maybe the best realisation I had as a kid was I did NOT want to be a veterinarian bc, sure I’d be around animals, but around HURT or SICK animals, ehhhhhhh
Why I never wanted to go into the medical field (animals or people) and preferred plants.
Doctor_Who
I considered medicine at one point. I have an aunt who works in anesthesia and she let me shadow her for a day. I got to be in the room when a man got open heart surgery.
Fascinating as hell, but I decided it was not for me. Even though I did nothing but stand there out of the way I was stressed out to the extreme. No way could I ever keep my cool doing a job like that.
Rose by Any Other Name
When I was younger, I wanted to be a research doctor – no working with patients, just lab work doing the science to figure things out to further medical science.
And then I took college chemistry and discovered that me and laboratories do not mix.
Switched over to a Writing Major and never looked back.
Masumi
I used to think organic chemistry is the coolest thing ever. Then I actually studied chemistry and found that I, as well, do NOT mix with labs. I’m like, ridiculously clumsy. And hate when stuff stops making sense and everyone is like ‘eh, close enough’. Luckily, I could still escape into quantum chemistry XD
Rose by Any Other Name
I was super slow and careful and methodical in the lab… and nothing worked. Everyone else was slopping together their titrations and getting textbook results, and my slow and steady setup got no results at all. I ended up repeating the experiment three times, staying two hours after everyone else left, and still nothing.
I was in tears by the time the professor told me to call it quits for the day. I left and never came back. Dropped the class, in part because I was utterly humiliated at breaking down over a fucking titration.
Kimi
I was always clumsy too, and having my lab coat dangle so far at my wrists (I had thin wrists) meant that I would always catch it on stuff and knock it over. They never scheduled enough time for labs anyway (tended to always go overtime) and having to come in at least 2 days later to spend at least 2 hours testing the purity of the compound in unscheduled lab time was ridiculous.
Ryan
Spent 4 years as an ambulance volunteer/EMT. Got the funny anecdotes and the recurring nightmares all without a single GSW or assault victim. Sign me up for the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
Paradox
I’ve worked in nursing homes before, predominately in memory care
The emotional stress almost killed me
Hof1991
Bless anyone who works memory care. The local staff were so good with my m-i-l. But it breaks your heart to watch people slowly die.
That must have been hard choice to face, but was probably the right one. Sadly, veterinarian’s have one of the highest rates of depression in suicide of any profession. Given the compassionate nature of people drawn to that work followed by what they have to deal with and do every day, it seems like a nightmare and dream at once.
Chupi
A big contributing factor to that is also, to be blunt, a lot of pet owners. While I’d like to think they’re a minority, there’s no shortage of people who view their animals as just replaceable. Not their own living beings, more like a car. So once the cost of care approaches the cost of a shiny new cat, why keep this one?
Then there are the owners who just refuse to make changes. They’re set in old care methods their family always did, that today is pretty much universally known to be a bad idea. Like outdoor cats (Not to start the argument that always happens when this is brought up, please.) or using a lot of popular and cheap brands of kibble foods that have become increasingly less nutritious over the years from poor regulation. Or “I’m a vegan, and this vegan cat food is legally sold in stores, so it must be perfectly fine! There must be some other reason these kittens have all gone blind!”
It really takes a toll, man.
Wizard
I’ve never quite understood how a vegan could ethically justify owning a pet in the first place. And if they absolutely have to, why get a cat, an obligate carnivore? Geez, if you’re not comfortable feeding your pet meat, then get a bird or a rabbit or something that can thrive on an all-plant diet.
Daibhid C
I’m a vegetarian, but I wouldn’t force this on other humans, let alone my cat. I resolve this ethical dilemma by mostly not thinking about it.
Daibhid C
Birds are omnivorous. The wild-bird food I use included mealworms, something else I try not to think about.
LiamKav
“I resolve this ethical dilemma by mostly not thinking about it.”
Ahh, the way I resolve 90% of my ethical dilemmas!
