I genuinely don't know what I'm doing with my life right now (plz read full)
I'm 18 and honestly this past week has completely fucked me up mentally.
For some context, I had already gone through a pretty rough JEE journey. I prepared for years, took a drop, and still ended up shit. That hurt like hell because I genuinely put years into it. Eventually I accepted that JEE wasn't working out and started looking at private colleges.
I got admission into IILM Greater Noida for BTech CSE. I visited the campus, paid the registration fee, and decided to go. I was already nervous about moving so far from home, but I thought maybe this was finally the start of something new.
Then everything went sideways.
I went to Noida, stayed there for basically a day, and while returning toward home my iPhone was lost in Delhi. A phone might sound like a material thing, but it had a huge amount of my personal photos and memories on it. I'm still trying to figure out what can be recovered.
Then the IILM hostel situation became another mess. I had initially been given one hostel arrangement, then it was changed to another, with different occupancy/accommodation than what I had originally booked. There was a lot of miscommunication and management issues, and I eventually cancelled my admission and started looking at colleges in Bhopal instead.
Now I'm in Bhopal and I've taken admission in OIST for BTech IT.
And honestly, I don't even know if I made the right decision.
That's the part that's eating me alive.
I keep thinking:
Did I make a huge mistake cancelling IILM?
Should I have just stayed in Noida and dealt with everything?
Is OIST actually a decent place to build a career from?
Should I take a partial drop and try JEE 2027 again?
Or should I finally stop chasing JEE and focus completely on BTech?
I feel like I've spent the last few years trying to fix one thing after another, and every time I think I've finally chosen a direction, something happens and I start questioning the entire decision.
The worst part is that I don't even know what I'm supposed to feel anymore. My parents are stressed, I'm stressed, I've lost something extremely important to me, I've changed colleges, and I'm suddenly supposed to make another huge decision about my career.
I know I'm only 18 and technically my career hasn't even started yet. I know people will say "you have your whole life ahead of you," and logically I understand that.
But when you're actually living through it, it doesn't feel that simple.
I just want some brutally honest advice from people who have actually been through college/JEE/career decisions.
Should I stick with OIST IT and focus completely on building skills, or should I attempt JEE 2027 alongside college as a partial drop?
And was cancelling IILM actually a terrible decision, or am I just regretting it because everything happened so quickly?
I'm not looking for fake motivation. I genuinely want honest perspectives from people who have been in a similar situation.