u/Adoptm1girl

Pls help

I'm (16F turning 17 in a week ) starting college soon and I would really hate to be one of those people who are constantly on their phone as if they didn't have a goal in life when I'm really hoping to an eye doctor / examiner in the future.

I stopped tracking my screen time because my mom woke up one day and told me she was going to check how much time I spent on my phone daily but I remember vividly that it was 11 hours or so especially when I am home all day.

I also put a time restriction on tiktok( the main app causing trouble here ) and I seem to just increase that time period every single time from 2 hours to 4 hours to even 6 hours . Even if I do delete the app, I'll just re install it after 😓. Maybe deleting the whole account / accounts would be the goal but I'll have sm FOMO if I actually do that 😭.

Can anyone out there help ? I don't wanna spend the rest of my teenagers years like this and later on regret after.

I’m a teenage girl (16) and I really need some help about the future. Growing up, I was never a very curious person. I would sleep in the same room as adults and never dared to touch their stuff or make them mad. As a child, I always tried to please every adult by keeping the house clean, obeying rules, doing my chores correctly, and minding my own business. We used to live in a big house with about 6–8 people in it.

Because of that, I also never talked very much as a child. People would sometimes say things like, “I miss when your siblings aren’t here, you’re boring,” when I was around 8 or 9 years old. As I grew up, I kind of kept the same dynamic. However, around the age of 13, my parent(i live with my mom only ,that isnt much at home and at that time my sis was 5) became very obsessive about my grades. When I would get grades between 60 and 79, it would become a big deal, and they would say that I would never have a future if I didn’t study harder.

When I got grades in the 70s, they would say things like: “What happened? Didn’t you study? Take your future seriously! I worked so hard to bring you to this country. I don’t want you to end up being a nurse like me. I want you to have a job that pays well because the world is getting more and more expensive.”

It was always a big fuss about grades, which made me put grades at the center of my universe. If I got a 60, I would cry and have dark thoughts, not because I thought the grade itself was horrible, but because I was scared of the reaction they were going to have.

I didn’t really understand why getting 90–100% was so important, since I always tried my best to at least pass with a 65–80, or more depending on the subject. As a kid, I never liked failing because my uncle would sometimes give us gifts if we had good grades, so I kept that habit of trying to get good grades even after we stopped living with him.

Another thing is that my social skills are not very good. I can talk normally with my friends, but when it comes to new people or small talk, I completely freeze. Also, my mom never really liked me going out with my friends. Every time I wanted to go out with them, she would ask for their address, their apartment number, both of their parents’ phone numbers and their own numbers, where we were going, and she wanted me to present them to her because she said she had “never seen them.” Even if I had already introduced them to her in person and told her some background about them, she would still say the same thing.

Because of that, I never went out very much to build adequate social skills. That really sucks because now, since I turned 15, I realized that you can go much further in life even if you don’t have perfect grades. For example, all my friends who have incredible social skills, outgoing personalities, and self-confidence seem much more successful than me. They can get almost any job they set their minds to, they don’t doubt their potential, and they don’t overthink like I do.

Meanwhile, I’m stuck not even getting a job at the summer camp and amusement park where I did interviews. I don’t really know what to do anymore. I feel like during interviews I overexplain things, don’t answer the way the interviewer wants, and end up messing everything up. I smile, act kind, and try my best to answer all the questions, but it just doesn’t seem to be working.

I don’t know how I’m going to manage in the future if things keep going like this. I’m starting to lose hope.

How do you recommend that I behave during interviews and when meeting new people? And how do I improve myself?

I’m a teenage girl (16) and I really need some help about the future. Growing up, I was never a very curious person. I would sleep in the same room as adults and never dared to touch their stuff or make them mad. As a child, I always tried to please every adult by keeping the house clean, obeying rules, doing my chores correctly, and minding my own business. We used to live in a big house with about 6–8 people in it.

Because of that, I also never talked very much as a child. People would sometimes say things like, “I miss when your siblings aren’t here, you’re boring,” when I was around 8 or 9 years old. As I grew up, I kind of kept the same dynamic. However, around the age of 13, my parent(i live with my mom only ,that isnt much at home and at that time my sis was 5) became very obsessive about my grades. When I would get grades between 60 and 79, it would become a big deal, and they would say that I would never have a future if I didn’t study harder.

When I got grades in the 70s, they would say things like: “What happened? Didn’t you study? Take your future seriously! I worked so hard to bring you to this country. I don’t want you to end up being a nurse like me. I want you to have a job that pays well because the world is getting more and more expensive.”

It was always a big fuss about grades, which made me put grades at the center of my universe. If I got a 60, I would cry and have dark thoughts, not because I thought the grade itself was horrible, but because I was scared of the reaction they were going to have.

I didn’t really understand why getting 90–100% was so important, since I always tried my best to at least pass with a 65–80, or more depending on the subject. As a kid, I never liked failing because my uncle would sometimes give us gifts if we had good grades, so I kept that habit of trying to get good grades even after we stopped living with him.

Another thing is that my social skills are not very good. I can talk normally with my friends, but when it comes to new people or small talk, I completely freeze. Also, my mom never really liked me going out with my friends. Every time I wanted to go out with them, she would ask for their address, their apartment number, both of their parents’ phone numbers and their own numbers, where we were going, and she wanted me to present them to her because she said she had “never seen them.” Even if I had already introduced them to her in person and told her some background about them, she would still say the same thing.

Because of that, I never went out very much to build adequate social skills. That really sucks because now, since I turned 15, I realized that you can go much further in life even if you don’t have perfect grades. For example, all my friends who have incredible social skills, outgoing personalities, and self-confidence seem much more successful than me. They can get almost any job they set their minds to, they don’t doubt their potential, and they don’t overthink like I do.

Meanwhile, I’m stuck not even getting a job at the summer camp and amusement park where I did interviews. I don’t really know what to do anymore. I feel like during interviews I overexplain things, don’t answer the way the interviewer wants, and end up messing everything up. I smile, act kind, and try my best to answer all the questions, but it just doesn’t seem to be working.

I don’t know how I’m going to manage in the future if things keep going like this. I’m starting to lose hope.

How do you recommend that I behave during interviews and when meeting new people?