Which did you find harder, uni or work?

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Work. Especially the getting hired part.

My financial aid appeal was approved, but like most things I am through the mental loops of reading the approval letter and forecasting into some bad time in the future where I lose it and have to apply all over again because of a loophole.

Sounds like me trying to apply to rent a house. I just found out they want my pay slips and bank statements for the last 30 days. I didn't know I had to keep them. Why didn't they tell me before? Is this one of those things I'm already supposed to know? Why did they tell me at exactly 5:00PM on a Friday so I have to wait three days before I can even try to do anything? Why didn't I just keep them in the first place?



Yes I agree with your idea that sometimes people do better with adversity. I wonder if I'd have a better job if I'd never been diagnosed or didn't live in a welfare state. Not that I'm complaining about being given free money that comes with no obligations but without that things could have turned out differently.

I probably would've gone for the first unskilled job I could find because in my mind work and college are like chalk and cheese.



So it you were working nearly 24 hours a day and without time to eat regular meals? Starving leads to even more exhaustion. If I did that I think I'd be having post-traumatic flashbacks too. More likely I'd be catatonic by now. I tip my hat to you because if I had to go through half of that stuff I would've been looking for the nearest ditch to lie down in.



I guess I shouldn't complain about those, they're merely boring, not horrible. I just got kind of jealous when one of my friends said his office parties were LAN parties.

I don't know. Maybe I'm pining for a career for all the wrong reasons. Maybe I won't be in a fit enough state to have one until I can stop hating myself for not having one before getting one. Or maybe I'd just get an insta-ego-boost if I got one. I don't know, I'm not a shrink.

time to eat regular meals? Hardly the biggest obstacle. After tuition, books & gas, I couldn't afford to eat on my minimum wage jobs.

Anyway, the point is, after 19 years of awkwardness, I fell into a line of work where I met many people like me. I was accepted, and even respected. That has given me more than I could ever describe.
I can only hope that everyone here finds that same acceptance and satisfaction.

Hmmm. Paying for gas to to drive to a minimum wage job in another town? If the cost of gas matched half your earnings that would be like working for half of minimum wage (less if add on the hours spent driving).

OK I'll stop turning you into a martyr. I'm just sort of struggling to overcome the paradox that the cause of my depression is having lived an easy life

But it could be worse right?

Gas was much cheaper then. Maybe only up to $1 a gallon by the time I finished?
Minimum wage was $5.15 at that time, I was earning between 5.50 and 6.25 in my jobs.

HA! I actually quit one of the jobs, because a new manager came in and decided I shouldn't be earning 6.25, when everyone older than me was making 5.15, so she reduced my pay to the minimum. Then she had the chutzpah to lecture me on being unprofessional when I didn't give her two weeks notice.

no worries, life turned me into a martyr, not you.

~shrugs~ Goes back to nature vs nurture, doesn't it? The age old question of whether we'd be different if we were brought up in different circumstances...

Always.

Yep....gas was down to about 85 cents a gallon in New Jersey circa 2001. We had some 99 cent places in NYC at that time as well.

I behold Daria, to my uttermost delight! Nature and Nurture together!

I see. I didn't take that into account because I wasn't up to driving age in those days. Also I live in Taxlandia, otherwise known as Australia. I could only afford to fill up three quarters yesterday. It was $1.60 a liter which would be $7.20 in gallons. There are two different taxes on our petrol and they compound

I'd be even madder if I had to pay income tax. We have high taxes thanks in part to the many welfare bums that live here including myself. Their shutting down the factories and it seems like the only part of the economy that's actually growing is mining. If it wasn't for mining our economy and government and society would've collapsed several years ago and The Road Warrior would've been a much more accurate prediction of the near future.

Ah yeah, I've heard some of those complaints from my Maid of Honor, Bill, who is an Aussie.
But my husband, originally from the UK, has had a few old colleagues emigrate to Australia, as it's cheaper than living in the UK, once taking other taxes and property values into account? He spoke of moving there himself at one point, and it's supposed to be pretty tough proving to the government that you work in a trade that is robust enough you can keep work and not end up on the dole.

