How do I cope with squandered potential?

June 22, 2015 3:57 PM

Lately it's been sinking in a little more how much potential and how many opportunities I obliterated by screwing up as an undergrad. I eventually graduated with a degree, but my performance was poor enough that it ruled out the career I imagined for myself.

I'm 31 years old, and I'm reasonably successful in my career (still not making the big bucks, but I think I'm on a trajectory to being pretty financially comfortable). I'm a web developer, a career I kind of fell into, initially part-time while I was in college but eventually as a full-time gig. I generally get a lot of praise for my performance at work, and I can tell from comparing myself to coworkers and others working in the field that I'm pretty good at it.

The problem is that I don't feel a great deal of passion for it. I have some concern about the field itself long-term, and beyond that I worry that I don't seem to have the drive and interest to really push my own skill development beyond what I do at work.

Lately, I've been ensconced in an episode of depression, seemingly triggered by a move to a new city (I have therapy and doctor's appointments scheduled to deal with that.) In terms of my career, it's led me to ruminate on the fact that I really screwed up as an undergrad. I am pretty substantially smarter than average and I was always pretty gifted academically. In high school, I was a pretty phenomenal student -- not perfect, and not as hard-working as I should have been, but smart enough that I got a great scholarship to a state school and tons of AP credit to ease the way (and admitted, albeit with less generous offers, to a bunch of better schools), plus various other opportunities tossed my way.

I squandered them. I got both scared and depressed, and it led me to spend way too long on a major I should have realized sooner I hated (because I thought it would lead to a nice safe career), and I pushed myself too hard (trying to get a double major in Spanish as well, for no particular reason). I failed a lot of classes, barely attended them some semesters, and I ended up eventually graduating seven years in, only after I switched my major to my original preference (linguistics, which was always my biggest academic fascination, something I was scared to pursue because of the uncertainty of academia.)

My GPA when I finally graduated in 2008, after 7 years, was 3.15, which is not miserable, but with nothing else to show for it (no research, no series of brilliant and fascinating life experiences), I figured it probably wasn't worth trying to get into grad school (probably correctly), and I was still scared, so I ended up eventually forging ahead with web development.

I'm good at what I do, and at least at present I feel okay about my career prospects, but lately I can't seem to stop thinking about what might have been. This weekend I hit upon the idea of med school -- there are definitely people who go as late in life as I do, and medicine is another thing that really fascinates me. I was hoping my undergraduate grades would be less important by now -- but I did some research and it looks like it would be an outside shot at best to get into a low-ranking osteopathy school, and that only if I spent years (and borrowed tens of thousands of dollars) to take classes to try to push up my GPA.

So now I'm feeling even more depressed at seeing all the possibilities closed off to me by my terrible undergrad performance. What do I do to cope with this? I know a lot of people are successful in careers they don't exactly love, but I can't stop thinking about what might have been if I'd just had a better plan as an undergrad.

posted by mister pointy to Work & Money (25 answers total)

You can get into grad school with a 3.0 don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
You are you and that's what matters. I think this is more depression talking than actual problems.
Depression is a cycle. .. it tells your what you can't do so you don't try and surprise it never happens.
You can do what you want even in your 30s. Want more schooling? Go for it! Web Development can be used in any field.
posted by AlexiaSky at 4:01 PM on June 22, 2015 [5 favorites]

A lot of grad programs don't care nearly as much about GPA as you might think. They really care more about GRE scores, your interest level, and your ability to pay tuition. So don't rule it out.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 4:07 PM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's a challenge to accept fully, but: self-pity and regret, past a point of acknowledging honestly that you screwed up, are simply wasted energy. You can either allow them to hold you in place, never able to learn or grow from this acknowledgement, or you can think about them briefly when they arrive, then continue using your time and effort to move forward.

It takes some practice to get good at this kind of letting go, but you really do have the power to just simply refuse to steep in the past and your unhappiness about it.
posted by ryanshepard at 4:09 PM on June 22, 2015 [14 favorites]

Yeah I don't know about med school but GPA is practically not cared about for research-based grad school. If you're still interested in that, the thing to do is to start getting research experience, by emailing professors and asking if you can help out in their labs, or by applying for research-assistant type jobs. A few years of solid research experience and no school will be able to care less about your GPA from years ago.

