Wow. Who wouldn’t be overwhelmed in your shoes? Why, may I ask, did you do so poorly in school? Sometimes there’s a connection between poor performance in school and inability to get a job. For instance, some people have a processing problem and have trouble following verbal instructions.
Do you have no support system outside your parents then? Why do you have no friends or classmates willing to take you in? Do you have no friends, or are your friends unwilling to take you in? If worse comes to worst, would you consider moving with your parents, or is your relationship with them strained?
By the way, don’t be discouraged because an interviewer threw a CV in the dustbin. There are a lot of possibilities there. For all you know, his career goals included becoming a hired assassin.
College isn’t necessarily a dead end, but I think it is definitely overrated. The lack of a HS degree can hurt you (prob a good idea to get that GED), but that doesn’t have to stop you either. If you are a serious person with a good work ethic, you can achieve whatever you set your mind to.
The scholarship students, the graduates, all but the Jared Kushner types have to start at the bottom in the work world. Accept that, get crackin’, and I do believe you can make it.
I think you’ll find a good number of people who did NOT find high school very motivating at all, once out in the real world find the motivation they lacked in school. It’s WAY more fun, you get the control, make all the choices, and get to feel really accomplished with every twist and turn mastered.
They say motivation is everything and I can personally attest to having accomplished things I found myself impressed by, having achieved things I would have considered outside my skill set and certainly outside of anyone’s ability to predict. Hardship is, in fact, a great motivator.
That’s certainly a lot of concerning circumstances to have on one’s plate as a young man. It sounds exhausting and terribly demotivating to me.
But it looks like you’re going to have to become a self starter, someone who can keep themselves motivated. Finding yourself without a safety net or support network, makes it essential, I should think. Some people need such trials to really step into who they’re meant to be. It means shifting out of the comfortable withdrawal, and starting to make connections, friends, get a job. It’s putting yourself out there and everybody finds it uncomfortable, that’s the challenge of life.
So, like, how motivated are you? To not return with your parents? To strike out as an independent adult and make your own way in the world?
Do you have any direction, goals etc for the arc of your life? A game Plan? A dream? An ideal? Any place to begin is all you need.
Certainly there are people content to “do nothing all day”, so their bar for “success” is pretty low. As most of the ones I know are from middle to upper middle class families, they often find relatives who are willing to enable them so they don’t become completely homeless.
There’s a difference between “lazy” and “not doing well at school”. Some people (like me) don’t do particularly well in highly structured, institutional environments like school or 9-5 jobs. However, typically whatever you define “success” as requires some work and effort to achieve. I mean, unless doing nothing all day is your goal.
Well, I guess that is how you define success. I’m in my fourties and none of my facebook highschool classmate friends are homeless, as far as I can tell. Then again, if they were homeless, they might not be on facebook. Lots of people appear more successful than me (posting vacation pictures every two weeks), but they could be awash in credit card debt and living beyond their means. Lots of them appear to be living fairly modest lives as well (like the teachers).
Its a little like going to a HS class reunion. Everyone you meet there tells you how well they have their shit together, but is it really true? And how about the classmates that don’t show? They could be down and out on the street somewhere. Not all your HS classmates do well.
I felt bad for not directly answering your question. My observation, as a 45 years old dude in a nice town in a condo that is worth a small fortune whose main regret in life is not just running away after graduating high school instead of dropping the time and expense into a mostly unproductive college experience even though I must admit the education has been useful in a variety of ways, is that it isn’t high school achievement that is the key factor. People who get addicted to heroin mostly go down the tubes. Even a celebrity heroin addict who is “successful”- fame, fortune, people to take care of them and clean up their messes- even then, they are heroin addicts. Is that really successful?
People who smoke crack, drop a lot of acid, or habitually snort meth seem to develop a lot of problems. Contrast that with high school “low achievers” who don’t have drug problems. Maybe they didn’t finish Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but they can maintain a schedule, pay attention and stay focused and maybe throw in keep their mouths shut. All of this sober behavior can only serve a person in most endeavors, especially “successy” things like working a good job or raising a nice family. Didn’t finish high school? Wait until you are 40 and dining in nice restaurants, zipping around in a nice ride with your smart gf and see for yourself if high school achievement really, actually matters.
With those grades, you’re definitely looking at a retail/service/janitorial job
Do you have a driver’s license?
You appear literate and at least basically able to use a computer, these are the skills you need to emphasise in an application.
Make a good generic cover letter to go with your application/cv and tailor it for each job you apply for, if you have any older family that could help with that, ask them for the help even if it’s embarrassing.
Apply for everything, in person if possible. I’d look for ‘help wanted’ signs in windows preferably to checking for jobs online, there’ll be a smaller applicant pool, less chance of a HR department automatically dropping you and a good interview with the owner can make up for a lacking cv.
Don’t consider any job beneath you.
Once you get a job, get there on time, don’t pull sickies and don’t slack off for at least a year. When you’ve got a year of employment down your options will improve dramatically.
You will never be successful (not ANY kind of successful) without friends. You won’t even be able to “get by” without friends. You don’t need a big group - one or two is enough - but you really do need them. Sadly, this is still true even if you have a condition that makes it more difficult to relate to other people - it’s harder to have friends, but no less necessary.
People always stay stuff like this. But what is it they expect to “do” in life without a college degree? No degree immediately eliminates being a doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer, and most other professional jobs.
Certainly there are jobs out there for like tinkering with computers or machines and stuff that may not require a full 4 year degree. Or one could use the $100k they would have thrown into college and put that into starting a business (which would then be run by an uneducated teenage CEO).
Most of the time people say a “college degree isn’t needed” because they don’t like the stupid shitty corporate jobs that such a degree usually ends up with.
