sounds like a good gameplan, man. maybe swap moving out down to last, and you'll be good to go! :) (that financial independence thing is painful!)

Hey, I'm just giving you my take. I expected and understand your response - no biggie. You can treat what I say as being the "devil's advocate". I understand the other advise and I'm sure it is all fine.

I think your list of priorities are very good and that you should probably do all of those things.

My basic points are:

!. Anyone that sounds as depressed as you might be and who cries for help by mentioning suicide, might need help. Any other problems pale in comparison to any mention or consideration of suicide. Finding friends (or not) probably won't help whatever the problem is (medical maybe) that causes you to mention suicide, and could make it worse if you are only dissapointed in the short term.
2. I was trying to show some life perspective by saying that whether you find friends in the next year or two should not be viewed as the most important thing in your life. It won't matter much 10 or 20 years from now that you didn't have many or any friends this year. By realizing this, then perhaps you won't be so obsessed about it and you will be able to say "fark it, I'll just live my life and friends will find me". If you try to hard and think about it too much it will hurt your efforts to make friends. You'll find meaningful friends if you devote yourself to your education and your true fun interests. That way you will be sucessful and meet people with similar interests. If you put too much emphasis on finding friends then what will you do if it doesn't happen right away? I would be great if it does, but I'm just worried that you could be setting yourself up for big hurt, and then what do you do? In order to make friends you have to be ok with yourself first - not depressed - not hating yourself - not very low self esteem. This is why you need to work on yourself first and be good with yourself. Because after this happens then you will be the kind of fun, happy person that people end up liking. You need to like yourself before others can like you. You need to love yourself before others can love you. To get there you might need anti-depressant (50% chance?) and you need to do things to feel better about yourself, like be independant, do well at school and do things you like.

Good luck, don't give up, and remember that what happens to you in the next year or two won't matter 2 rat shiats 12 years from now, but being happy and successful and not killing yourself sure will matter 12 years from now.

Right, that sounds like a good plan. Moving out of the house needs to be step one, so here's how to go about it. Do you live in a city with City Search? Go to http://www.citysearch.com and look for your city. Once there, search for "apartment finders" or "apartment locators", something like that. These services will help find a place in the area you want in a price range you specify, along with any extras like washer/sryer connects. These services are free for you because apartments actually pay a bounty to the appartment locators for finding you. I recommend against a random roomate, seems like that's just asking for trouble.

You need to do this today, seriously. If you can't use City Search, just look in the yellow pages. Get this taken care of and be moved in before the semester starts or you won't be able to do this.

Then, find out when those clubs have their first meetings and show up.

Lastly, my school has free psychiatric help for students (part of the health fee we pay). Yours may have that too, but like all these other things, you need to get signed up early.

Call me crazy, but there's not alot of mention of grades here. Yes there are clubs or organizations that will help you get involved, but you need to make good grades so you can get a good job/into a good grad school. That seemingly obvious point is missed by many. My first year, I had no friends, but used all that time with nothing to do to study. The next few years, I had alot more fun, but was not trying to come out of the gpa hole many partyers were. If you're thinking of suicide, you need to seek help, but also channel those negative feelings into something productive. Getting a good job and making more than all those people who had lots of fun will do alot to erase those sad feelings. You could just rty to work towards that.

there's gotta be something you're interested in!

find the club/society for that interest and start going. meeting people & interacting can solve most of your problems.

not to dis this wonderful forum, but if you ever want to hold a chick's hand (or anything else, for that matter), you're gonna have to get out & meet some face-to-face.

hmm, addressing the more serious problem first:
I had a major problem with depression and wanting to commit suicide in HS. Go to the docter about that first. Don't live on your own if you are diagnosed with depression or some other mental disorder. You may find, if you are diagnosed with depression, that once you start on medication or therapy, you truly have a lot more that you just never saw before. I thought no one liked and me that no one ever would. I got pumped full of drugs.. 5 a day, just for my depression, and looked around and saw that I was just paranoid the whole time. I actually had a lot of people in my life that really cared. Eventually, you get weened off the meds and live your life like a normal person again.
on what to do next year:
I'm transfering to a 4 year school this year. I'm nervous as hell! My roommate is younger than me and all my friends have typically been 2-3 years older than me. Most the people I know that go to my school, I hate. So, what I plan on doing is getting involved in AURH, its the dorm student government. Since your not going to be in the dorms, try doing regular student government. Do you have a place in your heart for an particular group of people? I care a great deal about deaf rights, and plan on doing some volunteer work. That is a great way to meet the nicest people. Not only do you get to hang out with other volunteers, but often times, you make friends with the people you are helping. You can turn just about anything into a great way to share your time with those less fortunate. Good with computers? Build computers for people without enough money to buy new ones. Good with kids? Help out at an orphanage. Good with numbers? Help do the taxes of a family in need. There are tons of student run organizations you can get involved in.
As for the girlfriend thing:
If you get help, and start getting on your feet, you'll have the slowly reviving puppydog thing going on, and chicks can't resist that. Also, if you do the volunteer thing, chicks love a guy that cares. It'll all come in time.

Best of luck to ya!

jbrooks544, I think I better understand what you mean. You're right about just doing what I'm interested and what needs to be done (school) and letting everything else fall into place. I admit, I'm too hung up on the fact that I don't want to later admit I didn't like my time in college very much.

Shades, unfortunately I think moving out is going to be the most difficult task. Ironically, my dad does rent apartments and duplexes (all of which are no longer available) but he said he would keep an eye out for single bedroom/studio type places. I'm looking in the school newspaper too. The problem is, I don't think he's too keen about spending $300/month to live across town and I don't want to push the issue. Most leases for apartments around the university have ended so I may not be moving out anytime soon.

About grades...well I have a mediocre 3.55 GPA and if I take about the same class load my second two years and get ALL A's the highest my GPA could be is about 3.78. Realistically, I'm not going to get all A's and even if I did, I really doubt it's going to mean much in the job world especially with no extracurricular activities. It's a "too little, too late" scenario but I will still try to work harder.

I don't mean to get cathartic but to add injury to injury my wonderful dog just died and my hand tremors are getting worse. Yay.

Wow, JUST 3.55 GPA? Mine was like 2.7 by the time I graduated. Shit, it's only 3.25 now in graduate school. Did I mention I got into the graduate engineering program at University of Texas? Trust me, GPA is not a real big deal. Don't sweat that.