But other than that... at this point almost nothing you do will care about your undergrad GPA. Med school may be an exception, I don't know -- it's a very specific thing, but even that can be fixed with a year or two of post-bacc pre-med program (which you may need anyway if you weren't majoring in something like bio). No doors are closed to you, you just need to figure out how to open them.
posted by brainmouse at 4:14 PM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I got into grad school with a 2.9. And it was a competitive, prestigious grad school. Never say never!
posted by arnicae at 4:21 PM on June 22, 2015

My GPA when I finally graduated in 2008, after 7 years, was 3.15, which is not miserable, but with nothing else to show for it

I would disagree here. Your missteps and your struggles have shaped your insight, no? Fuckups can be a gift, sometimes. You had problems with completing your program and kept troubleshooting til you made it through. I have a hard time believing that a grad admissions board wouldn't see that kind of determination as invaluable in the context of a rigorous degree track.

Take what the other posters are saying, think about it, and try to encourage your brain to take it easy in the days coming up to your doctor's visit. Your brain is working against you presently, and may not let you see what we can.
posted by Ashen at 4:38 PM on June 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

There's so much more to life than the thing you do for money. That "find your passion! follow your bliss!" crap is the greatest lie perpetrated on our generation.

Find some means of fulfilment in your life outside of your career and I promise this won't haunt you like it is.

I'm not saying that being interested in and concerned with your career is unimportant, but nobody lies on their deathbed thinking, "gee, I wish I had worked more."
posted by phunniemee at 4:44 PM on June 22, 2015 [8 favorites]

I had a 3.08 undergrad gpa. Am now in a top 5 Ivy League phd program. Wasn't easy by any means, but bad undergrad grades can be overcome. I did a MA and killed it. Maybe that is an option?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:49 PM on June 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Eh, the grass is always greener. If you'd gone to grad school & gotten a decent postdoc, right about now you'd be ruminating on how great it would be to be a web developer, with a job that only expects you to work 40 or 50 hours a week, pays a living wage, and lets you choose to live in Current City, instead of moving to a strange new town every year or two.

Now, if you really want to live the life of the mind, then you should consider . . . doing linguistics research. I'm serious: you know how to write and how to use a computer, and you've got a degree already, which might help you get an alumni library card, and will definitely help you pick some interesting books to read. Post-postdoc academics often find every official working hour consumed by teaching, service, and miscellaneous professional expectations; we do our "real" research on evenings and weekends. If you want to live that life too, well, nothing's stopping you. You'd likely find it tough to publish your projects in academic journals, but you can clearly communicate your thoughts in writing, which means you could probably find a broader, "popular" audience elsewhere.
posted by yarntheory at 4:54 PM on June 22, 2015 [12 favorites]

Best answer: First of all: don't make any major life decisions when you're depressed. That's super-essential basic self-care for depression. Get better first and then decide.

But it is fine to think about options now without making any final judgements, and doing so can even help your depression some, because it's a way to feel better about yourself and about your life circumstances. Depression is relatively susceptible to cognitive reframing, and one possibility might be reframing this depression partly as a "vision quest" kind of thing- i.e. you are suffering now at least partly in the service of figuring out your purpose in life. What are your core values; what would it make you feel whole to be doing? It doesn't have to be something that makes you money- figure that part out later.

Also, to me, the part of your question that actually stands out the most is the regret. And I think that part is easily and honestly reframed as: "All that shit I did that seems like failure was actually a step in trying to figure out who I am". Your GPA is really not that bad, but even if it were, GPA is much less important than doing what you need to do to learn and grow into the person you want to be. That's a hard task and it often takes a lot of wrong turns before you figure it out. So the wrong turns aren't squandered potential; since nobody gave you a map at birth, wandering around lost, somtimes even for quite a while, is just an inescapable part of the process of finding the right place eventually.
posted by shiawase at 5:24 PM on June 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

Eh, the grass is always greener. If you'd gone to grad school & gotten a decent postdoc, right about now you'd be ruminating on how great it would be to be a web developer, with a job that only expects you to work 40 or 50 hours a week, pays a living wage, and lets you choose to live in Current City, instead of moving to a strange new town every year or two.

Totally agree. I would wait until you've treated the depression before making any decisions on this, because your unhappiness with your current situation might go away. Really, what is there to be unhappy about? Why do you want to study medicine? If you really just want to learn, try learning on your own. If you want a career with more impact on others, shift to doing web development for someone else with a bigger mission. If you want to seem like you have a successful career...well, it sounds like you already do. It's a good field to be in. I would keep going.
posted by three_red_balloons at 5:26 PM on June 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Well, I don't know how seriously you're thinking about medical school, but there are people who devote a couple of years to go back to do their prereqs, boost their GPA, etc. (I've been doing something like that, but not for med school.) Their odds are long, and they are wildly committed, and often pay a price, but some succeed. It's not like it's completely impossible. (Money-wise, you could probably go to a Canadian university for cheaper than you could in the States.) Although, I don't think it's worth doing unless you're 1000% sure you want to do it, because it is just harder to do that kind of grinding study - or more to the point, to be a broke student - in your thirties.

