I’m about to be 30 soon, and life hasn’t really taken off for me. This pandemic period, while being a pause button for everyone, is like everyday life for me. I’m unemployed, still financially dependent on my parents and can’t seem to do anything right, even the things I’m supposed to do.

I had an alright job at 25, but I quit that to pursue my dream of becoming an academic. Academia has been my first love, and the only time I stop thinking about the misfortune that is my life is when I’m researching or writing papers. My parents are essentially the greatest people anyone can find on earth. They supported me when I decided to do another Masters degree, which I thought would boost my chances of getting into a decent PhD programme. I got into a decent PhD programme, but I could not get any funding because my grades are not good enough. Almost everyone there has funding, but me. At this point I just feel like the most useless person in the world. I wasted money on an extra masters that did not help me with what I wanted, and now my parents insist on paying for my first year (out of three) of PhD till I can get a part time job to manage the rest, because they share my dream and know that I love it. They have already sacrificed so much for me, and they are more than happy to do more, which makes me feel extremely guilty.

Being self-funded has been a blow, where I feel and keep reading online that I am not supposed to be doing a PhD, that self-funding is just a polite rejection of your intellect. More importantly, I have this crushing feeling that I will never be able to be an academic and do research in the field that I love. I hate myself for being so ambitious and yet so dumb. And when I look around for an alternative, there is none, because I cannot imagine doing anything else other than studying and working on my discipline in an academic capacity. I sit on my ass all day, looking at friends and acquaintances who are well settled in life and have got everything together, with the only inconvenience in their lives being that they were unable to watch a movie or buy a game.

My life has yet to start, but I’ve already failed at it. I guess I’m just asking, how do I try to feel better, or try to not think about being this worthless piece of shit?