My drinking buddy is a neuroscientist.
Same story. Went to college uncertain what he wanted. Did liberal arts, realized he was always curious about how the brain works, and just kept pushing through.
He’s not really sure how he was going to make a living, but he’s good at what he does and it’s the only thing that keeps him going.
A few drinking sessions prior, we celebrated over him submitting a paper that took five years to write.
Sometimes I regret my choice of doing software engineering only to be glued to a computer my whole adult life working at optimizing systems for large corporations to maximize their already huge profit and contributing nothing of significant value to humanity.
I’d rather be riding around on an ATV outdoors with the sun and trees and flowers and birds collecting soil and rocks and stuff.
Apply to the public sector ? I’m doing that, fuck waking up to increase profit margins of someone else
Honestly? Sounds like a pretty decent life path
I knew a guy who did that around here and I never seen anything but a smile on his face.
Does he… not know about climate change? lol
I mean, yeah, but he spent his whole workday riding around in the woods on an atv. He came to my little gas station to fill up his truck and atv and he was always happy.
He also inspected mines, I think most of his job was about looking for runoff from the mines.
He probably knows a whole lot about soil biodiversity collapse. Close enough
Colleague asks to do Environmental activism
Don’t know what that means, but sure why not
mfw blowing up oil pipes
'How many credits do we get with this field project?"
Anon teaches us that making seemingly random choices and going for it is better than making no choices at all
As someone a bit older than most on these sites, I can say with confidence, if you have any kind of solid plan for your life you’re going to get royally fucked over.
If you want any chance of happiness in your life, you have to ride a balance between working towards goals, but also learning to love and appreciate wherever life takes you, even if it’s in the opposite direction. Because the harder you try to fit into an image you make for yourself, the harder life pushes back.
I know all this sounds like a wood-etching in grandma’s kitchen, but it’s 100% true and if you don’t get it now… you will.
I was trying to explain this to my son yesterday. He’s in middle school but already has a career path picked out. I was like, “dude, I didn’t even know my current job existed until a decade after I graduated from college, you don’t have to have this all figured out yet. Plans change, life gets in the way. Just go with it.”
It is something I am learning myself, but without the experience to back it up, it’s really hard to understand truly.
Yeah, but Zoldyck was talking about doing something Vs doing nothing. And that doing something random is fine as long as it is something.
I wonder why self-intro in college application asks so much about life plan, when it is not remotely how we should live.
Those kinds of things, along with work-interviews and small-talk at gatherings and why your boss talks to you at the urinal, because it’s far more about viewing how someone presents themselves and conforms to societal expectations.
Not necessarily in negative, overbearing way, often this is literally how we appraise people all day, all the time. This is how we keep from inviting psychotic strangers into our tribe who may cause damage. Just seeing if they can conduct themselves as we expect so we know they are likely to hold to their end of our social contracts.
(All of this is also why we’re such a racist and scared species, which is also what inspires college self-intros.)
I’m tempted to disagree somewhat as a mid-20-somethibh. I think your point is excellent overall but I also think it’s pretty important to have plans. Just don’t expect to have 20/20 foresight and that your plans will fail - but the takeaway is to make more, better plans, and do your best to take failure on your chin, rather than to feel it’s okay to just drift not knowing what you want in life and not planning on how to get it.
That’s why I said you need to keep working towards a goal, and why a balance between passivity and rigid planning is a must.
Any absolutist viewpoint is going to cause you more problems, and there are a lot of people pushing very absolutist ideas out there about what you need to do with your life to feel rewarded and fulfilled.
The dirty secret is there’s no such thing as a “wasted life.” Short of doing something so heinous that you have your life or freedom taken from you, there’s no “wrong” way to live, you simply existing is a miracle beyond all reason and explanation and even if you just sat on your hands contemplating your navel for 80 years, that’s still an experience of life, and any kind of experience you’re having must be appreciated, because the alternative is not experiencing anything.
I disagree. I think you need to have plans but be willing to let them go. You’re wrong! No you!
I’m in my mid-50s and pretty financially successful (enough that I’m thinking about retiring soon). My entire career gameplan has always been ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ combined with ‘someone I know put in a good word for me’. I’ve never got a job from a cold interview.
Moral of this story - network like your future career depends on it!
How’s the saying go? Success is opportunity… Uh… When… Eh…
(I had to Google it)
Success is when opportunity meets preperation.
Literally, it’s kinda inspiring tbh. While choices were pretty much freefall like, when he commited, he commited. And when situation got clearer, readjusted course slightly to make it better for himself.
Not once would it pass through my mind I’d ever find greentext inspirational.
Op could have made worse choices overall. ATVs are pretty cool. Soil is soil. Coulda been a cubicle monkey. At least op is getting some sun.
Fake: Anon never goes outside
Gay: Anon likes to rideSee Greentext post
Look inside
“Anon is fake and gay”
MFW
Me too, thanks.
ATV is cool, yeah!
But sampling soil from who-knows-where is shit. Imagine two weeks of rain at 4 °C and everyday you have to drive out. You are muddy, you are wet, you are freezing.
If you get the proper gear, clothing etc. - - still better than a cubicle in urban hell.
But you are also paid, which is alright.
I’d take a substantial pay cut for the opportunity.