Almost everything else is not only possible but entirely feasible. (Presuming you are willing to accept at least temporary poverty, which also often means social isolation and a higher requirement for self-care in that way, and have thought hard about the likely long-term career outcomes.) You could take a few courses as a special student, do an MA, go through the hoops. You've got the work ethic required. Mental health, that could be an issue, staying on top of things that way will obviously help. Also though, having a long-term goal to which you're committed can help as far as providing a medium-term sense of purpose.

What I think you really, really need to think about, and research, and talk to a lot of people about, is whether going back to school would be a good use of the time you've got left. Regret about lost opportunities is one thing, and I definitely know that pain. But chasing a dream for the sake of ego, if it's just for that, is another waste of time, imo. (It's not a waste if there are additional reasons, I'm not suggesting you wouldn't be a brilliant researcher or doctor, and love it. And it's possible, absolutely.)

The questions are, what are the odds the outcomes will make you happy, and will be worth the cost? Because it's a good few years - the last of your youth, really. Most people in their thirties are placed to start leading, contributing from their existing knowledge and experience, building and investing in the future, in families, if they want them. Even without the brokeness and the grind (and the challenges to building and maintaining romantic relationships), it's not easy to be positioned as a beginner, as someone on the first rung of a very long ladder, when you feel you have things to say and do. And it is a ladder, hierarchical and unyielding. (I mean, it's true that you can always find other ways to contribute on a personal level, it's just there's not a lot of time or energy for that. It's worth mentioning that all this requires a certain amount of physical and mental stamina.)

I know you're saying you feel insecure in your current career, but there's little security to be found anywhere (apart from careers in healthcare, I think; that's where I've put my money - but as I say, there is a cost).

It can be worth it. Definitely. People have made huge improvements to their quality and enjoyment of life by pursuing professional or advanced academic study. (And admittedly, I'm having a go at least partly because of ego, but also because I didn't have a lot of other great options, and it's relatively cheap for me). But ask yourself seriously: do you think the end result will lead you towards a way you want to live? How do you want to live for these next five to ten years? Can you imagine other kinds of futures that might be more, I don't know, free? (Like starting your own business or community project, writing a play, seeing more of the world through travel... anything less locked-in. I have to mention that all this is coming from a place of being kind of sick of the grind, already. You might not feel that way.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 5:35 PM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

There are potential paths to medical school for you, but I'm not seeing a clear rationale for why you want to go to med school. For a lot of people, med school is a sort of holy grail of prestige and selectivity, and they want it because it will prove something about them to themselves or other people, not because they really want to be a doctor. It is an utterly grueling process to become a doctor, and a lot of doctors report lower job satisfaction than people expect them to, and I think you need to be very, very clear that you actually want to be a doctor before you start to think about how that would work.

I think you're on the right path with getting your depression addressed. When you've got some sort of handle on that, I wonder if you could work with a career counselor to sort out what kind of career would be rewarding for you and what steps you could take to get there.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:38 PM on June 22, 2015 [5 favorites]

Best answer: People don't go to med school because they have potential and find medicine fascinating. They go because they want to be a doctor.

I totally get everything you're saying here, but you're focusing on the wrong part. Focus on the part where you set your mind on a goal and work toward it, obstacles be damned. It sounds like you haven't really done this. You say you fell into your current career and are just kind of going along with it because it works for now. That's fine, actually – you're one step ahead of most people, who lack both ambition and a stable day job. But if you want to feel like you're pursuing something with passion... well, you have to actually pursue something you're passionate about, the more specific the better. I don't think age is a barrier, except insofar as it may make you ineligible for certain types of financial aid.

Another thing. Dwelling on bad decisions you made in the past is only healthy to the extent it can help you make decisions about right now. Your tone in this post just sounds like a lot of self-flagellation. Self-flagellation is actually (IMHO) an avoidance technique to divert your attention away from the part where you have to make a choice about your future, because decisions are scary and risky and can carry a price. Much easier to sit around pulling up grass and dreaming of What Could Have Been.
posted by deathpanels at 7:13 PM on June 22, 2015 [12 favorites]

I think if you try to get rid of your ideas about your own intelligence, it will help a lot. That sort of self-evaluation can really prevent making progress, because then you put pressure on yourself to do the Best Hardest Prestigious Smart Person Thing and get stressed when you feel like you can't life up to it and end up in paralysis, faffing around and feeling depressed and anxious all the time because you're a failure.

