Original E-Mail, sent to my mother, detailing my plans:

Here's the general plan I have right now for what I want to be doing over the coming year, and my general ideas for the future. Sorry if it's a bit of a long read, but I just wanted to give you the full details of what I'm thinking, so you know in general what I'm trying to do with my life right now.

1. Move back in with you and Jim, only bringing the necessities of my computer, my clothes, and other stuff like that.

2. Get a job at Red Robin - Any paying job, whether it's a busser, a hospo, or whatever, with as many hours as I can get, even weekends and nights - and start saving money.

3. Once I have enough money for the deposit, first and last months, and whatever else I need, rent a 2-bedroom apartment with Adam and Forrest in Fairfield, preferably near the school and Red Robin so I don't have to commute too far in either case. Once we move into an apartment together, splitting the rent should make saving money easier, so I can cut back on my hours to get ready to go back to school.

4. Start at Solano again in the Fall, but this time only taking one or two classes at a time to slowly work on things, rather than trying to rush through with six classes at a time and burning out again. Depending on how I'm feeling, I may go for classes that gets me a direct-to-job technical certificate and get into a trade job - An electrician, or something along those lines, something simple but that pays well. From what I understand, Solano can get me hooked up with trade jobs after I graduate that pay around ~$40k a year, with good benefits. There wouldn't be much upward mobility, but it would be enough for me.

I'm not looking for a dream job anymore, just something that I can support myself and Adam with and isn't the bullshit of retail or food service. Something like what Robert is doing right now with his linoleum laying job is a good example - Tiring and exhausting the work may be, but paying well for him, letting him support him and his family, and not being overly stressful or high-paced. On that note, if nothing else works out, I'd be interested in seeing if Robert could get me hooked up to his Union so I could work as a linoleum layer, myself - That'd be far in the future, though, when I've run out of all of my other options, so no need to worry about that right now.

Otherwise, if I don't go for a trade job, I will try to work my way back up to transferring either to Sac State, or back to UC Davis, this time genuinely as a computer science major, which will require me to spend at least a few more years at Solano on the pace of one or two classes a semester to finish all the math and science courses required for computer science. We'll have to see which direction of classes - Technical classes for a trade job, or math and science to transfer again -  I pick once I start up again, so I at least have some time to think about it and decide.

5. Alternatively, instead of doing any further schooling and getting more degrees, I will attempt to make my way into IT with the certificates and qualifications I already have, along with the references of my professors from Solano. The best would be to work IT at Solano itself, but you said you might be able to get me into IT stuff for Red Robin, or maybe my professors can hook me up with an IT job somewhere else. Really, though, an IT job anywhere would be fine with me. From what I understand, with my current qualifications, I would be able to get an IT job that pays somewhere between $30-35k a year, with decent benefits, if I work full time. It's a field with lots of upwards mobility, too, as long as I continue to educate myself about IT subjects, so I can easily see myself getting promotions and be making $60k in ten years, even without a Bachelor's degree from university.

The big point is, though, is that the end goal for me right now, for my career and for my schooling and for my life, is just to get a job that pays enough so that I can live comfortably. I don't need a job where I'll be rich, since I don't want many material goods beyond computers and anime merchandise. I'm not worrying about doing Ph.D. work in computer science and research and robots and all that any more, at least not for now. Right now I'm just going to look to be a self-supporting, independent adult, so I can stop relying on you guys and the government for my living expenses and all that. Once I get my life sorted out, once I can stand up on my own two feet, and once I get my head on correctly with therapy and medication, then I'll worry about bigger things. For now, though, I'm aiming simply and aiming low, just trying to get what is necessary for me right now.

Even if I do transfer back to UC Davis or to SacState, I think I may just stop at a Bachelor's degree, rather than a Master's or a Doctorate, since the jobs I can get with just a Bachelor's will pay well enough, most starting around ~$60k a year, with lots of benefits, If I network correctly, I can get a nice high-paying, low-stress job with it, like being a Systems Administrator, or something similar. We'll have to see how things go when we reach that point, though, since that's a fair bit off.

Let me know if you have any questions.

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Second e-mail, the letter sent to my father, with the above attached:

Dad,

First of all, I didn't want to do this over the phone, as I doubt I would have been able to maintain my composure and say everything I wished to say properly, especially since what I wished to say ended up so long. Apologies for that.

