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Find Your People

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Re: Find Your People

#161

Post by dan-robertson »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #123
parpfish wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think its interesting that for so many college kids, the post-graduation options that continue to provide tracks are also treated as the more "prestigious" options (go to grad school. work at big3/faang, etc). it's not because they are any more prestigious or important, but because they provide a clear sense of achievement/external validation and kids that make it to the end of college are kids that have had decade…

I heard that quant finance companies target high-achievers by creating a sense of continuing tracks: recruiting based on high GPAs, an application process with a high-profile entrance exam, and so on. It creates an impression among their target group that such a company is where they "should" go to work, because it's at the top.

Agree in spirit though I’m a bit doubtful of your details (exams or GPAs, etc). I think part of this is presenting the work as looking more like university and less like what students might imagine work to look like.

Re: Find Your People

#162

Post by orthecreedence »

riehwvfbk wrote: post #140
orthecreedence wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a strange response. Anything is a track if you only do that one thing. The point is that having diverse life experiences that challenge you make you a much more well-rounded person that can adapt and handle difficult situations.

Well, I think people like you are strange: how weird would it be to go through life assuming that everyone thinks the same way as you! How is working at McD's more "diverse" than playing soccer, or even tinkering with a computer at home? It's only "better" in a very specific value system, that of the American lower middle class Or put differently: the cliche thing that every teenager does in every American movie is "…

Going outside and playing with other kids is "diverse" because it's unstructured time. What do you do with the time? It's up to you to decide. Do you build a fort? Egg cars? Sell plants? It's an activity that requires some amount of creativity, and it's outside the normal zone of operation (home/school/etc). The only reason I could see this as a negative is if you wish your children to grow up as cogs and automatons who are unable to think for themselves and find their own place within social structures.

As far as getting a job, I have to say it benefited me quite a bit. I was already tinkering at home (I've been programming since I was 8) but getting a job before I left home did many things for me. I got to see how things are for a lot of people in the world around me. Some people need this shitty job. I was lucky enough to be able to do it because my parents mandated it, not because I needed to make ends meet. That gave me an enormous amount of perspective and humility. "This is how things could be for you." It gave me the drive to want to do better than working in fast food, and it gave me compassion for the people who are in that situation. Compassion that, to be frank, a lot of people I've met who have not done customer service or shitty jobs lack quite a bit. Secondly, I had to get that job myself. My parents didn't pull strings, they made me go out into the world, do applications, "sell" myself, etc. It was a growth experience. The world isn't going to bend to your whim, you are going to have to do things you don't like, and you are going to have to compromise.

TL;DR: playing outside: independence + creativity. Job: independence + compromise + humility + compassion.

None of that you learn by doing homework.

Re: Find Your People

#163

Post by bumby »

joshstrange wrote: post #54

> The first step is to realize that the subway stops here. Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college—it was always clear what the next stop was. In the process you've been trained to believe something that’s not true: that all of life is train tracks. And there are some jobs where you can make it stay like train tracks if you want,…

The book “Excellent Sheep” has an interesting portion on this. At one point someone from a non-traditional background is bemoaning the mentality of his colleagues at a prestigious university. He says they are so used to following a template of moving from point A to point B that they are completely rudderless when put in a situation where there is no template defining “success”.

Re: Find Your People

#164

Post by susiecambria »

Watching the speech, had a flashback to early 1986 when I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do now that I had graduated from college. In addition to what Jessica talked about, I left school a semester early having earned enough credits. I was quite off-balance, didn't have any peer support or friendship.

I moved in with my parents and I'm grateful for that. But they were not helpful in any way with helping me think through what was next for me. As I've said here before, it was a long road of mental health and drinking challenges and I finally got it together enough to have a direction somewhere.

As I reread this, I recognize how whiny this privileged white girl (!!!) sounds. But I also know that my not-so-great experiences got me where I am and I desperately want more for my grandkids and hope that I can be what they need me to be for them.

Re: Find Your People

#165

Post by throwaway1921 »

jamesgill wrote: post #119

It's great advice. Reminds me of Steve Jobs' statement: When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up…

I find myself in the former position more than ever. Feeling kinda trapped... it's what my parents and their parents did before me. Not sure how to break out? It becomes much harder to take risks once you have an entire family to take care of.

Re: Find Your People

#166

Post by smeej »

scns wrote: post #153
smeej wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to leave a comment related to this. This article has great advice, if you're normal enough that enough of "your people" exist to be able to find them and do something together. But if you've spent your whole life being told by the whole world--even people you thought were really interesting and wanted to get to know--that you're "just too fucking weird," it lands more like, "Oh. More advice for other peop…

Sounds familiar. Have you looked into ADHD and Autism yet?

Yeah, but the other symptoms don't line up. Screenings I've had have been negative.

It seems more likely that I have complex trauma from gestation, birth, infancy, and early childhood that really threw a monkeywrench into my neurological development. What we're trying to figure out now is whether I have enough neuroplasticity left at this stage for it to be recoverable, or if I'm just going to be like this forever. I'm definitely not neurologically typical, but I'm also not neurodivergent in a well-established category.

It does seem like there comes a point, though, where it's worth throwing in the towel on attempting to get "better" and just learning to make the most of what is.

Re: Find Your People

#167

Post by buggyipadmettoo »

throwaway1921 wrote: post #165
jamesgill wrote: post #119

It's great advice. Reminds me of Steve Jobs' statement: When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up…

I find myself in the former position more than ever. Feeling kinda trapped... it's what my parents and their parents did before me. Not sure how to break out? It becomes much harder to take risks once you have an entire family to take care of.

Just gotta compare it to the risks of not having a family to take care of.

Re: Find Your People

#168

Post by dang »

tilne wrote: post #147
EGreg wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Full Time Employment crowd is the people who continue the tracks. Chilling by the watercooler, being paid for 8 hours a day with health insurance etc. while working 2 hours a day and/or bitching about your job. Or just enjoying life after work. These people would be as much at home in Soviet Russia as they would in today’s USA. They want more security. The EU has become the new USSR for this. Lots of protections.…

[flagged]

Please don't cross into personal attack, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Find Your People

#169

Post by mlsu »

rconti wrote: post #155
orthecreedence wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't blame the kids, they don't know any better. They've spent their whole life focusing on the next goal. No, they spent their whole lives being sheltered. Let's call it what it is. These people were on tracks because they were put on tracks from a young age and told that the track leads somewhere, and any questioning of the tracks was often met with a harsh rebuke. They didn't play outside with the neighborhoo…

> These people were on tracks because they were put on tracks from a young age and told that the track leads somewhere, and any questioning of the tracks was often met with a harsh rebuke. They didn't play outside with the neighborhood kids, they were at soccer practice. They didn't get a summer job at a shitty fast food joint, they were doing summer school or learning piano. Everything they've done from start to fin…

You learn quite a lot by working a regular job and getting a paycheck as a kid. It is utterly baffling that there are some kids graduating college that never worked a regular job. It's a problem that young kids in our modern world don't seem to even want to get jobs.

As far as I'm concerned, you are basically mentally stunted if you didn't work for pay in your teenage years.

Re: Find Your People

#170

Post by FlamingMoe »

“I would have liked to work hard on something I cared about. But I didn't have anything I cared about”

This is one of those sentences that make me jealous I didn’t write it. Just such a perfect description of early adulthood for many.

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