Clif
It’s extraordinary effective. Too bad we can’t tell Dorothy.
Wizard
Vegetarian and vegan are significantly different things. Vegans strive to avoid any and all animal-derived products. Given that, I find it a little hard to justify keeping an animal for companionship. Especially since domesticated animals are essentially human artifacts, created through generations of selective breeding, much of that selection not in the animals’ own best interest.
Taffy
Humans aren’t obligate carnivores, are we? If we know cats are, then there’s no moral dilemma in the first place. Forcing a cat to also be vegetarian is animal abuse and anyone who does it deserves to also die of malnutrition.
Violet
Whether or not you’re an obligate carnivore as a human seems to actually depend somewhat on your environment and your health conditions? The most common food allergies in humans are to plant-based proteins, and if you are afflicted with that it may not be safe to eat an all-plant diet. Similarly, in latitudes far enough away from the equator it may be difficult or impossible to get enough vitamin D from sunlight, as I recently learned when my doctor discovered that my frequent violent muscle spasms were due to critically low vitamin D levels despite my best efforts. There are effectively 0 plant-based sources of vitamin D (outside of mushrooms if you deliberately leave them out in sufficient sunlight for many hours before consuming them which is unreasonable for most people). Any vitamin D supplements are going to be derived from animals.
All-plant diets can be extremely dangerous to humans given the right combination of not-uncommon circumstances. Which is extremely distressing to me, as I can’t go without meat or at least animal products and yet I have a high level of empathy towards animals (thanks in part to my autism) (but then I also have developed a similar level of empathy towards plants which is woof).
The way I’ve coped with this dilemma is just acknowledging that… all creatures need to eat to survive. We all deserve life. And it is inevitable that we will become food when we die (for the worms and other decomposers, unless we get cremated), which is something I have made peace with and find oddly exciting – to contribute to the cycle of life in such a way. What matters is treating all living creatures with respect during the time they live and only consuming in reasonable moderation.
thejeff
No humans are obligate carnivores in anything like the sense that cats are. We’re omnivores. Mostly we can subsist on strictly vegetarian diets if we’re careful, but eating only meat would also be bad for us, unlike for cats.
Kimi
Some of it is also a poor relationship between vets and owners. You sometimes get vets that insist on expensive care when a cheap solution is possible in rural and poor areas (eg. amputation of parts of a cat’s tail vs expensive and time consuming reconstruction). My sister has a cat that recently had some kidney issues (infection with high toxins, possibly crystal related) and the first vet she went to see was insistent that it was diabetes and that he would die within 24hrs if he didn’t get expensive care. She asked another vet (sending over the bloodwork) and she recommended giving him a lot of intravenous fluids to flush his system. That is what my sister did (home health care nurse, so she could do it herself with the equipment) and he is perfectly fine with no diabetes now. She might have put him down if she had gone by what the first vet said (due to the claim of kidney failure from diabetes) even though he had really turned a corner in the half a day he was there getting fluids. Paying for the expensive meds on the off chance he might survive on top of paying for the vet visit (and it wasn’t even the actual problem) vs food and gas for her family didn’t leave her much of a choice. Even for human medical services, without free medical care, you have to know your audience and what they can afford. It isn’t unusual for vets or doctors to ignore trying the cheap possible solution first, instead aiming to do expensive tests or medications that are outside of the person’s budget.
My aunt was a vet tech before she retired so I was able to shadow her at work when I was young, and thus eliminated veterinary miscellany as a potential career path fairly early on. I love animals but I’m not exactly into animal dentistry.
One of the techs let me take home a cat knuckle from a declawing procedure in a sample bottle, though. That was a big hit at show and tell.
Needfuldoer
Declawing is a horrible practice.
Did you ever come across those hen’s teeth everyone always talks about?
jflb96
You can make hens grow teeth, but you have to edit their DNA to remove the bits that say ‘don’t grow teeth’
Clif
Gene editing is remarkably accessible and unregulated (basically as long as you’re small scale and not mucking about with pathogens or humans, nobody cares). Between that and Machine Learning this is a golden age for being a mad scientist.
