[Need Advice] Please help me get my shit together.

As an F1 student doing his MS in US, I can understand your pain and feelings completely.

My advice? Face this feeling. I know I sound very harsh, but this is how it is going to be when you set foot here. Understand how to make personal timetables on the fly and how to stick with them. Also, it may sound as a cliche, but learn to enjoy the effort you put into your goals. If you are feeling bummed out, squash that feeling, it is not going to do you good.

I came to do masters in a field that I did not have prior experience in. This meant that I had to spend every moment of my free time to get a better understanding of the topics inorder to keep up with the pace of my professors. I felt hopless and defeated everyday, as people around me were ten steps ahead of me in both academics and social lives. I stopped comparing myself with them. When I stopped the comparison, most of the "defeated" feeling lost meaning, and I was able to push forward.

Now, as you are from Philippines, I know that failure while you are at USA has a heavy consequence. Make sure you have backup plans to support yourself financially if that failure happens. But don't be relieved that you got backup plans. It is very natural for any student to face failures during your undergrad and graduate studies. In my culture (Indian), it is a common practice to praise the victor and shun & ridicule the loser. They teach you to fear failures, not to anticipate and prepare beforehand what to do when said failure happens. Learn to understand what went wrong when you occur failures. Make notes, form a solution and move forward by adapting yourself with the solution.

Discipline yourself, learn to control your curiosities as living in USA would be an experience nothing you've faced before. People generally here are friendlier than what you'd read about in the news and other subreddits (save for a few racists, but it is rare that you encounter them). Since you'd be 18 when you land here, make sure you keep a healthy balance between your social and work schedules. There are many study tips on this subreddit and stick with the one which works best for you. Academics in USA is more focused on exhibiting your knowledge on problems you've never faced before rather than the "mug-up and vomit" nature of asian schools. If you have a talent for the latter, use it for memorizing useful academic stuff. Since you are aiming for aerospace industry, read up about the courses offered in your future schools.

To end this wall of text, I will just say that you have made the decision to do your undergrad outside your motherland. This is the first step you have taken in your passage of becoming an adult. You will get alot of responsibilities dumped on your shoulders very quickly and it will become daunting. But remember this, your discipline and habits which you had formed will always stay with you, despite the failures and problems you encounter, unless you break them yourself. Your goals of working in aerospace industry will evolve over time, and don't be scared of that. If you have confidence in yourself, no failure can hold you back. Always prepare yourself for the steps to be taken after the best and worst case scenarios of an event which is about to happen.

/r/getdisciplined Thread