# On being in a bad place and too stubborn to leave.

I know, it’s probably a good deal too personal a topic for LW. Don’t hesitate to downvote it into oblivion.

In high school, I had to choose what to study at uni. I was, then, a bright enough student, autistic but just enough to be a little nerdy and dorky. I had been getting interested in social psychology, science, cognitive biases, and eventually rationality. I considered various options: architecture, medicine, engineering, biology, etc. But none of those suited me perfectly, and for most of them, I was held back by my lack of self-confidence. And by what I now know is a probable ADHD that made me shy away from the idea of working 15+ hours a day in engineering school, even if it seemed fun. 

The only reasonable option left was the mistake. I really liked the sort of political, social, and economic topics that were being discussed on SSC and similar places. Improving the world sounded like a fun thing to do. So, I went for what was basically a [PPE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy,_politics_and_economics), confident that it was sold as being really great, famous, and very intellectually engaging. Quite promising, right? I did, however, suspect a less than perfect culture fit, and I was a little worried.

And rightly so. I arrived full of ideas about rationality in politics, before being quickly and firmly told that "we" didn’t care about science here. Another issue was the lack of depth, we barely skimmed over things. Now, being a 18 years old lonely nerd, learning stuff was most of my life, and I had expected a lot more —likely too much— out of that uni. So I got depressed. In fact, on a Friday in March 2020, I was pondering the practicalities of a suicide attempt for the following Monday, when it was announced that said Monday would be the start of lockdown. (In retrospect, if I hadn’t been prone to depression, I’d have read [this](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NbBdGhJaeEWPcCRxJ/reflections-on-a-year-of-college) and noticed that there wasn’t yet much to be depressed about. But that’s not how it happened, and instead, I did basically all the wrong things. Probably because using college to hang out with smart and interesting people when we didn’t have much in common —and during a pandemic— was particularly hard).

Anyway, will you be surprised if I tell you that the start of lockdown wasn’t a very good time to be depressed? Teenagers often do stupid things, and the stupid thing my depressed self did was to decide to stay in that university. Seemed safer and less risky, you see. So I carried on. I slowly started losing contact with my goals and my interests. But not completely, as I spent the whole time wishing I was somewhere else. I kept getting good grades, but a big part of me just refused to accept this was my life. And so, a psychologist would probably find that I remained at least sub-clinically depressed for the next four years. Sounds fun, right? My career plans, as unclear as most people’s when I was 18, only became less clear as time went on, especially as my degree was touted as "allowing us to do pretty much anything", which is university lingo for "gives neither specific skills nor a sense of direction". Career planning also became some kind of ugh field, and I mostly stopped thinking about it.  
 

I am now 22, in what is nominally a good business master’s degree, still at the same uni, but I’m mostly drifting around aimlessly, and only chose that degree because it seemed to my still-somewhat-depressed self like the most sensible option I had left after a social sciences undergrad I saw as worthless in anything but signalling value.

Ok, now, I’m done with the sob story, if anyone’s still reading this far. With the help of a great therapist, and other sources of good advice, my mental health has improved no end.   
 

But I’m still in a pretty difficult situation, right? I know that I’m better than in 2020, but in 2019 I was a smart and promising student interested in what I was doing, and I see no way of going back to something like that? That’s my main worry, but even if I did find something, I’d have to deal with the massive shame of having, almost deliberately, chosen to obstinately screw things up for four years. And if I could get *that* depressed in the past, surely I have a ‘major depression’ sword of Damocles hanging over my future as well?   
And again, my current degree basically won’t get me anywhere, even though I’m not sure whether it’s because I genuinely dislike working in business management (likely) or just because I’ve associated that uni to too many bad memories to take advantage of anything they provide (also likely). There are things I’d like better —though I’m not fully sure what exactly they are —, but today, at 22, I may not have a way to pursue these things. And even if I had, my confidence in myself’s been too completely shattered for me to feel fully comfortable exploring those possibilities.

So: to an extent, I’m writing this just for venting. But I won’t reject an opportunity to tap into LW’s collective wisdom: anyone got advice on how to solve these issues?