–Me, cubicle code monkey wage slave.I wouldn’t
- work from home code money/server toucher
You’re not wrong. I make enough money at my current work that I’m hoping to be able to stop working w/i about 10 years (I’d be in my mid 40’s) and then go do some kind of outdoors work (ideally as a park ranger or game warden) where I’d be able to get back to my redneck roots and be away from the city 75% of the time.
with the right gear even freezing rain is tolerable, the big thing is that you need to prevent any water from getting between the boots and the rain/snow pants (or use the single piece pant boot things for wading).
single piece pant boot things for wading
Waders?
Thanks for the reality check
atvs are a death trap
I have a family friend who grew up near a creek. He loved bass fishing, so when he heard that invasive carp were eating bass eggs he took that personally.
He’d go out night after night bow hunting carp. He’d kill them and throw them on the bank for animals to eat. Dozens of these huge fish every night for years.
Eventually he cleaned out several miles of the creek by his house, and it’s some of the best bass fishing in the area.
tl;dr - He got a degree in fisheries.
Man really is all about that Bass; no treble.
Actually he liked treble hooks for bass fishing
I kinda wanna answer with a joke about that but all I can think of is mid.
People, man.
One man can create a great local environment with time.
And then there’s how much a group could do. How much more could they do if they just got one or two more to join?
And yet some of us just sit here, feeling a bit depressed and purposeless.
Went to college, had GPA issues.
Stoner neighbor friend says " Bro, you should do undergrad research at some lab at school, it’s really easy and they give you an A at the end of the semester.
ok
do undergrad bitch work get easy A
They ask me to do a master’s. Ok
they told me I could do a PhD. Ok
apply to national lab for post doc
accepted
working there 10+ years
boss retiring, says I have to run the research group now
its ok
Actually, though? Or did you just make that up?
True story
At least Anon didn’t pick Law like so many people do when they don’t know what to do after high school.
Could’ve also done business and become reprehensible.
Disrupt the market by exploiting your customers and employees. Such innovation! One golden parachute please
When I was at school everyone picked criminal psychology when they didn’t know what to do. Not sure what that says about my school.
Man, I recently quit IT and went back to school and became an electrician. Couldn’t be any happier rn
I’m in cybersecurity and being a heat pump technician is starting to sound very appealing. Can’t seem to convince my younger brother tho. Guess we all gotta make our mistakes before we can learn.
I consider leaving cyber and becoming a barista on a daily basis
Do it, I left IT to become a chef. The pay is less but I feel so much better about my job. Theres a huge difference doing something that actually benefits people (making good food for people was my path, it doesn’t have to be cooking specifically) rather than slaving away for a corporation’s benefit. It’s awesome when you go out and see people enjoying what you did
YES! This perfectly describes my current feeling about my job!
My CISO has been trying to recruit me for year to his department, but I haven’t got the mental health to spare for the cybers.
I firmly believe you cant really fully articulate what a certain career feels like. You need to experience it for yourself because it subjective. Some may like it and some may not. If he were to listen to your advice, he may be left wondering; what if.
Combine your current skill set with HVAC and you can make big money in data centers i have been told.
Tell him no one is hiring and security is saturated.
Funny enough i switched from being an electrician to doing IT a few years ago.
I’m making a ton more money and I’m inside all day. Which is nice today because it’s 25°F and windy as shit here today. Its less nice when it’s 70°F and sunny though.
It might be because our country needs electricians at the moment hence that’s why the pay is higher atm
I’m making almost double what I was as an electrician in IT.
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Born to go field study and research nature, forced to be a cog for increasing shareholder value
Tried this with geology. Then quit and went to get a PhD. Now as a postdoc finding out that even the $50 million grant to “sustainably extract critical elements” is mostly bullshit. The system can’t self-correct.
I basically fell into my life choices and they’ve worked out remarkably well for me. I intended, upon leaving high school, to get a music education degree and become a high school band teacher. Then due to budget reasons (and an unwillingness to take out $50-80k in loans) and having to work full time to support myself, I ended up taking a break from school (after taking 5 years to get my Associates Degree). I moved to the opposite side of the country on a whim, and after a year and a half at a truly miserable call center job, my friend suggested the Coast Guard. So I talked to a recruiter and got a report date.
Around the same time, I met a woman in my area (back before online dating was the tragic mess it currently is) while just looking for people to do things with, since I moved across the country knowing nobody. We got along, but nothing kicked off until I told her I was joining the military (leaving), we both expressed how interested we were in each other, and became a couple.
I’ll spare you the longer story, but ended up proposing during “off-base liberty” in boot camp (generally speaking DO NOT RECOMMEND) because I was moving halfway across the country, and, per my proposal, “neither of us have anything, you just lost your job, and the way we both are, even if it’s bad we’ll stick it out for a year. And if you ever want to go back, we’ll buy you a plane ticket, split what we have, and you’re no worse off than you are now.” We ended up getting along amazingly.
And I was worried about joining the military (which I was doing for the GI Bill so I could finish school then become a band teacher), but the job I’ve been doing is WAY better than being a band teacher, and I’m currently buying a house (for the second time) and getting set to retire somewhere amazing. At 46.
My life is considerably better than anything I might have planned, because I went along with the opportunities that came up. I think OP failed task successfully.
You’re doing God’s work. Underground runoff is real, and it’s full of shit and pesticides. Digging a well for fresh water sucks.
Environmental science jobs are legit, they’re pretty chill too, unless you’re working as a lab analyst
Great. Wonderful. Really happy for you, anon. >:{
?
I’m jealous of anon making a living out of sampling dirt
