I've withdrawn from school.
I had two different teachers for the same section. They both taught and they both graded. They gave contradictory instructions, graded differently, and I never knew who was going to be grading what. To make matters worse, I didn't always have access to both. So, if I had a question and the teacher who had been helping me wasn't available, I got shit for not doing it "right". One teacher would advise me to take a break from a project when it was getting frustrating and work on something else. His reason was that in an actual shop, you'll rarely ever have only one thing to work on at a time and past a certain point, continued work on something(when you're having trouble with it) can be counter-productive. The other thought that bouncing between projects was irresponsible and that I'd never get anything done unless I stuck to one thing at a time. One told us that there were lots of ways to get these projects done. The other said there's only *one* way to do any of them correctly.
Confession time: I'm on disability because of a chronic major depressive disorder and an intractable general anxiety disorder. It's a struggle to get things done on good days. It takes longer than normal and more effort for me to do most things, especially when learning something new. Having anxiety attacks is a real possibility, and happened a few times at school.
The director of the school tried to help. He allowed me to come in on Fridays and work without it counting against my grade. Normally you lose a full letter grade on anything that you work on during a Friday - and coming in on Friday is not something you do of your own volition. It's something they tell you to do because they think you're not progressing fast enough. They won't let you take your work home either - at least not while you're working on it.
Altogether, it was kind of horrible. I did get to meet some interesting people. I learned things I didn't even think there were to know. It was not for me though. There were plenty of people who did fine. They adjusted to the conditions. It was like there was something they knew that I didn't; like there was some level of understanding being assumed of students, and I just didn't have it.
No matter. The same day that I withdrew from Colorado School of Trades, I enrolled in Penn Foster's gunsmithing program. Yes, it's an online course, but it gave me a lot of information and reference material I'll be able to use for the rest of my days. All I need to do is practice this stuff. Soon, I'm going to start working my way through AGI's offerings.
I'm moving back to Alabama. I know people there, and they know me. I've got a good reputation among the gun people there, and will have plenty of chances to grab odd jobs while I work on the things I need to be able to do.
There's no way I'm giving up on this. I'm just going to have to take a slightly different route than I planned on. Then again, that's the story of my life. There are very few things I've ever been able to do "the easy way." lol
I'll end this with a quote, and a song.
I read once, in regards to doing some type of gunsmithing job: "There are only two types of people who can make this work. The first are the skilled, experienced, and talented individuals who know exactly what they're doing. The second are the people too stupid to know they couldn't do it."
Also, this may as well be my theme song:
Gary Allan's 'Get Off On The Pain'