I sent the forwarded e-mail below to mom, yesterday. Here in is everything I plan to do over the next few months and the next couple of years. I know you might be disappointed that I am leaving school yet again, but I feel that this is the necessary thing for me to do at the current moment, especially when considering the fact that my financial aid from the government, in terms of both free grants and subsidized student loans, has been cut off due to my having withdrawn from UC Davis in November, an event which makes me ineligible for government financial aid under their rules. This means, then that I will have no government financial support if I go to ARC, and will be unable to pay for my tuition, my books, my rent, or my food by myself. Now that it has come to this, I will need to be able to financially support myself both for my living and my school expenses, and can no longer rely on hand-outs from the government and leeching off of you, mom, and Jim. Therefore, my primary goal, before anything else right now, is to achieve financial independence. I am 22 years old, and still relying on my parents for essentially all of my financial support. I simply cannot consider this acceptable, so I must remedy this situation as quickly as I can, before I worry about my academics or anything else that I want or need to do. I know you, mom, and everybody else in my family has always told me that you will financially support me through college, but after I have already wasted so much of your money by running around blindly and foolishly and simply not getting anywhere, essentially ending up back in exactly the same spot I started at in 2011, I can no longer, in good conscience, continue to rely on anybody else to put me through school besides myself. From now on, any future failures, if they come, will entirely fall upon my own head, and I will not have wasted anybody's time or money but my own.

I do want to go back to school eventually, and hopefully transfer back up to a 4-year institution, either back to UC Davis or potentially to Sacramento State, and finish my Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, maybe even going for the Doctorate as I have always dreamed, but I will need to get up on my own two feet and get my head on straight before I return to school. After examining myself thoroughly, I have come to understand that I simply am not in a position where I can continue my higher education right now; Not financially, not mentally, and not emotionally. After hours upon hours of self-reflection and weighing my options and agonizing over all the facts of my current situation, of who I am, who I want to be, where I am, and where I want to go, this is what I have decided is the best option for me in my current situation. I have consulted many different people, close friends whose opinions I value and trust deeply, friends far more mature and knowledgeable of the world than I, and they have agreed that this would be for the best, as well. I apologize for not consulting you, as well, but I felt this was a decision best made with the advice of relatively impartial parties, who can look at the situation objectively and help me determine what is best for me, without any strong emotions in the mix.

If I continued to go to school now, it would accomplish nothing besides causing myself more stress, confusion, fear, and anxiety, and I would likely just repeat the events of last November over and over again if I continued to bang my head against the wall like this with school, which may eventually lead to something much worse happening than what did happen last November, which neither I, nor doubtlessly anybody else, would wish to see happen. I do not intend for anything of that sort to ever happen ever again, especially when I know how much emotional turmoil it caused for everybody who cares about me, and how much more emotional turmoil something worse would have caused, having to drop out of UC Davis entirely aside. Before I head back to university, I need to become a truly mature, self-supporting, emotionally and mentally stable adult who can handle the regular stresses of every day life, work, and school, without having constant emotional and mental breakdowns which sabotage everything I attempt to do with my life, especially when it comes to my academics. I need to become a stronger person than I am currently, a person right now who is extremely weak and cracks under the slightest pressures of life, running away and hiding at the slightest sign of danger or difficulty, before I return to the high-pressure environment of university. If I keep flailing around in the metaphorical waters as I have been for the past while now, I will eventually drown, rather than getting anywhere. I must first learn to swim, metaphorically speaking, before I enter the waters of university again, or else the result, I feel, will always be the same, if not worse, and I will only be wasting time and other people's money for the sake of getting nowhere in school and in life.

 I've realized recently that I never really grew up as much as I needed to in order to face the adult world successfully, as you can see from what happened last November, so, in the end, I'm going to need to do that growing up now, albeit several years later than I was supposed to. By both experiencing what it's like to truly be a self-supporting adult, rather than the joke that was my time as "independent" in Rhode Island, and by engaging in psychological therapy and counseling and acquiring psychiatric help while I take time off from school, I intend to grow up and mature sufficiently enough that I can finally face the pressures and stresses of the adult world without constantly mentally and emotionally collapsing, and constantly running away like a coward from what I want to do and and what I need to do, without being a quitter who constantly leaves their work half finished because they are too afraid of real life, or because they believe it is too hard or too difficult for them. You may not see these negative aspects of myself, at least not fully, but that is likely your love of a father blinding you to the faults of your child. I have studied myself enough to know exactly what my faults are, exactly how these faults cause me to fail so often and so frequently in school and in life in general, exactly how strong - or, rather, exactly how weak -  I am right now and exactly how strong I can grow to be, and I've hopefully found a way to slowly fix these faults of mine and grow stronger as a person, strong enough to finally do everything I've always wanted to do and needed to do with my life, strong enough to move past my failures and finally succeed as everybody knows I can, to go back to university and finally follow my dreams, strong enough to truly deserve the pride everybody has in me.

