Should I give up poker forever? (serious)

[pokerjoker]

I just finished college. I am a music major. I plan on taking 1 year off then going to grad school. I was going to go directly after, but I started playing poker and did really well for awhile. So I thought I could maybe "go pro" at least for a year.

Anyway.....Since Dec 1, I have played 12,000 (including 2500 today) hands, playing 4-6 tables of $200 NL. I am down ~$1350.

The bad part is that I feel like I have been playing pretty well. Not brilliantly, but well.

Since October I have played 22,000 hands and am 1.68 pt bb/100. (including this [censored] in december)..I focused on school a lot

Before that I was doing quite well (~6 ptbb/100) over about 30000 hands over the summer (my computer crashed and I don't have exact statistics)

anyway, my bankroll has went to [censored] ($1500) and I am moving down.

It seems like the games have gotten a lot tough since this summer. I just don't feel like I am beating them. Do you think this is just variance?

If I can't make ~$80,000 playing poker fulltime in a year I don't wanna even try. Does this seem possible?


I guess this post is all over the place, but that is how I feel right now. Feel free to put it into any direction you want, this is a big deal to me though so please be constructive if you respond.

Thanks,
Pokerjoker