How to Get Motivated After Quitting College
Quitting college for whatever reason -- financial, personal or academic -- can be difficult. It can lead to feelings of failure, a sense of purposelessness and fears about the future. However, it also can be an important time of self-discovery. Consider this period an opportunity to evaluate possibilities, do research, make connections and take steps toward self-fulfillment.
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Journaling
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Starting a journal can be a good way to evaluate your situation and get motivated. In a notebook or blank journal, write about your thoughts, feelings and observations. You might start by describing some of your college experiences, focusing on what you learned, what you liked and what you enjoyed. Writing about the positive aspects of your college experience will help you to realize that the experience was worthwhile and useful. Give yourself other writing assignments, such as listing your strengths, writing about jobs you'd like to explore or describing activities you like to do. Your journal can become a workbook for your future, giving you a place to talk with yourself, make plans, and discover ideas you didn't know you had.
Doing Yoga
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Taking up yoga can help you to feel better, focus your thoughts and find inner strength. Look for a local yoga studio or check out yoga DVDs from the library. You'll find that doing yoga is both relaxing and challenging, and that the practice will lead to greater flexibility, both physically and mentally. Yoga will help you to develop a sense of motivation because it will make you feel better, more hopeful and more able to take on whatever comes your way. If yoga doesn't interest you, any type of consistent exercise is always beneficial.
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Networking
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Meeting and talking with other people can help you find a sense of motivation and purpose, and it also can help you find jobs and career paths that might interest you. Networking can take place at conferences, job fairs, or online on professional networking sites like LinkedIn. Be open to anything since you never know who you will meet and what they’ll have to offer you. Meeting new people helps you to think about possibilities that might not have occurred to you if you'd kept to yourself.
Research
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Now is the time to research jobs and educational opportunities. Local libraries have books on careers and education, and you also can do research online at websites like Monster or Glassdoor. Sometimes, you don’t know what's out there until you spend some time looking around, and you have time now to do just that. If you left college for financial reasons, now is also the time to research grants, scholarships, loans and other opportunities that might help you get back on an educational path.
Take a Class
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It might seem counterintuitive to get back in the classroom, since you just left. Signing up for a class, however, can get you back in the swing of things and let you explore new opportunities. It can be a class at a community college, an online class or a workshop at a museum. Consider taking a class in something completely different from what you were studying before you quit college. Were you studying business before? Try an art class. Sometimes it helps to try new things and discover new skills. That one class might eventually lead to re-enrolling in college full-time, or it might just teach you a new skill. Whatever happens, it won't be time wasted, and it will help to motivate you to try learning new things.
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