Surprise, you now realize that there is no end-game. Life is a journey, enjoy each part.
Competition and Quarter-Life Crises
21–30 of 96 posts
Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises
#22I remember the strange feeling of uncertainty I got shortly after graduating college. Up until then, what I was supposed to do next was always clear. I was building up towards being an adult, and then suddenly there I was.
That shift from planning for the future to realizing that future was now was tricky. It took me a couple of years of aimless drifting to finally come to terms with it, and convince myself that it was time to start actually doing the things I had always planned for doing in the future.
Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises
#23As a first generation Indian, I grew up with the competition and abhorred it as a high-schooler. I keep far from it even now. It is not good to have a uncritical self image. Keep doing the good work, enjoy life. Nobody knows what will happen, so plan for the risks ahead, and keep chaos at bay. That's the best you can do. Rest is gravy. One of the worst things anyone can do is feel bad about things that they shouldn't feel bad over. The time spent doing so is wasted, it belittles your spent effort, and creates a poor self image. And keep away from snobs. It is not worth killing yourself over. If you are born in US, you should be able to pickup friends outside your country circle anyways. Don't fix the wrong bug. Cheers.
Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises
#24Competitiveness of any kind, with others or with oneself, whether physical or mental, seems to me like a crutch rather than a path to happiness. If you can only feel good about yourself when you're on the up and up, what happens when you start getting old and can no longer keep up with the young blood?
You can still compare yourself to others in your age group. There needs to be a realization that there are always people better and worse.
Have you encountered mimetic theory? It's worth a read if you haven't yet. To boil it down: we measure ourselves by the people around us, and the more homogenous the peer group, the greater the pressure on each individual. We're all busy copying each other without consciously realizing it, but simultaneously we are mortally afraid of anybody thinking we are copying them. Here's a random overview: https://violenceandreligion.com/mimetic-theory/
Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I picked up coding at the age of 22 as a hobby and now am a tech lead at a green energy company. I don't make as much money as my hyper competetive peers. But I feel like the work I do matters a lot more. And I never felt this stress about under performing.
if you accept, send me your company name, I talk with a bunch of people interested in green energy and coding in general.
You can send me an email if you'd like to talk more: paul@mstream.io
Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises
#26I do not believe for a moment that this has anything to do with competition.
I have lived in China and kids there are booked fully. Their parents sacrifice everything for their only child but at the same time they put a very high burden on them booking every space of their lives.
Just letting the kids fool around, experience what interest them, play and make mistakes is inadmissible.
Usually the parents work all day and only grandparents could take care of them, so making them go to some class or another is a way to have their kids busy all day.
Because they have only one child, the child needs to be perfect all the time, and the bet must be risk free.
This creates children than don't really know what they really want, and with zero creativity, incapable of making mistakes or take their own decisions.
Also when they don't have external pressure they just laze, because they lack internal motivation.
This particular person is happy on the work because he is told what to do, I suppose he works at Microsoft. Only when he is free to do whatever he can do he feels uneasy.
Like adult people(over 40) in Russia when Soviet Russia collapsed, they felt uneasy when there was no one taking all the decisions for them.
They just had not the training to deal with freedom.
As a kid, when I finished school, I was free, My friends and I decided what we wanted to do all the time. If I joined a competition, I did not tell my parents.
Over time you make lots of mistakes,exploring new territories, experiences and dangers, but develop autonomy and learn to deal with chaos.
After university I had the opposite problem to this man's, I could not stand people at work telling me what to do, specially when I considered they were taking bad decisions, so I started working on my own.
Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises
#27I had my first quarter life crisis at 18, when I came to grips with the fact that I had accomplished nothing in my life so far, as evidenced by my lack of good college admissions - I graduated only 2nd in my class with just a 1500 SAT, which isn't good enough for top schools. Unlike OP, however, it was less of an aimless drift and more of an aggressive, angry depression. Had another one at 20, when I realized that no…
You are 24 and work at amazon (I assume in engineering) and you think others consider you a disappointment? I honestly think you need therapy, you have some major self esteem issues. Part of being an adult is not caring what others think, you need to be happy for yourself.
I think it may be the "working at Amazon" part, considering its been under fire quite a lot in the last few years
Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but I caught myself sleuthing on your github and LinkedIn and feeling that familiar sense of envy He works at AWS? Is that considered particularly impressive to be envious over? Sure he went to Hopkins but that's not atypical in the Princeton area. I'd imagine for most of his peers from high school he's considered a disappointment for working at "only" AWS, they're probably all ML Engineers at FB or Google or Two S…
If you’re pathetic like me I guess. I only work at IBM on a bunch of Salesforce bullshit, so I find working on AI at AWS to be pretty impressive. Trust me I know there’s tiers to this stuff as someone who hasn’t passed interviews at Google and Citadel.
I see. I don't want to come off as harsh, I work at Amazon myself and know a lot of these people but didn't grow up in the peer group.
Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises
#29I'm going a bit off-topic compared to other comments, but I had never heard about Seattle Freeze. Is it really harder to make friends and acquaintances in Seattle compared to other cities or States? Any Seattleite to confirm?
Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises
#30The emphasis we put on kids to out perform their peers, get the best grades, get the best scores, go to the best colleges, is unrealistic and creates anxiety ridden adults later on. You can fail. It’s ok. What did you learn? You can skip college for some fields and be totally fine. You can even shun your old existence and live a life of a hermit, that’s cool too.
This isn’t the first time I’ve read something like this from an Indian household (or Asia in general). Yes, your family experienced great pressure to do well in order to prove they belong. But in keeping up with the “Jones’s” you aren’t enjoying it, you aren’t doing things that bring you joy, and you are doing things to conform. We all want to “fit in” but it’s when we let our diversity shine we can truly appreciate each other.
Good read though and I hope you realize it’s not all about performance, even in the workplace. Prioritize your mental health and happiness over your career. You’ll live a happier life.