Joy
Declawing is animal abuse… I agree with you there.
BBCC
Needs to be done sometimes. I had a cat who’s front claws were infected and we were told it was lose the claws or lose the paw. The other side was done to maintain his balance, but his back claws were fine and were untouched. So while it shouldn’t be done just because, there are sometimes medical reasons to declaw a cat.
zee
I mean that’s basically an amputation at that point
BBCC
Pretty much. Just like amputation, you shouldn’t do it just because furniture or just because but they can be medically necessary.
Wizard
True, but even with a medically necessary amputation, removing as little tissue as possible seems like a good idea to me.
Needfuldoer
Yeah, that’s fine because it’s a medical necessity.
Declawing a cat is like chopping all your fingers and toes off at the last knuckle. It’s something you better have a damn good reason for, and “so it won’t scratch the furniture” isn’t one.
morleuca
My grandmother was the first woman allowed into the veterinary program at Cornell. She would be horrified by all the animal cruelty based in ignorance that goes on today, not to mention the over breeding
Weirdly enough, I had the opposite reaction. I LOVED being around sick or injured things as a kid, because it was this fascinating little glimpse into how the body worked. Unfortunately this does not lead to good bedside manner, so I’m also not a doctor. I became a clinical researcher instead.
Needfuldoer
“Take it apart and see how it works” is a perfectly fine mindset to have, when you’re talking about mechanical contrivances.
I don’t have the stomach for surgery, so I perform my perturbed science experiments on machines. At least an engine’s family can’t sue you for malpractice if you put something back in the wrong way around!
Rhah
This is exactly why I’m an engineer. Lots of the sciencey stuff and none of the moral conundrums!
I had a similar realization. My dream growing up was to be a psych professor, I always knew I wanted to study psychology but I don’t have the patience to be a clinician nor the discipline for tedium to be a researcher (taking notes and doing paperwork? Ick!), but I’ve always been drawn to performance and lecturing, I had plenty of classmates who told me I explained things better than the teachers sometimes since I always had a knack for efficiently isolating what specifically isn’t being understood and how to rephrase it for clarity.
So, when I got to college I studied psychology and was a few years into my degree (although not as many credits as my years should have been, I was five years into a four year degree and still had the credits of a Junior, college is a scam) when I learned that most professors only have a couple classes a week and the rest of the time is office hours, paperwork, and research (some schools won’t have as much priority placed on research, but it’s still not enough time actually professing for my taste). I briefly considered going into k-12 teaching, but with my anger issues I wouldn’t last long before I blew up and cussed out a kid (which I understand is a no-no). I briefly intended to change my major to game design planning to publish 3rd party supplements for TTRPGs, but the game design 1 professor was a genuinely terrible teacher who’s horrible practices caused me to lose my temper publicly for the first time since high school and thus I burned all my bridges with the department (seriously, who TF thinks subjecting 101-level students to “the realities of the field” irrespective of their actual plans for employment IN the field is even remotely a good idea, teach the GD fundamentals FIRST, idiot). So I decided to finish out my psych degree while working part time, got a job doing delivery, cut my courses to half time, then had a class that was assigning 8-hours worth of homework every day and had to choose between dropping out and quitting my job. Considering I really liked my job, it paid better than anything I could get with my degree in this terrible hellscape of a job market, and I wasn’t enthused by the idea of piling on more and more debt for the foreseeable future until I could finally finish my degree (I’d probably still be a student now, half a decade later, if I’d made that call), I chose to drop out and start working full time.
The company has been getting progressively worse and worse over time, but I’m not worried about losing my employment any time soon and I’m still paid better than any other job I could get while still having enough free time and money to indulge my hobbies, so it’s safe to say I made the right call. My only regret is that I went to college at all. Granted I doubt I would have been able to handle going directly into employment after high school, emotionally, and the company I work for now didn’t open until a few years after I graduated, but I do wish I had found a way to not put myself in so much debt for a degree that I didn’t finish and would have been worthless even if I had.
