i hate college.
I don't really know where else to dump this - I hope everyone's ready for some hardcore complaining. If that's not your thing, go find something else to read.
I'm at the end of my senior year in college. I've got 5 weeks left here. I have a midterm coming up on Wednesday, and I have another one a week or two after that one.
I don't know if it's senioritis. Sheer burn out. Exhaustion- I don't know what. But I am exhausted and so, so frustrated at how mediocre I've turned out during my time here. Dull.
I had to step up and be the project manager, basically, for a big team engineering project. But I have also felt torn about this role - and I don't know. I don't have enough experience to know if this is just plain sexism, or what to call it - but it makes me feel uncomfortable.
I feel as if I've had to babysit my team, to try and get them to coordinate with each other on basic communication practices.
I hate that - I also feel as if I'm not one to talk, at all. I've had my own struggles with getting my own work done at all, have dragged out my own stuff under the guise of it being a new role. I feel as if I've blamed my managing role as well for a lot of the mental load - and I don't know how much of it is just an excuse for my poor technical workload or if that's all I can genuinely manage at one time.
I hate how overwhelming this all has felt. My latest frustrations?
Our midterm is coming up. My mechanical leads have not built the robot - and we're fifteen weeks into this project. Our professor was firm on it at the beginning of the quarter - design work should be WRAPPING UP by the first week, and physical prototypes should be getting built by the midterm.
The mechanical leads have not even started on building the robot yet.
Our midterm review is in 3 days.
And yet somehow - I feel as if I'm the insane one, for caring about this deadline.
And after a couple days of genuine frustration and confusion (and promises from one mechanical lead to at least START 3D printing by Thursday, which is 3 days ago) - this mechanical lead disappeared. Friday afternoon, he finally responded - "Oh, sorry! I have a big, large percentage of my grade project due Monday in my other class!!"
And instead of the other mechanical lead backing up the fact that he is BEHIND and NOT communicating at all - he says instead we have to compromise. Meet with him on Monday - two days before our midterm.
The robot has not been built yet.
I have offered to help. I have offered to print things earlier. I have offered to CAD files up, do anything to speed up this painfully slow process.
But nothing. Everyone is going along as if nothing is wrong, as if our deadline ISN'T in less than 4 days. I can't code an ROV that doesn't have anything BUILT on it yet.
I don't think it's wrong, how demoralizing this all feels. I am angry, and I am upset. I don't often let myself feel those things - but I've also never been so frustrated with people's lack of common sense.
And yet - I'm still trying to find a way to blame myself for this whole mess. When the mechanical leads have been dragging us around in circles, and no one has seemed to care about this.
I tried to come in today, to offer assistance of sorts. Maybe a second pair of hands, anything, really. I managed to file a hole into a GoPro case for one of our camera enclosures.
But then one of the other leads was hungry and cranky and also stressed at the low progress - and he snapped at me. Said something about how I was pissing him off, and of course I crumpled. I packed up my stuff and left, and while on the phone with my fiancé just started bawling my eyes out. I drove home in tears (I cleared up enough to see on the drive, and it was a short 10 minute drive), and it just crushed me.
I don't know how much is my own bad luck, or how much is me, or how much is just how crappy engineering students can be to each other that's just worn me down so much. It's been five years of thinking I'm not enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not hardworking enough-
And yet somehow, this year, it's been relentless, almost insults to the quality of people I've been stuck working with. For every time that I've cried or struggled with turning in decent grade work- someone else is scraping by on so much less, is just cruising through on low-effort stuff they turn in - sometimes with MY HELP.
And yet I still don't think I'm enough. That I'm a disservice to every team I've been on.
I can see why my fiancé gets upset, when I dump on myself. And it's not that I don't know deep down that I have things I can contribute, that I've been dealt a bit of a shitty hand in college. I know I have adhd and I have genuine issues with concentration and memory -
But it's so hard to remember all of that when I see so many people just do school, and do fine. Get honors, find the math easy. Find the physics fine.
I have felt so dumb for so long. I'm so tired. I just want these next five weeks to be over, to graduate and to rest from all of this. I just want to be done, to have my brain back. To be less stressed - please, to be less stressed than this. I can't have my head splitting four ways again.