Hmm, interesting on the economy. My friend there is an architect, but, he has recently traded off building design work to do software training, I guess that's a steadier gig for him.
Where I live, a lot of manufacturing jobs have been lost in recent years. It's crushed the average household incomes in the state. And, obviously, the building slowdown during our recession has caused people (like my husband) to leave the design and construction trades and do other things that don't pay as well.
IT and research science seems to be doing pretty well in our areas, low cost of living has been good for us as well.

Reason number two not to be an architect. Aside what you said about inneficient grunt work. Disregarding the total amount of work, I just hate doing tasks that seem pointlessly inefficient. That describes a lot of the stuff I do in my job. Although the hours are short and I have no objection to the number or hours, I don't like how Sisyphean most of the work they do is. They create useless tasks to keep us busy because they don't have many clients. The CEO noticed our department was in the red so he called for our manager to resign. She was effectively fired for incompetence. Then we had one of those lame office parties for her fairwell in which speeches where made about what an excellent manager she was and how sorry we are to see her go. Even though she was being fired for poor performance and putting off most of the clients by being "too old fashioned" (that's what the CEO called her). They even had the cheek to ask for money to buy her a watch, even though she gets paid more than me. I managed to weasel out of it somehow. All the senior staff seem so phoney. They never say what they mean and they contradict themselves all the time and yet they expect me to not get confused. If I had a more serious job I'd probably get even more of that sort of thing.

Getting back to reason number two, it doesn't surprise me much there's little work for architects here because they just don't much anymore. The subsidized housing commission used to build entire suburbs on a whim but nowadays they're selling them all and not building new ones. Very few houses are being built for private rental as well. This housing shortage seems to be pushing up the rent so they can charge high prices even on crappy old shacks. Last year I spent winter living in an overpriced 40s beach house that had originally been designed to be inhabited in summer only. I don't think I should do that again because I went on a diet over summer and after I lost 100 pounds I lost my former resistance to cold. I never felt cold at 300 pounds but I do at 200 pounds. Anyway, although very few houses or other buildings seem to be being built by the government or anyone else, most of the construction in my town lately has been on various bizarre transportation projects. Some of the road and railway projects seem a bit unnecessary but I guess it's good that they're trying to get our roads up to mid twentieths century standards.
/rant

Work is definetely easier if you study engineering. As a full-time employee, you have 130 hours of free time every week.

Definitely sounds about right about it becoming harder and less structured. I did just fine in the first year of my degree, but the second year was on a whole other level. It felt like I'd just done my first year of high school and then without any preparation I was thrown into the final year immediately afterwards. That's probably the best analogy I can think of. I was doing physics and at the start, the maths was difficult but bearable. Then I suddenly had no idea what was going on and a teacher who barely spoke English. For this particular class, I ended up getting 16% overall. I got my results yesterday and am almost certain I'll drop out myself right now if I can find a job. So yeah, in my first year I averaged 70% which is considered very good. Then my second year... well I already failed it once, now I've failed it again.


I can definitely see this being true in the workplace, and maybe some exams depending on the subject. With me though, even confidence wouldn't help since I didn't understand anything.


I didn't, really. In my first year I shared a house about a mile away with some other students who for whatever reason weren't in dorms. It was essentially the same experience that people had in dorms though. After that, I got my own little apartment which was much better for a hermit like me.


I can definitely relate to this in a certain way. I wouldn't have said I was the absolute best kid in high school, but I was definitely up there in the top few, no doubt about it. Until I got to university, I'd do really well in almost every class whether or not I even put much effort into it. I'm also very aware of the mental health problems I've had which really haven't helped me, and I've spoken to people about it but it doesn't feel like the sort of thing that 'talking therapy' will solve. Tbh even being on meds for 2 years changed nothing and I've said it felt like I was just being given placebos for how effective it was. Maybe my problem is that I'm not gullible enough to believe overly optimistic people. It always seems to be people who know nothing about your situation and are just saying whatever they think will make you feel better because they don't like seeing people upset. One thing that in hindsight I find pretty disgusting is the lack of information we were given in school about what university would actually be like. We were just told incessantly that if we're smart enough to be able to get accepted, we should definitely do that. We had no idea how different it would be from school, or even that there were legitimate alternatives to going to uni. I really wish we'd have been told about things like apprenticeships and vocational training.


