Dear Auntie, I am a teenager fed up of my life. We are a family of five with me as the eldest daughter and two brothers after me. Our family is totally a failure. My parents don’t make a good couple and we siblings never fit in with each other. Every day starts with quarrels and ends with swollen up faces who are not even ready to see each other. After I turned 15, I completely lost my good nature and have turned into a grumpy and fault-finding machine. We three grew up witnessing the worst of fights between our parents and this has proved to have a bad effect on our natures and attitudes, especially on me as I had always tried to be a bridge between them.

My parents got as far as separation, but had to cling on together because of me. I have a great love for religion, writing and painting, but over the past years it has diminished to an utter end because of their lack of cooperation. I have become a confused personality, inconsistent in every walk of life no matter how hard I try to keep on track. I find myself standing alone on the farthest bank of the ocean from the rest of the world, and there is no one to help me. I have tried stuff like family movie nights, dinners, lunches, table talks, picnics and even talking to parents about how things are affecting us (though that stage has been crossed now), etc. but always end up disappointed and feel that we all need a big break.

Helplessly troubled

Dear Take-control, It is sweet that you attempted family movie nights and dinners to bring your parents together, but your efforts should have taught you one thing: you cannot bring together two people you love and make them get along, if they don’t want to be together. On the other hand, you can control your reaction to what is happening at home and that is precisely what you should do in order to deal with this.

Try to keep away from the negativity at home as much as possible and try not to burden your parents with your ‘stuff’. Don’t get involved in fights and instead take charge of your life and know that you can handle most things that life throws at you, by yourself.

Set yourself a goal and work towards it. It will keep your mind off what is going on at home and will give you a purpose. Think long and hard about what you want to do with your life, and then start working towards it, right now. If you feel hurt or angry by some of the things said at home, know that you are in control of your emotions and that in every moment you can choose to either feel angry or you can choose to ignore it and carry on with what you were doing.

Start exercising too. It will lift your mood.

Find a purpose, stay busy and keep looking for and focusing on what is going well in your life.

Stop being hard on yourself. You tried to change things. Many won’t even do that. Change the voice in your head that says you have a confused personality because of this or that. Many people, even adults feel confused a lot and everyone has problems.

Dear Auntie, I am a 23-year-old graduate student doing my degree from a renowned private university. I have still not been able to complete my degree programme and am in my 10th semester now. This is because in the beginning I was not a serious student and I had little or no mental inclination towards what I was being taught and I was interested in other activities outside academics. I cannot change my degree programme as I have already invested a lot of time in it. After wandering here and there for a couple of years I realised that I should now finish the degree. Although quite near completion, I would have to study another semester to earn enough credit hours. This has led me into depression as most of my friends have passed out and are working and moving on with their lives, while I am stuck here.

My parents keep asking me when I would be completing my degree and to be frank I do not have any suitable or satisfactory answer to give them. I am under immense pressure and it has started to take a serious toll on me. I am unable to socialise with people, broke up with my girlfriend and keep myself isolated. I think I am having an existential crisis and this degree, if not completed, would make my life more miserable. My attitude towards life has become negative and I am surrounded by friends who have the same kind of problems which I have. Please give me some hope. Please!

Stumbling through Uni

Dear Shape-up, Unless you have a learning disability, you can make it through college. You just need to have the right study skills and discipline, and you need to make time to study. Every day.

When you say that you are unable to socialise or that you broke up with your girlfriend, Auntie senses that you have made these distractions your priorities. When you say you weren’t a serious student in the beginning, Auntie is inclined to think that you are still not a serious student. Right now you are a student who is under pressure to graduate, but you don’t sound super serious about your studies.

A lot of people become lost when they leave school and enter university. A lot of people who did well in school aren’t able to manage university. Let’s get one thing straight … you need to work harder to get through university. And you won’t be spoon-fed while you do it. Auntie suspects you are spending too much time lamenting that you can’t have fun and too little time actually studying. You need to study at least three hours outside of the classroom, every day. That means, cell phone on silent and away from you, no one to disturb you, very few breaks for food and loo, and nose in book, mind at work, learning. And not only should you be reading the assigned material, you should also be solving problems given in the textbook.

And if you really want to stay ahead of the game, you should be reading up on topics in advance. Remember that course outline your professor gave you at the beginning of the semester? Use that.

Take notes and study consistently throughout the semester instead of cramming things at the last minute. Start studying for tests and working on assignments soon after they are announced instead of working on it all night, the night before it is due. If you get a bad grade, go talk to your professor to find out where you are going wrong and how you can improve.

You are nearing the end of your degree programme, but you need to make that last effort to graduate and bring up your grades as much as possible. Quit the excuses and start studying hard.

Auntie will not reply privately to any query. Please send concise queries to:auntieagni@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, June 28th, 2015

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