learned C++ in college. What's bothering you about it? C felt like 'this is how programming is supposed to work' compared to Java. C++ is C's attempt to be java. It can be clear or a headache, entirely down to how the programmer wrote their code. There's clean ways to write C++ that make sense, and there's ways to write C++ that are so arcane almost any human will struggle to make heads or tails of it.

Well, it was fine until I got to loop statements, especially the for loops and nested links loops. Like, I understand them in theory, but have a hard time parsing what I am seeing and the code ends up not turning out right regardless of what I try.

 

[asquirrel]

Well, it was fine until I got to loop statements, especially the for loops and nested links loops. Like, I understand them in theory, but have a hard time parsing what I am seeing and the code ends up not turning out right regardless of what I try.

Can you post an example of something that confuses you? Or several. Is this your first programming language, or are you coming from another language, like Python?

 

[Reluctant Theologian]

I learned C++ in college. What's bothering you about it? C felt like 'this is how programming is supposed to work' compared to Java. C++ is C's attempt to be java. It can be clear or a headache, entirely down to how the programmer wrote their code. There's clean ways to write C++ that make sense, and there's ways to write C++ that are so arcane almost any human will struggle to make heads or tails of it.

History is slightly different; C++ existed long before Java arrived on the scene. The 'Java version of C' would be C# (with the .NET runtime) .. both Java and C# have automatic memory management.

 

[asquirrel]

History is slightly different; C++ existed long before Java arrived on the scene. The 'Java version of C' would be C# (with the .NET runtime) .. both Java and C# have automatic memory management.

I know. But when I was being taught I learned java first, then C, then C++. So while historically wrong, my comment was more that C++ was C trying to be java. Or, said differently, C++ was adding in a lot of the dumb stuff java did into my glorious C. That said, std:string saves a LOT of tedious work, so not *all* of C++ is bad. I tried to write everything in C for about 10 years, but with time, bash, and then Python became the languages I needed to write most of my stuff in because it was more about parsing data and orchestration than processing GB of data as fast as possible.

If you need to blow through a 2GB text file and find a few specific tokens, C can do that in under 1 second, if your storage is fast enough. Bash will take around 5 minutes. Python around 2 minutes. C++ can also do it in 1 second, but with 10x the code of C (because templates get nested like Matryoshka dolls). vs C where you just write a state machine in 20 lines of code and it does what you need. Simple.

 

[9Rock9]

But do you like IT - tinkering around, making something work, programming, etc. ? C++ IMHO takes all the fun out of programming, but it does help to understand at a low level how a computer works. Like @eleos1954 said, why not something more practical that will not be AI affected?

Well, I am ambivalent about IT. It's not my passion and I only have a mild interest in computers, but I don't think I'd hate doing it for a living.

Idk what I want to do, tbh