But regardless of your IQ, you aren't under any obligation to go into academia or med school. If you WANT to, fine. But make sure it's because you're really, really into it and prestige isn't a factor. Once you get rid of these preconceived notions about yourself, you can discover what really suits you best.

How to do this is of course the hard part. Once your depression clears more, you will feel better about yourself in general. And once you establish better self-worth, that has nothing to do with your high school standardized test scores, it'll be a lot easier to stop obsessing about this.

I think what also might help, is to realize that all people kind of "squander their potential." Even an average human has the capacity to be really, really smart--if they devote their life to that. But people often make other choices. Choosing happiness and other forms of fulfillment is just as valid. You are under zero obligation to do something Fancy just because you have the ability to.

Definitely get into therapy. Focus on clearing your depression and feeling better for now. When that lifts, it'll be a good time to start focusing what you truly want out of life. And no, it will not be too late for a damn thing.
posted by hejrat at 7:20 PM on June 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I was having a discussion with a friend the other night about how the dominating force of one's early 30s, as an intelligent person who isn't, like, Mark Zuckerberg, is feeling regret about the fact that you are now old enough that you cannot be literally anything when you grow up. Being an astronaut is just off the table, now. Medical school is probably incredibly impractical, to say the least. When you're a smart kid, you get kind of attached to the open-ended nature of things. And then when you suddenly reach a point in your life that some of the things you really liked the idea of are probably not possible? There's a certain sort of grief that goes with that.

That's not to say it's 100% impossible, and if you have a really driving passion to do something, that can make a lot of difference. But in some ways, this is just a thing to work on with a therapist and by doing things to make sure that the rest of your life feels full and satisfying. It's not that medicine is impossible, but make sure you're taking care that it's something you are really sure of, and not just something you're doing because you feel regrets that your life is starting to solidify and your future is no longer as open-ended as it was ten years ago. (Lots of people in their 30s seem to end up, from what I've seen and what I did myself, in law school for exactly this reason, and don't do that, it was definitely a mistake. I'm still looking at a career change, myself, but it took several years and some very false starts to distinguish between "I want to do something different because I feel trapped" and "I want to do something different because my current career doesn't have a future and I actively dislike it".
posted by Sequence at 7:48 PM on June 22, 2015 [21 favorites]

So, I'm an academic, and in this capacity I've literally had hundreds of conversations with people anxious about fulfilling what they see as their intellectual potential. You need to stop thinking in these terms; it is misguided, and it is the path to pain and wasted time and money.

As others have pointed out, you are exaggerating how much GPA matters to graduate admissions. When I did graduate admissions, I never bothered to look at candidates' GPAs. At all. If you really want to go to graduate school/medical school, you can.

But I don't actually think you have reason to go to graduate school--at least nothing in your question suggests that you do.

I will try to be gentle since I know you are depressed, but the fact is that academic potential is extremely cheap. In fact, academic genius is not actually worth that much. One data point: the smartest people in my graduate program, including people who were full, true, utter geniuses, are not the people who did particularly well or even finished the program. Success in academia (and I assume elsewhere) has very little to do with talent, let alone potential . Instead, it has much more to do with hard work, sticking to one's project, who one knows, basic social skills, and good old fashioned luck.

Please don't torture yourself with this narrative of unrealized potential. If you are hanging around a lot of academics, think about expanding your circle. I'm sure you can make a big life change, if this is what you want. But think more about what you want out of this change and whether a career change and graduate school will get you what you want.
posted by girl flaneur at 8:06 PM on June 22, 2015 [15 favorites]

If you are willing to broaden your title a little to developer from web developer, I think you'll find that one of the incredibly awesome things about being a developer is the ridiculous breadth of fields that you can fit into. So many fields (research, linguistics and medicine certainly included) need help in automating various parts of their work. Or understanding vast quantities of data. The fun thing about being a developer is that you don't really have to limit yourself to one field of study. You could be helping out in a cancer research lab, or trying to revolutionize language translation, or dealing more with phonology as with Siri to get the computer to translate speech to text and vice versa. There are so many ways you can incorporate other interests or passions into this skill set. And, of course, it can be fun to be in such high demand being able to dictate your own terms and negotiate competing offers.
posted by uncreative at 9:31 PM on June 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

From what you've described, you didn't screw up your life; you're just very down on yourself for no reason and seeing everything in a negative light. Please find a therapist.

Source: Been to grad school on a similar GPA for similar reasons, been to therapy, and have a best friend who had a worse GPA and went to med school "late."

