The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
-- If you really want to go to a different/better school, transferring is a lot easier than a lot of people think it is, if you do well in school. At elite schools, there's always a couple of transfers in every graduating class. Work hard in your classes at your midwest state school, get a couple signal accomplishments, fair chance you can transfer to a better school. Especially if you're not on a scholarship.
-- That said, tons of people do tons of cool things coming out of smaller schools. Be a big fish in a small pond. At a smaller school, look for opportunities to take over student organizations, get leadership roles, get in tight with your professors. Go to office hours, found new clubs if the ones that exist aren't to your taste it just requires a touch of moxie, enter competitions and get on competition teams. Hell, join a club sports team to round yourself out. You can be a superstar going into industry or a grad school. Kids are sorted into elite and non-elite schools based on how they're doing at 17-18; that means something but not a ton about how they'll be doing at 24-26.
-- If you feel like you need to Ivy/Adjacent bump to get into the tiers you need, you can always get a grad degree later.
-- Most university classes, you learn techniques that stick with you, but most of the rest you take a class and you might hold onto one-to-three lessons or ideas in the long term. Don't stress if you're not getting more out of it.
Good luck.
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