I just started my internship, and I have to say, it is so good not to have to worry about exams, projects and so on aftera full day of school and on weekends. When I close the lid of the laptop, the day is over. Plus I get smaller days, from 9 to 5 instead of from 8 to 5/6. I have never had as much free time
I always got pretty worried when adults kept saying that school was the good times growing up, as I didn’t have a particularly good time, and was not onboard for it being downhill from there.
Luckily I’ve learned that it’s not actually universally applicable, my life has definitely just gotten better as I’ve gotten older.
For me, school was a shithole that I was glad it was over, those were not the good years. Things are not perfect, but they have gotten radically better ever since.
The only thing about school that was good is that I made a few very good friends. Those are probably going to be life long friendships.
They’re the good times because you see you had no responsibilities and endless potential to be so many things, which becomes less and less true as you age. Of course, it’s miserable too not knowing what you are/what to do and feeling lost because you have no responsibilities, so it’s really just a grass is greener thing I imagine.
Yeah I think it is a greener grass situation. Sure you may have no responsibilities, but you also have less freedom in school. You can’t live on your own, can’t drink or gamble or vote or anything like that, can’t go where you want, etc. There’s always a trade-off.
It’s way better in some ways - especially if you find a good career in a field you’re passionate about.
But some of the responsibilities of adulthood are a burden that is hard to appreciate until you’re there. And the perspective gained by life experience is also very different, for better or worse.
For instance, I went through a breakup last year at 39 with someone I was fully expecting to marry. It was my first major relationship failure in decades, and as I was being dumped I expected it to crush me.
What ended up hurting the most was that it didn’t hurt that much. I didn’t spiral into depression or fall apart at work. I wasn’t happy about it, but I was fine. A younger me would have been overwhelmed by the emotional toll, but the adult me was able to keep moving forward without breaking stride.
And in a way that’s what hurts. The passion of youth has been tempered by a lifetime of experience that puts everything into perspective.
Ugh, as you get older, everything just starts to dull. Things are less important, less passionate, and more “meh” in general. And not in a depressed way, but more specifically that I’ve been there, done that for most emotions I could have.
I will say that now that I have an infant daughter, I’m finding those passionate emotions again and I’m excited as she’s excited and sad when she’s sad. That is the great part about parenting.
Ohh that’s where I remember you from. Do you still use it? I killed the script on my computer a couple of weeks ago, but I can turn it back on if you like
I haven’t used it that much tbf, just a bit. I finally have a homeserver now, so if I need it, I can just easily start my script. Thank you for the offer tho!
If you can afford not working, yeah. That wasn’t a reality for me or most people I know. Luckily I’m in a career that doesn’t value a major that much, so I dropped out after finding a decent job
I mean, for the subset of people who go to uni and can support themselves without also working a lot in that time, yeah.
In my time at uni there was
work, at which the hours were inconsistent
coursework, which there was a lot of
constantly battling a shit landlord who didn’t give a toss about uni students and left the flat in disrepair, but the housing shortage meant he could get away with charging a fortune for a mouldy flat with broken windows and non-working appliances
There was a lot of good, sure, but uni can be a very stressful time.
There is a big range between “parents could save up for their kid’s college” and “parents own a large successful company”.
I’m just some grunt working an office job, but I’m still lucky enough to be able to put away money for my kid’s college fund since they were born. I hope that they won’t need a job to get through college, when/if they go.
I think a big difference is what the free time is like. I worked full time or nearly through college, so I didn’t have much free time in terms of quantity. When I got it, it was often with friends and during the day. When I graduated, I got a job with regular hours for the first time- I had so much free time, but I didn’t have a lot to fill it with, nor did I have a lot of energy after sitting down. Developing an active hobby helped with both, but doesn’t work for everyone.
I’m in grad school now, working 30 hours a week, and I do feel much more weighed down, but I’m able to set my own schedule a lot more than I could when I worked in an office
Not trying to downplay your experience, but uni was actually so much better for me… being able to focus on things that actually coincide with my interests and abilities in Uni was so liberating after being forced to go through five classes a day five days a week, most of which were either insultingly idiotic or existentially difficult… Not to mention having an actually human-paced schedule with ample time to plan ahead instead of constantly being in damage reduction mode. I remember thinking to myself in the first year of uni: “Is this what normal life is supposed to feel like?” I’m still recovering from school emotionally, but the fact that I finally have the mental space to recover is definitely a good sign. I guess you and I just have way different schools, universities, and personal circumstances!
Work is pretty much the same, but depending on your job it can be way worse, or actually not that bad. I’ve had both.
Started off in a repetitive job with highly demanding monthly targets that we’d need to hit to get our full bonus (which was a significant part of total comp, salary was low as hell). It was an endless cycle of “X more days until Friday”.
I transitioned into software engineering. Ya know what? Occasionally I was EXCITED for the next work week. It’s still work and it’s hella stressful and sometimes you wish you could take the next 5 years off and have no obligations. But a lot of the time, you’re not actively waiting for the weekend anymore. Helps that my commute before I transitioned fully to home office was a 12 minute walk and I had after-work activities on weekdays to be excited for.
School for me was living hell for 5 days a week, working for me is alright and at least i also have money to use in my free time. Which I have less of of course, but even if school hadn’t been hell I’d never want to go back.
Which is to say, if anyones reading this who’s still in school and is getting discouraged from people saying working is worse, don’t be. It’s very subjective and depends on your job too. If school feels like torture, work will probably be an improvement.
Honestly the worst thing about school were the other kids. Everybody are little psychopaths and are utterly ruthless. At work everybody just wants to get paid and no one really gives a shit about other’s business (YMMV though).
Also there’s no homework, which is a godsend as somebody with ADHD. Just show up, work your little butt off and go home, nice and simple.
Yep, the other kids traumatized me for life lol. And they didn’t even hate me or anything, as I found out by them becoming generally fine to interact with in like 11th grade when they were 17+.
The homework I was thankfully able to just flat out ignore. But that along staying up way too long and as such struggling to stay awake in class lead to friction with teachers, so once the other kids weren’t a problem anymore, it was instead the classes themselves. Which were also just mostly very boring and very slow, and I’m suspecting I also have adhd.
Look on the brightside. You still have the weekend when you are in school. Wait until you get a family and every single fucking weekend is taken up events you don’t want to go to but you get nagged into.
I would gladly take a side job over another weekend birthday party. Work isn’t supposed to be fun, there is something insulting about being dragged to something supposed to be fun but isn’t.
As I am typing this it occurs to me I have a solution to my problem. Thanks for inspiring me.
Eh, OP may be complaining but if they have a family then their family deserves some of their time. A hobby isn’t gonna make the responsibilities disappear, just give them another thing to compete for their time.
Op needs to talk to their family and figure out how to make time for self care.
True, but that still fits with the hobby idea - they could use a personal interest to drag their family into instead of always being dragged to everyone else’s things
That’s good, but then 5/7ths of your life is wasted. Plus, you don’t really have the time and energy to fully commit to 2 days of hobbies, so you’re really only enjoying 1/7th of your miserable wasted life.
Indeed. Even better is having something to live for, or even something to work for (even if the work itself sucks). And these things can take place on evenings and weekends. Then at least the toil is meaningful because it enables the real work.
If they don’t pay well then that’s a different problem than the meme refers to. If there’s a high barrier to entry, compete like fucking crazy and own that shit. Any different attitude is a distraction that will sabotage your efforts.
Are you an amazing ball player with lots of experience?
No, im not good enough to make a varsity HS team after 10 years of practicing. But playing football is the only thing I love, its the only career id be passionate about and enjoy for more than 1 or 2 years.
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