I had no idea what I wanted to do. Went into engineering finally because I had the grades for it, I was accepted at a good uni for it, and I didn’t get accepted for any of the architectural programs I applied for (and I only applied for those at the suggestion of my mom because I was good at math and art). Two years in, I HATED it. I was bored; I wasn’t enjoying myself at all; I was okay at it to pull mostly B’s but not good enough to be considered a “good engineer”. Tried to drop it, but my mom guilted me into completing the degree because sunk-cost fallacy. Got a job (eventually), hated it. Did it for 7 years because what else could I do – I couldn’t afford to go back to school for what I finally figured out I wanted, which was psychology. I’ve made peace now, because I discovered there were more aspects to engineering than just design, and I found a position as a contract administrator that actually suited me better. Now I’m a project manager for construction projects, and in a much happier place, mentally. If I could do it all over again, though, knowing what I know now, I probably would’ve gone into psych.
TLDR, don’t let your parents dictate your studies, no matter how much they pressure you.
She’s also worried about being Jack the Ripper (ie, psychosis).
If she is bipolar, it’s probably bipolar type 2 which is more depressive episodes than mania. And the mania could potentially go unnoticed depending on severity.
I’m not saying she is for sure bipolar; just that; as someone who is bipolar she comes across that way to me.
I feel like I should say something, but don’t really know what to say. However, I know you like anime and music so here is a song by an Argentinian band that sings in English and has a Japanese aesthetic. It’s not their best work, but it seems perhaps tangentially related to what you are talking about (maybe). I hope you are doing well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID-g6__6X_w&list=RDLIBTaYT4-I0&index=3
For true course correction, I like to get the boundaries to pass each other, so that my spectrum has “too low” on one end, “too high” on the other, and in the middle is “simultaneously too high and too low”.
i’m sure there’s techniques to calm down, but honestly, other than being risky and like gambling or so at a casino while youre hyped up/buzzed, i can’t rly haven’t seen many cases where ppl make a ‘bad’ decision while being euphoric (tho even when i’m excited/amped up i still kinda have my ‘guard up’ /don’t rly make ‘spontaneous’ /spure of the moment decisions)
I guess that’s where the “too” comes in. You find a high or low that’s stable enough for you. I still get depressed on my antidepressants but I’m stable enough to not spiral and just handle it
143 thoughts on “Temporary”
Ana Chronistic
Porque no los dos?
Ana Chronistic
maybe the best realisation I had as a kid was I did NOT want to be a veterinarian bc, sure I’d be around animals, but around HURT or SICK animals, ehhhhhhh
Kimi
Why I never wanted to go into the medical field (animals or people) and preferred plants.
Doctor_Who
I considered medicine at one point. I have an aunt who works in anesthesia and she let me shadow her for a day. I got to be in the room when a man got open heart surgery.
Fascinating as hell, but I decided it was not for me. Even though I did nothing but stand there out of the way I was stressed out to the extreme. No way could I ever keep my cool doing a job like that.
Rose by Any Other Name
When I was younger, I wanted to be a research doctor – no working with patients, just lab work doing the science to figure things out to further medical science.
And then I took college chemistry and discovered that me and laboratories do not mix.
Switched over to a Writing Major and never looked back.
Masumi
I used to think organic chemistry is the coolest thing ever. Then I actually studied chemistry and found that I, as well, do NOT mix with labs. I’m like, ridiculously clumsy. And hate when stuff stops making sense and everyone is like ‘eh, close enough’. Luckily, I could still escape into quantum chemistry XD
Rose by Any Other Name
I was super slow and careful and methodical in the lab… and nothing worked. Everyone else was slopping together their titrations and getting textbook results, and my slow and steady setup got no results at all. I ended up repeating the experiment three times, staying two hours after everyone else left, and still nothing.