I can't speak for your school and your experiences, but for me, it was massively worse. I guess I just wasn't used to having a class of 100 students where you never actually speak to the professor and he doesn't have the time to help everyone.


How old are you anyway? I'm 21, and I find it ridiculous that people expect us to know what we want to do with our lives at my age or younger. I really don't know how people get through college anyway, so maybe I'm just not made for it. I'm really not sure what you mean by 'contaminative bias'


Yes, but the thing is unless you're super rich, it won't last indefinitely. I'm kinda the opposite I guess with this - even when I do have money, I'm scared of the inevitable times where I will not have money. :/


Anyway, sorry I didn't check back on this thread sooner. You're more than welcome to message me and talk about this.

I find that pretty funny, too... at age 17 or 18 we're supposed to pick a career track and find the education for it. Heck, I didn't even find out the difference between a bachelor's degree and an associate's degree and a certificate program until I was about 19... yes, two years into college. ~facepalm~

Ah, motivation... dealing with adjusting to that myself.
Since 1998 (age 18), I've always worked multiple jobs, because I had no choice if I wanted to take care of myself... and I kinda had to, as no one else was going to.
So, I finished college in December of 2011.
I spent all of 2012 and the first half of 2013 applying for every job I was even remotely qualified for (I was soooo burnt out in my last job)... so, since I started here last fall, my brain has been a bit overwhelmed with all of the new stuff and I cut my freelance work down to almost nil.
So, I've been feeling stressed about not pulling in as much income as I did last year... even though my husband got an increase in work this year that makes up for it.
I just feel like I'm slacking.
I've never worked this little before and I feel like I'm tempting fate or slacking off.

But, then I realize that it's totally mental and plenty of people only work one job, and I can be just like them.
I'm working on it.

You're doing great, Miss Dorkness! Truly you are!

Thanks. By all outward measures I certainly am.
Inside, I still feel like a scared little kid who never fit in, or, as they say in the women in technology talks I've been to "imposter syndrome"... like someone's going to suddenly discover that I don't belong and make me leave.

Bit silly when I say it aloud, though.

No worries.

I'm 26 and dreading every birthday.

I meant confirmation bias. The idea that people will find evidence that supports ideas they already have instead of neutrally gathering evidence in order to got an objective conclusion.

Close enough. I didn't even move out of home 'till I was 25 and that only lasted six months, not because I was unable to be independent... more like it wasn't independent enough. I had some conflicts with my house mate and the lease was in his name. That's the last time I'll move in with someone I've never met before. I guess I'm a part of the boomerang generation. A little apartment? Great minds think alike. For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to get my hands on this granny flat I spotted a few streets away.

As for campus for a while I had this idea that I was missing out on some amazing social scene but that may've been exagerated in my mind. After all people are there to study and it takes me a while to intergrate into groups anyway (like most aspies).

Sounds tricky. Not even being able to ask for clarification. Also sounds completely unlike the community college I went to which had only small classrooms, not lecture halls.

I didn't mean to give the impression that I was living off savings or independently wealthy. What I meant was that I receive a rather generous pension from the state and my razor thin living costs (except for running a car) leave me with a decent level of disposable income.

Yes there is a chance they could cancel my pension since the new prime minister seems to be extremely conservative but at the moment he seems to be more concerned with crippling the unemployment benefit, not the disability pension. He's not very popular so I don't think he'll get reelected anyway.

Anyway, I just want to clarrify that I'm not refusing to work. I did a lot that in the past but those days are over for me. I had years of doing nothing followed by years of doing a job that was insultingly easy. I'm definitely going to resign from that and I'm definitely going to to try to get another job.

So I'm no longer struggling with the question of should I work at all or should I keep my current job. What I'm struggling with is should I get a new job which is unskilled and less than 30 hours per week (the pension stops if I work more than 30 hours in a week) or should I spend a few years studying (the pension doesn't stop due to study so there's no need for me to work my way through college) and then get a professional job.

