So recently, a friend of mine found out someone they know is taking a year off from college. That’s right, a whole year! And it’s not because they want to travel, or work, or learn some new stuff. It’s because they can’t handle the stress of the course.

Well, that’s apparently what they’re saying. However, my friend has read several facebook posts about how this person will be doing stuff like sleeping and playing video games for a whole year. So this person, going into the last year of their course, is choosing to take a year off, but is also choosing not to do anything productive during this week.

The last year of their course is the year in which these people will be under massive amounts of stress and have lots of work to do. So, the year previous to the last year involves increasing amounts of pressure, such as projects with deadlines all about the same time, group projects to learn about the dynamics of groups, and an internship program so you can learn what real world work is like and learn how to cope with real projects and real deadlines so that you can cope with this after you finished the last year. Hopefully, finishing the last year of the course with a job offer from the company you were an intern for.

Taking all of this into consideration, I don not understand the following things:

1. How this person’s parents could let them spend the whole year in their house doing nothing.
2. How this person thinks they could get through the last year after a year of a very stressful course that is fairly competitive after taking a whole year off and doing nothing.
3. How this person thinks that any company would find them, a person who had to take a year off to get over stress, an attractive job candidate.

With all this in mind, I don’t think that I, or any of my friends, would take this particular year off. In fact, I think this person should have (at most) just taken a couple weeks vacation from his internship.

I just thought I’d point out how confusing this is for me.

Q

New place I reached, not as pretty as the old place, but hey, the water is the important part for me, that and the ladies ;)

Plan for tonight :)

How I spent today, loving it over here. Met Diana there, she’s my date for tonight, I hope all goes well.

Kisses can make or break your night with a lady, too much tongue and she’ll spurn you for life, not enough and she could feel like you don’t care enough.

Just make your mouth love hers, feel her soul and she’ll understand how much you worship the Goddess that she is.

Some healthy hors d’oeuvres to give my lady friend and I some energy after our brisk swim in sea beside the boat.

I was once told that ladies love flowers. So I planted my own flower garden for all the ladies I know and love.

The view from my yacht ;)

Lately, more and more people around me haven’t been happy. I’d like for them to know that I hope things go well for them.

One of my close friends is reaching a point where she has to make a real decision about whether she wants to be with someone who, in my opinion, is not good enough for her.

I feel like he doesn’t treat her well enough. He cancels dates at the last minute, he makes her feel guilty for being unhappy when they’ve fought, he treats a large amount of her friends like shit - including myself, and did not even bother to come to her birthday party. A bunch of the girls finally convinced her to break up with him the next day, she was all set to do it and then she got nervous. I have a feeling she doesn’t want to be alone when so many of her friends are in relationships. Fortunately, the girls persuaded her to at least go on a break… unfortunately, it lasted for an hour before she took him back.

We all were disappointed, at this stage we thoroughly disliked the guy, but he played the guilt card (a favourite of his) and explained that his ex- had broken up with him after being on a break, which also happened to be what had happened to her. 

For a while, all was well, we were polite to him because it meant something to her, we tried to believe he had changed, that he was no longer treating her badly. Sadly, he was just being nice for a little while, waiting until the dust settled until he went back to cancelling things on her again (still at the last minute, leaving her literally all dolled up with nowhere to go). He went from being what seemed like a slightly awkward person to being unbelievably rude to all her friends. Once, when they were having an argument, he actually went so far as to say that he had more proof her friends don’t like him because one of them had “unfriended” him on facebook.

Quite soon after that, one of the girls had a get together at her house for a week. Basically, all of us were invited and you could bring your current boyfriend or girlfriend of the moment. A good deal of the people who were there the whole time were in a relationship. The first day of the week, he came over too and stayed the night (which was good, we were hoping she could be happy). After that, he didn’t show up anymore, he said they’d meet up after work, that they would be together, but he didn’t come and his excuse was that they would only get about 40 minutes together until he had to leave again (his bike had broke down, and he had no money for public transport). 

This was the last straw, with all her friends around trying not to put pressure on her, trying to be supportive of her decision, she broke up with him and threw herself into having fun.

That was not the end though, they decided to be friends. Now, my friend has some self-esteem issues, she’s gorgeous, and a lot of my friends would love to be with her, but she was one of the first in our group of friends to get into a relationship and a lot of the guys who would have jumped at the chance to go out with her are now with other girls.

This is the part that makes me angry, this (for want of a better word) worm and my friend are texting all the time, messaging online all the time, basically keeping intense contact. He’s been acting as though his life is not too bad now, as though he’s okay with or without her. She has been around her friends, which happens to involve a lot of couples now, instead of feeling free of a bad relationship, she feels alone and lonely. Recently, he went so far as to ask her if she’d be happier alone!

So, all her friends are worried about her, worried she might go back to this worm who isn’t good for her. She has been talking about it, she feels a bit left out around the couples, he had been asking her to take him back.

My question for you:

What can we do to make her understand that she can’t just jump back into a relationship without thinking it through properly just because she feels that it might be better than being on her own?

Waiting eagerly for a reply,

Quinn