I was in tears by the time the professor told me to call it quits for the day. I left and never came back. Dropped the class, in part because I was utterly humiliated at breaking down over a fucking titration.
Kimi
I was always clumsy too, and having my lab coat dangle so far at my wrists (I had thin wrists) meant that I would always catch it on stuff and knock it over. They never scheduled enough time for labs anyway (tended to always go overtime) and having to come in at least 2 days later to spend at least 2 hours testing the purity of the compound in unscheduled lab time was ridiculous.
Ryan
Spent 4 years as an ambulance volunteer/EMT. Got the funny anecdotes and the recurring nightmares all without a single GSW or assault victim. Sign me up for the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
Paradox
I’ve worked in nursing homes before, predominately in memory care
The emotional stress almost killed me
Hof1991
Bless anyone who works memory care. The local staff were so good with my m-i-l. But it breaks your heart to watch people slowly die.
True Survivor
That must have been hard choice to face, but was probably the right one. Sadly, veterinarian’s have one of the highest rates of depression in suicide of any profession. Given the compassionate nature of people drawn to that work followed by what they have to deal with and do every day, it seems like a nightmare and dream at once.
Chupi
A big contributing factor to that is also, to be blunt, a lot of pet owners. While I’d like to think they’re a minority, there’s no shortage of people who view their animals as just replaceable. Not their own living beings, more like a car. So once the cost of care approaches the cost of a shiny new cat, why keep this one?
Then there are the owners who just refuse to make changes. They’re set in old care methods their family always did, that today is pretty much universally known to be a bad idea. Like outdoor cats (Not to start the argument that always happens when this is brought up, please.) or using a lot of popular and cheap brands of kibble foods that have become increasingly less nutritious over the years from poor regulation. Or “I’m a vegan, and this vegan cat food is legally sold in stores, so it must be perfectly fine! There must be some other reason these kittens have all gone blind!”
It really takes a toll, man.
Wizard
I’ve never quite understood how a vegan could ethically justify owning a pet in the first place. And if they absolutely have to, why get a cat, an obligate carnivore? Geez, if you’re not comfortable feeding your pet meat, then get a bird or a rabbit or something that can thrive on an all-plant diet.
Daibhid C
I’m a vegetarian, but I wouldn’t force this on other humans, let alone my cat. I resolve this ethical dilemma by mostly not thinking about it.
Daibhid C
Birds are omnivorous. The wild-bird food I use included mealworms, something else I try not to think about.
LiamKav
“I resolve this ethical dilemma by mostly not thinking about it.”
Ahh, the way I resolve 90% of my ethical dilemmas!
Clif
It’s extraordinary effective. Too bad we can’t tell Dorothy.
Wizard
Vegetarian and vegan are significantly different things. Vegans strive to avoid any and all animal-derived products. Given that, I find it a little hard to justify keeping an animal for companionship. Especially since domesticated animals are essentially human artifacts, created through generations of selective breeding, much of that selection not in the animals’ own best interest.
Taffy
Humans aren’t obligate carnivores, are we? If we know cats are, then there’s no moral dilemma in the first place. Forcing a cat to also be vegetarian is animal abuse and anyone who does it deserves to also die of malnutrition.
Violet
Whether or not you’re an obligate carnivore as a human seems to actually depend somewhat on your environment and your health conditions? The most common food allergies in humans are to plant-based proteins, and if you are afflicted with that it may not be safe to eat an all-plant diet. Similarly, in latitudes far enough away from the equator it may be difficult or impossible to get enough vitamin D from sunlight, as I recently learned when my doctor discovered that my frequent violent muscle spasms were due to critically low vitamin D levels despite my best efforts. There are effectively 0 plant-based sources of vitamin D (outside of mushrooms if you deliberately leave them out in sufficient sunlight for many hours before consuming them which is unreasonable for most people). Any vitamin D supplements are going to be derived from animals.