I mean, getting a part time unskilled job seems a lot safer in my mind. Partly because it won't dominate my life and partly because I can start trying to get one straight away. I don't like taking risks but long term risks are the worse for me because I don't even get to see if the risk paid off for a few years. At least with this scheme if it works I'll know it worked straight away. Also I'd be getting decent money from little work. I mean, $1,000 a fortnight plus wages from a part time job and both of them free from income tax (other people in Australia pay relatively high income tax thanks in part to sods like me).

So that's one choice. The other choice is as I said is going to uni and then getting a more professional job. This could take longer to pay dividends. I'd have a bit less money for next few years since I probably wouldn't be working I'd be living on the pension alone and have to pay uni related expenses (not tuition, that can be on loan). I'd be slightly worse off financially in the short term but as MissDorkness will attest other students have had it a lot rougher than that.

Now you paint a grim picture of uni, not that I doubt you're telling the truth. It could be like that for me. A few years ago I was completely against going to uni but after I talked to a few uni students I thought maybe it wouldn't be quite so bad but... the thing I couldn't deal with was the idea that if I got a degree, the resultant job would be far harder than uni itself. The hours could be longer but... like you were saying about how it's harder to study without any help from the professor, well, it's sort of like that with jobs. With the lower level jobs you have supervisors or managers. You can ask them questions and they'll tell you if you're doing something wrong. In the higher level jobs you have to sit down at your desk and figure out how to most productively spend the day by yourself without any prompting at all (this is according to one of my career councillors). Maybe I could do that I was very familiar with the job but even than I have a habit of focussing on one task at a time. My organisational skills are poor even for tasks I'm familiar with (hence my single tasking).

So if I could get by with an easier job than why would I want to get a pro job? Well a few years ago I did absolutely nothing and now I'm ashamed of that but somehow it feels like getting an unskilled part time job is nearly as shameful as doing nothing or that such jobs are only meant for teenagers to do while they study not for 26 years olds to do while not studying. And soon I'll be 30, then 40.

I've asked a lot of people in meatspace as well and the funny thing is I get a different response depending on how I frame the question. If I ask if I should go to uni and get a pro job people always say yes but if I ask if it's shameful to have a working class job people always say no. I'm not sure if I can consider that to be useful advice if the answer varies depending on how I frame the question because it seems to much like an experiment without proper controls or a survey with leading questions.

Yeah and I guess I shouldn't be so hard on myself for not having a complete plan the moment I graduated from high school (actually I did have a complete plan it just wasn't a very good one). I'm sure if I went to uni I wouldn't be the only undergrad there who's more than 18 years old.

And maybe even at 26 I shouldn't blame myself for being indecisive or feel like I must start a degree right away because it's ?now or never?. I dropped out of college when I was 20 and I think I've changed a great deal since then like anyone would between 20 and 26 so bearing that in mind, I probably won't see things the same way when I'm 32 so maybe I don't have to plan out my whole life right at the moment.

Yeah, no need to feel guilty for working only one full time job. Remember at the moment my job is eight hours a week

Still I can sort of understand stressing about not working enough because I've been doing the same thing lately except my version of ?not working enough? is about an order of magnitude lower than yours. As you said many would consider one full time job to be a perfectly acceptable amount of work.

Trying to hoard work when you don't need to due to events in your past reminds me of famine victims who continue hoarding food even after they've regained a stable food supply. I think you've earned the right to an easier life.

Wasn't that what you were trying to get in the first place? I mean you were already able to support yourself before you got a degree so I figure that means you had the goal of supporting yourself more easily after you got a degree.

Any since you're no longer moonlighting there's this new thing you might want to check out called free time
But seriously not working during every waking moment does not make you a slacker. I should know because I'm an expert slacker.

Imposter syndrome? When in a low mood (though my mood improved as I wrote this post) I feel more like an imposter not at work but at life. Like a basement dwelling manchild (if only my Mum's house had a basement than I could complete the stereotype )

It's statistically likely that some of your coworkers have imposter syndrome. It harkens back to that age old question that everyone seems to ask between about 20 and 40 ?when will I start feeling like an adult? (that could be a good question for a thread sometime).