Hello all,

I’ll just get right into it. I’m a junior in college, but a sophomore in my school, I feel like I’ve been sinking for every year I’ve been here. This past month has been the worst of my life, I’ve pulled more all-nighters than I ever have to finish projects by due dates, I’m physically exhausted and mentally done with this. Every day is a new conversation in my head about just withdrawing from it all and accepting failure. Some people have told me that’s just how college is but when I see all my peers and classmates doing alright (I know they work their ass off like me but they seem to manage every aspect of their school life better) it makes me feel like I’m inferior to every single person around me.

This has led to this plan. I think that after this semester, if my grades don’t pick up and I get the inevitable bad news that I’ll have to spend an extra year here for a degree, I’m going to take a gap semester or year. I want to try my hand at building my own business. I’m very experienced in my field, have a very well thought out plan that I’ve put together over the last few months and just need to implement. I strongly believe it’s a viable business plan, but college has not allowed me the free time to actually start.

My thought process is that I can always go back, so if it doesn’t work out I’ll just suck it up and push through, but as a disclaimer I haven’t discussed this with my advisor yet so I’m unsure how that will go down. I also know that many who take gap years never go back, but I have a family that puts college first and foremost, so I can almost guarantee if it doesn’t work out I’ll be forced back.

The common agreement on this sub seems to be “finish college, get experience as an employee, THEN build your business.” I understand why, and I get why this plan is a huge risk, but if I can re-enroll in college later, why not? (Not a rhetorical question, if you have an answer please let me know.)

I believe in myself, have experience leading teams, have experience as an employee in my field, but it just simply doesn’t translate to the college classes for that same field as I’m doing so much unrelated filler work. I think that if I didn’t have to worry about 5 different projects being due on the same exact day for classes that have nothing to do with my field, I might just be able to build something real and valuable. I’m prepared to put in the immense amount of work for this and understand it won’t be easy but I think that it’s what I need.

Is this a crazy idea, am I an idiot, or is the potential reward worth the risk? Don’t roast me, I need genuine guidance here. Thank you.