All-plant diets can be extremely dangerous to humans given the right combination of not-uncommon circumstances. Which is extremely distressing to me, as I can’t go without meat or at least animal products and yet I have a high level of empathy towards animals (thanks in part to my autism) (but then I also have developed a similar level of empathy towards plants which is woof).
The way I’ve coped with this dilemma is just acknowledging that… all creatures need to eat to survive. We all deserve life. And it is inevitable that we will become food when we die (for the worms and other decomposers, unless we get cremated), which is something I have made peace with and find oddly exciting – to contribute to the cycle of life in such a way. What matters is treating all living creatures with respect during the time they live and only consuming in reasonable moderation.
thejeff
No humans are obligate carnivores in anything like the sense that cats are. We’re omnivores. Mostly we can subsist on strictly vegetarian diets if we’re careful, but eating only meat would also be bad for us, unlike for cats.
Kimi
Some of it is also a poor relationship between vets and owners. You sometimes get vets that insist on expensive care when a cheap solution is possible in rural and poor areas (eg. amputation of parts of a cat’s tail vs expensive and time consuming reconstruction). My sister has a cat that recently had some kidney issues (infection with high toxins, possibly crystal related) and the first vet she went to see was insistent that it was diabetes and that he would die within 24hrs if he didn’t get expensive care. She asked another vet (sending over the bloodwork) and she recommended giving him a lot of intravenous fluids to flush his system. That is what my sister did (home health care nurse, so she could do it herself with the equipment) and he is perfectly fine with no diabetes now. She might have put him down if she had gone by what the first vet said (due to the claim of kidney failure from diabetes) even though he had really turned a corner in the half a day he was there getting fluids. Paying for the expensive meds on the off chance he might survive on top of paying for the vet visit (and it wasn’t even the actual problem) vs food and gas for her family didn’t leave her much of a choice. Even for human medical services, without free medical care, you have to know your audience and what they can afford. It isn’t unusual for vets or doctors to ignore trying the cheap possible solution first, instead aiming to do expensive tests or medications that are outside of the person’s budget.
Neeks
My aunt was a vet tech before she retired so I was able to shadow her at work when I was young, and thus eliminated veterinary miscellany as a potential career path fairly early on. I love animals but I’m not exactly into animal dentistry.
One of the techs let me take home a cat knuckle from a declawing procedure in a sample bottle, though. That was a big hit at show and tell.
Needfuldoer
Declawing is a horrible practice.
Did you ever come across those hen’s teeth everyone always talks about?
jflb96
You can make hens grow teeth, but you have to edit their DNA to remove the bits that say ‘don’t grow teeth’
Clif
Gene editing is remarkably accessible and unregulated (basically as long as you’re small scale and not mucking about with pathogens or humans, nobody cares). Between that and Machine Learning this is a golden age for being a mad scientist.
Joy
Declawing is animal abuse… I agree with you there.
BBCC
Needs to be done sometimes. I had a cat who’s front claws were infected and we were told it was lose the claws or lose the paw. The other side was done to maintain his balance, but his back claws were fine and were untouched. So while it shouldn’t be done just because, there are sometimes medical reasons to declaw a cat.
zee
I mean that’s basically an amputation at that point
BBCC
Pretty much. Just like amputation, you shouldn’t do it just because furniture or just because but they can be medically necessary.
Wizard
True, but even with a medically necessary amputation, removing as little tissue as possible seems like a good idea to me.
Needfuldoer
Yeah, that’s fine because it’s a medical necessity.
Declawing a cat is like chopping all your fingers and toes off at the last knuckle. It’s something you better have a damn good reason for, and “so it won’t scratch the furniture” isn’t one.
morleuca
My grandmother was the first woman allowed into the veterinary program at Cornell. She would be horrified by all the animal cruelty based in ignorance that goes on today, not to mention the over breeding
Ari
Weirdly enough, I had the opposite reaction. I LOVED being around sick or injured things as a kid, because it was this fascinating little glimpse into how the body worked. Unfortunately this does not lead to good bedside manner, so I’m also not a doctor. I became a clinical researcher instead.