PS. Don't go for med school. You don't want to go to med school.
posted by zennie at 5:04 AM on June 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

Seconding girl flaneur's points. Talent and potential are a dime a dozen. What matters is discipline, willpower, and the motivation to go after a specific goal. I know a lot of people from my fancy, high-caliber high school who were totally brilliant but flamed out in college because they didn't want to do the work anymore. Or they got so caught up in the pressure of picking the right thing that they lost focus. Potential, unrealized, is nothing special.
posted by deathpanels at 5:22 AM on June 23, 2015 [6 favorites]

The past is a sunk investment. You can only learn from it. You like the idea of being a doctor; maybe it would be more effective to check out a copy of what Color Is Your Parachute from the Library and look at other reference works on careers. Imagine the end of your life; what sort of person do you want to have been, what will you want to have accomplished? Lots of people want to have a job they're passionate about, but it's also okay to have work you like, and to pursue your passions outside of work.

Being smart can mean, for many of us, that we don't learn to work hard to do well in school. Some of my less smart classmates have done well because they have better work and study habits. I worked at developing better habits, and that's what I recommend.

31 is young. It's not squandered potential.

QFT: What matters is discipline, willpower, and the motivation to go after a specific goal. You develop it by practice. Charts, stars, whatever. Even if it seems silly to track progress that way, it really works.
posted by theora55 at 7:28 AM on June 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

nthing the caution on going to med school. It's a long and expensive road (and one that will feel even longer in your 30s)--totally worth it if it's what you want to do, but a huge grind if it's not.
posted by n. moon at 9:40 AM on June 23, 2015

In addition to the wise things other people have said... I actually have a PhD (incidentally, I had a 3.09 in undergrad, and I probably benefited from grade inflation tbh) and I'm doing a postdoc right now at a pretty prestigious institution, but I and a lot of other people I know actually have pretty similar thoughts on the regular. "Living up to your potential" is a moving target and basically nothing you do is ever going to be good enough to make that feeling go away. If the bar isn't set at getting into a top 10 PhD program, it will immediately shift to getting a Nature paper, or two Nature papers, or getting on a 30-under-30 list, or being selected to join the Harvard Society of Fellows, or what the fuck ever, seriously.
posted by en forme de poire at 10:35 AM on June 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

Your post sounds like a classic case of the gifted kid's curse, a certain type of perfectionism. I grew up with it too. You get praised for your talent, and nothing is ever hard. Then college rolls around and you've never had to try: you're completely unequipped to be bad at something, to mess up and keep going...you have no idea what it feels like to not be the best, to have to try your hardest and still not be the best. And that's weird and scary, so you end up not trying anything new, not doing anything. And most of all, you don't do that one thing you're passionate about, because if you try it and aren't the best at it, your whole smart kid self-identity will crumble.

That was me in undergrad. I think if you go back to grad school, you will have to get past the gifted kid's curse for it to be meaningful/enriching. Your self-worth has to get untangled from external measures of smartness/specialness. You gotta find something that you like doing, whether or not you're the best/smartest. I went back to grad school. I got scared because I wasn't doing a stellar job in my first semester in a totally new field. A few sessions with a therapist helped wake me up to the danger that perfectionism can just absolutely paralyze you and prevent you from ever trying anything or progressing. Once I realized that, I was happy to be starting out fresh, with a climb ahead of me. And not being the best, not living up to some notion of potential, that wasn't giving me anxiety, because i learned that this bifurcated "SUPER GENIUS AMAZING TALENT or NO GOOD WORTHLESS HACK" way of thinking just isn't how the world works. It felt so good to unburden myself of that notion!

i think you will find therapy really helpful in coping with--reframing--what you're currently seeing as squandered potential.
posted by iahtl at 2:01 PM on June 23, 2015 [7 favorites]

Ditto to everyone who is saying that it's impossible to disentangle what you're feeling from your depression. Which is awesome, because you're taking steps to work on the depression, and that will help with the regret you're feeling.
Looking at your starting position, though... I think we all got sold a bill of goods when we were told that smarts were the #1 most important thing and everything else would fall into place. The longer I am in the workforce, the less I value being "intelligent" and having "potential" as the determinants of success. I'm actually pretty sure that having the kind of intelligence that delights in debate and exploration is going to be a) not helpful in and of itself and b) WAY less important than people skills, focus, and having goals that you're working towards.
It's also a relatively new concept that we should all be LIVING OUR PASSION 100% ALL THE TIME. Maybe I'm just jaded and bitter, but having a job that I'm fairly ok with, has nice benefits, and reasonable work hours seems like a decent benchmark to hit.
posted by dotparker at 2:25 PM on June 23, 2015 [1 favorite]