taking a semester off from school: C/D?

If it's a small, private liberal arts school -- talk to whatever appropriate office (career services, Exploring Your Potential, whatever) about a semester-long internship. No classes, no academic nonsense, no dorm, no more teachers, no more books, but neither parents' dirty looks. Small private liberal arts schools generally excel at hooking you up with an internship (talk to them about applicable grants etc. if it's an unpaid internship), and if you need financial assistance from your parents -- if that's an option for you -- you will probably have much more luck with "I'd like to intern with Such And Such for a semester and get some Real World Skills and Job Experience and La La La" than "I have no idea what I'm doing here and I need to clear my head."

But by all means, clear your head anyway.

I took a year off, after a semester+summer of field leave, first because I was distracted by personal life shit, and then because I realized I was paying outrageous amounts of money to go to classes I wasn't getting much out of with people I didn't like at a school with policies I thought had failed. I did basically nothing in that time, and ran up a lot of debt and felony to get by. I don't recommend that, although everything worked out for me and I wound up in New Orleans.

oh ha!ha! thats what happenned to me at NYU.

I took a semester off my junior year to spend that $10,000 on a semester traveling around Eastern Europe and the Middle East and it was really the best thing I've ever done. Actually, it only cost like $3000.

Go for it. I didn't take any terms off, but my best friend did. Warning, sappy story here!! She was a year ahead of me at college, and January of her senior year, during Wintersession (which is like sit around at school for 6 weeks & goof off period), she decided that she was burnt out, and not ready to graduate. So she spent March in Prague and Switzerland, and other than that worked part time and hung out. I was taking a bunch of art clases, so she would come to my studio with me and talk while I worked. It was great- we were normally both so busy with classes that we didn't have much time to sit around & talk, but for 3 1/2 months we saw a lot of each other. Then she went off to Portland for the summer, and I went out to Seattle for 3 months, and we saw each a few weekends. She came back to school and did fall semester, graduated, and moved to Seattle. I moved out to Seattle in June, and we hung out a bit, but both of us had crazy jobs. And she lived 30 minutes away, which in our traffic feels like it's even further than it sounds. Less than two years later, she was killed in a car accident. So now it feels selfish, but I'm so glad that she took that semester off & we had time to see each other- I think about those months a lot.

Errr, I hope this doesn't come across as "take time off & a great tragedy will befall you!!" though.

I got kicked out for a semester, for having a sub-par GPA. (At a 'fourth-tier national university', according to those wacky folks at US News and World Reports, aka the Bottom-50. Not my finest hour.)

I don't remember the fall of 2001 much, aside from the obvious. Mostly I worked, and played pool/drank beer after work. But it was really the final straw, and when I went back, I got a 4.0 the next semester, having dropped political science as a major and taken a couple of art classes. It took two more semesters of 4.0 GPAs, but I'm off probation.

I guess that's a bit different than voluntarily taking a semester off to find yourself (I don't think my credit cards would allow me to find myself, unless I'm at Target), but it worked out the same. I realized that I was never going to make it (ie graduate/live-past-25) on the path I was following, and lucked into something that had never occurred to me before. Probably works even better if that's your plan at the outset.

Do it. If you've never had a full-time job or supported yourself before, do something that really sucks, like waiting tables or construction - if nothing else, good incentive to go back to school.

You could also take classes at a community college or state school in things you'd never try at the liberal arts school, if you're worried about losing ambition.

er, i would advise against waiting tables in new york for a semester. you'll get too comfortable having lots of cash and going boozing all night until 4am.

Boozing and cash don't make the job suck any less, though. Easier to handle, what with the self-medication, but still crap.

And, kind of like smoking, seeing people over 30 wait tables makes the affair look much less attractive.