A New Life

[NixAvernal]

My name's Nathan, 21 years old and currently an international student studying in Australia.

I'm fully committing to quitting games and changing my life after I got my results for this term. I have gotten fails for the 3rd straight semester in a row and just got my first double fail. I have fully realised that I've let people down, and my life is about to go down into a disaster spiral if I don't change.

Thing is, I'm scared of change. 

I tried to quit last term. I took up photography as a hobby, went to a convention to volunteer (which was one of the best experiences I ever had) and tried to take up mediation.

But a month in, my mediation lapsed, my camera is gathering dust and my motivation to volunteer has gone down the drain. All I wanted to do was crawl in bed and find something - anything -  to play.

I felt like I've lost control of my life. I missed assignments, I fell out with my project members, and I never did well on my exams. 

I feel like this really is my final chance to do something, before I feel like my life is a useless, worthless mess. 

[giblets]

Welcome Nix! Both to the forums and to down under ?

 

Having gone through that process of letting games effect my grades at university, I understand the frustration and self-hate you are probably feeling right now!

 

The first thing I would recommend is to get back on the study train is change your environment for where and how you are studying. For example, if you have a laptop at home that you study on, maybe switch to a library computer or set the laptop up somewhere other than your house. When I get urges now, I try to put myself in an environment that not only will I not naturally fire up a game (or need to steps to achieve it), but somewhere where I can be held accountable by other people, eg in a library you have the other people there trying to be quiet as well or the librarians saying you can't game there. That at least starts to get your foot in the door, and really, once you have your foot in the door you are off to the races.

 

Unless you have been expelled, you can recover from this. By going from a fail to really good grades within the space of one semester will really show them what you are capable of as well.