school was hard for me too. but to encourage you, i am currently getting my Masters.

if you don’t go through the fire, you can’t know what your made of.

Why isn’t the school plan working out? Obviously, something in the equation isn’t working, so I’d start by trying to identify and fix that problem so you can get back on track. Finishing is the real goal, not just seeing how fast you can finish, okay? 🙂 I graduated with someone who at least didn’t seem like the dumbest person in the world but just took 5 years to finish for whatever reason. Unless you’ve got some abolutely spectacular reason that you just have to drop out over (I at least don’t see one in your question!), I’m sure you can make it if you make that a big enough priority.

If you need to for some extra motivation, see what kinds of jobs are available to someone without a high school diploma. Now imagine you’re 30 or 40 and still doing that level of work and getting paid that little to do it. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find something just right for you in this little thought experiment. . . but otherwise, look at that as a reason why you *have* to start making better progress toward graduation.

Regardless of whether you have a clue what you want to do afterwards, your options will always be more limited if you don’t finish somehow. And, heck, I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up as a 2nd-year Ph.D. student.