Needfuldoer
“Take it apart and see how it works” is a perfectly fine mindset to have, when you’re talking about mechanical contrivances.
I don’t have the stomach for surgery, so I perform my perturbed science experiments on machines. At least an engine’s family can’t sue you for malpractice if you put something back in the wrong way around!
Rhah
This is exactly why I’m an engineer. Lots of the sciencey stuff and none of the moral conundrums!
Psychie
I had a similar realization. My dream growing up was to be a psych professor, I always knew I wanted to study psychology but I don’t have the patience to be a clinician nor the discipline for tedium to be a researcher (taking notes and doing paperwork? Ick!), but I’ve always been drawn to performance and lecturing, I had plenty of classmates who told me I explained things better than the teachers sometimes since I always had a knack for efficiently isolating what specifically isn’t being understood and how to rephrase it for clarity.
So, when I got to college I studied psychology and was a few years into my degree (although not as many credits as my years should have been, I was five years into a four year degree and still had the credits of a Junior, college is a scam) when I learned that most professors only have a couple classes a week and the rest of the time is office hours, paperwork, and research (some schools won’t have as much priority placed on research, but it’s still not enough time actually professing for my taste). I briefly considered going into k-12 teaching, but with my anger issues I wouldn’t last long before I blew up and cussed out a kid (which I understand is a no-no). I briefly intended to change my major to game design planning to publish 3rd party supplements for TTRPGs, but the game design 1 professor was a genuinely terrible teacher who’s horrible practices caused me to lose my temper publicly for the first time since high school and thus I burned all my bridges with the department (seriously, who TF thinks subjecting 101-level students to “the realities of the field” irrespective of their actual plans for employment IN the field is even remotely a good idea, teach the GD fundamentals FIRST, idiot). So I decided to finish out my psych degree while working part time, got a job doing delivery, cut my courses to half time, then had a class that was assigning 8-hours worth of homework every day and had to choose between dropping out and quitting my job. Considering I really liked my job, it paid better than anything I could get with my degree in this terrible hellscape of a job market, and I wasn’t enthused by the idea of piling on more and more debt for the foreseeable future until I could finally finish my degree (I’d probably still be a student now, half a decade later, if I’d made that call), I chose to drop out and start working full time.
The company has been getting progressively worse and worse over time, but I’m not worried about losing my employment any time soon and I’m still paid better than any other job I could get while still having enough free time and money to indulge my hobbies, so it’s safe to say I made the right call. My only regret is that I went to college at all. Granted I doubt I would have been able to handle going directly into employment after high school, emotionally, and the company I work for now didn’t open until a few years after I graduated, but I do wish I had found a way to not put myself in so much debt for a degree that I didn’t finish and would have been worthless even if I had.
Felis Dee
I had no idea what I wanted to do. Went into engineering finally because I had the grades for it, I was accepted at a good uni for it, and I didn’t get accepted for any of the architectural programs I applied for (and I only applied for those at the suggestion of my mom because I was good at math and art). Two years in, I HATED it. I was bored; I wasn’t enjoying myself at all; I was okay at it to pull mostly B’s but not good enough to be considered a “good engineer”. Tried to drop it, but my mom guilted me into completing the degree because sunk-cost fallacy. Got a job (eventually), hated it. Did it for 7 years because what else could I do – I couldn’t afford to go back to school for what I finally figured out I wanted, which was psychology. I’ve made peace now, because I discovered there were more aspects to engineering than just design, and I found a position as a contract administrator that actually suited me better. Now I’m a project manager for construction projects, and in a much happier place, mentally. If I could do it all over again, though, knowing what I know now, I probably would’ve gone into psych.
TLDR, don’t let your parents dictate your studies, no matter how much they pressure you.
Doctor_Who
Dorothy: Thanks Ruth, that was very perceptive.
