Low academic achievement

I am Dharmesh Pathak, a 18 year old student of a diploma in electrical engineering in Rajkot. Throughout my student life, I have never scored a position in the top one third of my class. I used to get about 70-80 % marks till 10^th grade. I scored 80 % marks in my 10^th Boards which prompted my parents to force me to take up the science stream. I managed to clear my 12^th Boards with 60 % and have taken up diploma. I feel that I have never been able to exhibit a passion in life as other people have in any field in life; be it in sports, academics or any arts of music, painting or dancing. I have never been able to form good relationships with either friends or my family. It seems that I am always in solitude, and mediocrity colours everything I do. I also do not feel like changing this. I do not wallow in self-pity too. I am confused about my future and what I should do.

You are probably born in the wrong social environment, Dharmesh. It seems that the opportunities in your environment have not been able to sufficiently stimulate you to have a fantasy life of achievement. There are many people who because of their poor socioeconomic environment lead a life like you do. If you take the daily wage labourer, you may find that his fantasy life has also received a severe dent because of the environmental conditions and hence is living a life which is devoid of much passion. His situation is influenced by reality, yours by an internal mental condition. Your inability to get an avid interest in anything is your main problem. It seems that you take life as a burden which you have to bear all the time. When the entire life is a burden, there is no respite. It seems that the drive to achieve is severely dented in you. You may feel as if you had no part to play in what has happened in the past and neither any part in the future to come. Secondly, you also have lost the ability to be curious. Henceforth there is nothing which surprises you. So at every blow you will bend a little, giving up the hope of ever standing erect. It seems that you feel that curiosity brings along responsibility and you are not ready for any responsibility. The feeling may be that you will have to face situations far beyond your maturity in order to have any effect on the situation. It seems that your self-esteem has been hurt to an extent that you perceive the situation as irreparable. In this situation, you are really left with very little choices. Firstly, you may have to accept that life is really a burden and merciless. However, we have a choice. We can decide to end, but if we decide to live, it is up to us to put the meaning into life. At your age, you may not be able to find someone who would put a meaning into your life. Having picked up that option of having to put meaning into your life, you will faced by further obstacles in the form of thought processes. It seems from your history, that you have always depended on an external structure to help you go through your years of life. You have never given a thought about what you want to achieve in life. So, when faced with the complex, intellectual tasks, you might find them difficult. You would be best advised to pick up a job or work,  that helps you deal with life in a mechanical way. This would form the backbone of your life for the immediate moment. This would be the structure that you may need to resort to in the crisis of your life. Secondly, you must start, even if at the very basic level, a curiosity that enables you to explore the perceptions of your mind and test them against the actual reality of your life. You feel that nothing is worth if an endevour has to be done for it. You may find that such a thing is not true. The pleasures of life can be multiplied if the right efforts are made. You need to be exposed to the pleasures of life, and they need to be glorified rather than be perceived as sinful.