Right now, I know I am not strong enough to pursue the academic goals I have in mind, not strong enough to even just acquire a Bachelor's degree, with the evidence being everywhere in how I dropped out of Calculus and Physics in my Spring 2014 semester at Solano, how I changed my major to History in Fall 2014 at UC Davis, and how I eventually broke down and was forced to withdraw in November from UC Davis. If I try again, I know for a fact that I will only fail again, unless I change something about myself, unless I grow stronger, strong enough to face these academic challenges properly, and with confidence. Rather than wasting both my time and your money attempting what I know I will most likely fail at, and at the best barely succeed, I will take the time to come to support myself and grow as a person, grow strong enough that I can finally tackle these things - school, life in general - head on, with confidence that I will be able to succeed in them and at everything else I choose to do. Until then, please have patience with me while I put my academics on hold for as long as it takes to finally reach the point where I can actually do what I need to do in regards to school, even if it potentially takes long and agonizing years for me to reach that point. This is what I have determined I simply must do if I wish to be as successful as everybody has always told me I can be, and to be as successful as I too know that I can be. I will no longer continue to always take the easy road in life, a road that leads only to mediocrity and dissatisfaction, just because I am afraid of the hard road, knowing that I don't have the strength yet to travel along it. I will, instead, become strong enough to walk that hard road, because I know that it is the road to success, happiness, and the accomplishment of my dreams, a place where I will truly deserve all of the pride you and everybody else has for me.

I hope you can understand my decision, and continue to support me with all the love and care of a father, as you always have in my life. I hate doing this, and you know I wouldn't be leaving school, the academic world of learning and knowledge that I love so much, unless I felt that I absolutely had to, and that this choice was not made lightly or without all due and proper consideration. I know you've always been proudest of me when it comes to my academic success, so I deeply apologize for failing yet again in that aspect, for, yes, running away and being a quitter once more, but I swear that I am doing what I am doing with the intent of becoming a better, stronger person who can handle their issues and be even more successful in academics, without the weight of constant depression, anxiety, fear, and the lack of maturity to handle those things and the stress of real life weighing me down, so that I will no longer run away or quit from the things I both want to do and need to do with my life. I promise I am doing this so that I can become a better, stronger person than I am now, so that I can become a child you can be even prouder of than you are already, a child who truly deserves the pride you have in them, rather than one who constantly finds ways to disappoint both you and themselves, due to their inherent weakness, fear, and general lack of maturity, constantly finding ways to fail and to run away from life in general. I am looking forward to showing you the person I know that I know that I can become - One who is strong, successful, mature, self-supporting, and generally better in all ways than I am currently. It may take me a few years to do so, far longer than other children have to take, something which I am not proud of and I do not expect you to be, either, but I swear that I will not give up until I become a person that both you, I, and everybody else can be truly and genuinely proud of, in all ways, someone who has the strength and maturity to do everything that they want to do and need to do in their life, without any more constant fear and constant failures, as has been the standard mode of operation for me for the past 22 years. I will become a better, stronger person, for you, for mom, for everybody else, and, most of all, for myself.

I hope you understand what I have said in this letter, and I hope that you are still willing to support me as a father while I strive to grow strong enough to support myself, despite how late I am in life to doing so, and despite how much I have already taken out of you for these past 22 years. I also swear here that, once I am strong enough to support myself, I will return the support, love, and caring you and mom have given me as parents back ten fold, as a child properly should to any pair of parents who properly support them and take care of them in so much and for so long, while receiving almost nothing in return for the work they have done. I regret that it is only very recently that I have come to appreciate everything you, mom, and Jim have done for me, and I apologize that I have never been able to properly show my appreciation, and I apologize for any way I may have acted or said in the past that devalued the support you have given me for so long, the support you have given me as one of the best fathers a child could ever ask for. It is more than likely that, in the future, we will continue to bicker and fight as we always have, but please remember when we do bicker and fight like that, that, from now on, despite what I may say or do, I fully appreciate and understand that everything you do for me is with the best intentions in mind for me, and that I love you for being such a caring, supportive father, even if I am consistently incapable of expressing it properly as a child should to any parent who does so much for them.

Apologies for the long letter, but it seems that there was much that I wished to say to you, things that I have never been able to properly say before now, but things which I feel must be said, as part of the process of growing into a stronger, more mature person, the process of becoming an adult. These are the things I believe that a proper, mature adult must be able to both admit to themselves and say to parents who have properly supported them, in spite of any difficulties which may have occurred between parent and child throughout their life together. I love you, dad. This is something that I have never been able to properly say, but I am so happy that I am now able to say it, freely, openly, and genuinely. Thank you for tolerating me throughout the years when I was unable to properly say or express it, in the years when I failed to appreciate all you had done and continued to do for me, and in the years when I actively acted in hateful, bitter ways towards you, despite everything you were doing for me at the time. I am still not a strong person, so I may not be able to consistently appreciate and love you for what you have done and continue to do for me, and may act in those immature ways of hatred and bitterness, but at least here, right now, I can and I will say it again: I love you, dad.

Thank you for everything you've done for me in my 22 years of life, and know that I will always love you no matter what happens in the future, even if, due to how weak I currently am, I sometimes don't manage to show it as I properly should from a deeply loved child to a deeply loving parent. Again though, I swear I will become a strong enough person so that you will be able to always see and know the love and appreciation I have for you, strong enough that I will be able to consistently show that love and appreciation, no matter what happens between us.

Your child, with all of their love for you, and all of their appreciation for your love and care and support for them, no matter what happens
-Alex Wuori