Ruth: If you ever tell anybody I’m capable of being good at this job then femurs etc.
Clif
Ruth manages to give good advice by talking about her own situation.
someone
Ruth’s problem is that she wants to know which is which just so that she can reliably set on the self-sabotage course.
DailyBrad
Damn good distinction to figure out.
Stephen Bierce
To Thine Own Self Be TRUE
Taffy
They can’t tell you what to do when you’ve gone guru.
Dana
Damn, this is very deliberately a mirror of their conversation on Halloween.
Bryy
………… oh.
Viktoria
Link, for those interested:
dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/advice/
Clif
Though the relevant quote is at https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/jack-2/
Clif
Specifically panel 4.
lyzzyrddwyzzyrdd
I think Ruth is bipolar.
Literally, not “oh, she seems so bipolar” the way people say it meaninglessly.
I think she’s actually bipolar; like me.
https://redd.it/11ygw7s
Joy
She’s only shown mania on antidepressants, though. That doesn’t make someone bipolar.
lyzzyrddwyzzyrdd
Anti-depressants can cause mania in many people with bipolar.
She’s also shown being very irritable, with that changing somewhat with medication.
Notice her specific use of the word mania and depression here:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/jack-2/
She’s also worried about being Jack the Ripper (ie, psychosis).
If she is bipolar, it’s probably bipolar type 2 which is more depressive episodes than mania. And the mania could potentially go unnoticed depending on severity.
I’m not saying she is for sure bipolar; just that; as someone who is bipolar she comes across that way to me.
Thag Simmons
That’s probably a good omen, right
True Survivor
Great catch. I love literary parallel.
HueSatLight
Dorothy breaks the door knob off her door in 5 days.
DailyBrad
Sierra wondering how the fuck she’s going to get a fresh change of clothes now.
Mark
Joyce getting wall-scaling lessons from Sal so she can enter through the window to get some more laundry to
drydo.RassilonTDavros
…fuck.
True Survivor
…yeah.
Kaiyalai
. . . Same.
The Wellerman
Not when too high or too low… For some of us NDs it can be very hard to get to that Goldilocks zone. ?
True Survivor
I feel like I should say something, but don’t really know what to say. However, I know you like anime and music so here is a song by an Argentinian band that sings in English and has a Japanese aesthetic. It’s not their best work, but it seems perhaps tangentially related to what you are talking about (maybe). I hope you are doing well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID-g6__6X_w&list=RDLIBTaYT4-I0&index=3
The Wellerman
I’m as well as I can be without Ritalin. Been making due, got lots of coding done. Also, thank you, I appreciate this. ?
Now to go walk in the rain… to a McDonalds.
Reltzik
For true course correction, I like to get the boundaries to pass each other, so that my spectrum has “too low” on one end, “too high” on the other, and in the middle is “simultaneously too high and too low”.
anon
i’m sure there’s techniques to calm down, but honestly, other than being risky and like gambling or so at a casino while youre hyped up/buzzed, i can’t rly haven’t seen many cases where ppl make a ‘bad’ decision while being euphoric (tho even when i’m excited/amped up i still kinda have my ‘guard up’ /don’t rly make ‘spontaneous’ /spure of the moment decisions)
lyzzyrddwyzzyrdd
I don’t personally identify as ND, but I’m bipolar and I am intimately familiar with this feeling
zee
I guess that’s where the “too” comes in. You find a high or low that’s stable enough for you. I still get depressed on my antidepressants but I’m stable enough to not spiral and just handle it
The Wellerman
Very affirming. Thanks. ?
Sirksome
She should just follow the Ruth method and find a well meaning patsy to damage control the mess after you do whatever.
LiterallyJustSomeGuy
Don’t mom me! I’m already like my own mom. I’m like two of my own moms! So I got them drunk.
C.T. Phipps
There’s been hints that Dorothy suffers depression.
newlland(Henryvolt)
I’ve heard that smart individuals who overwork themselves often do struggle with that.
JA