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Anyone else feel like you're meant for so much more? Being an outcast finally got me thinking, maybe I'm not meant to fit in. Maybe conventional life isn't the answer.

I understand the need for money but I don't want to sacrifice half of my life being somewhere I don't want to be just to get by.

That makes sense. Sort of like living life just for money is an incomplete life.

yes sir

my precious lil "parents" made me take the SAT in 7th grade. i got 1040. average for 12th graders was 1012.

my sister's 7th grade SAT score was lower than mine. and she is a medical doctor.

after high school, academic performance plummeted drastically. quite frankly, suspect clinical depression lowered IQ score. no method to verify that claim. but what difference does it make if it is right or wrong? it still is .

BA cognitive science, ucsd

not an ivy league school
not a STEM subject
not even a grad degree

(rolls eyes)

2.19 gpa. that's pretty low. even state schools have 2.5 gpa quota for application to grad programs. and that's just to apply. does not guarantee admission. other schools have higher gpa quotas.

got on academic probation a lot of times

took 6 years to graduate

first 4 years, it took to flunk out structural engineering

quite frankly, i feel academically stupid, ashamed, guilty, lazy, morally inferior



and feel neglected, negligible, and trivial

but whatever.

hitler is important. important does not necessarily mean good.

and how you define and measure importance is subjective and vague.

the licensed clinical social worker @ school had the nerve to tell me that i was "important".

to whom, myself?

a cockroach is important to itself. it does not follow the cockroach is important.

and if everything and everyone is "important", then nothing is important.

then the LCSW asked me if anyone is important to me.

answered, yes, my precious lil "dad".

but, if someone gives birth to more children, that does not raise someone's importance.

seriously



seriously i studied way too much. and way too hard. to sit on the sidewalk panhandling.

and the other thing. likewise i strongly imagine. fancy. suspect that if someone with a normal IQ score were to have wasted as much time studying as i did, then they could have gotten at least a Masters in Mechanical Engineering.

but whatever

You hit the nail on the head, shortfatbalduglyman. Nice name btw lol.
Everything is based on the perspective it's viewed from. Is the cockroach wrong to think it's important?

Just by reading your writing I can tell you're very intelligent. That doesn't equate to academic success though as you know. Hell, they thought Einstein was mentally challenged in grade school... perspective.

I've attempted college 5 times now and have no degree to show for it. But looking back on everything now makes me realize that everything lead me to where I am now. Nothing I was trying to do would have been a good fit, I wouldn't feel important because I wouldn't feel fulfilled.

You hit the nail on the head, shortfatbalduglyman. Nice name btw lol.
Everything is based on the perspective it's viewed from. Is the cockroach wrong to think it's important?

Just by reading your writing I can tell you're very intelligent. That doesn't equate to academic success though as you know. Hell, they thought Einstein was mentally challenged in grade school... perspective.

I've attempted college 5 times now and have no degree to show for it. But looking back on everything now makes me realize that everything lead me to where I am now. Nothing I was trying to do would have been a good fit, I wouldn't feel important because I wouldn't feel fulfilled.
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"Nice name btw ". thank you.

"Everything is based on the perspective it's viewed from." what gets on my nerves is when someone elevates his/her opinion to a fact. it also annoys me when someone calls himself/herself "people", "we", or "most people". that sounds like he/she wants to overpower me by outnumbering me. but there is only one of him/her and one of me.

likewise, the solar system contains a lot more convicted rapists, than Nobel Prize winners in Physics. it does not follow, however, that the activity with more participants is more morally justified.

so, what if "most people" do something? that don't make it any more justified, than if nobody does it.

"Is the cockroach wrong to think it's important?"
no the cockroach is correct to think it's important. b/c in order to lead a functional life, it has to act like it's important. if the cockroach acted like it was not important then it would not attend to its needs and desires in a sufficient method.

"Just by reading your writing I can tell you're very intelligent." okay, the neuropsychiatrist that diagnosed me with autism gave me an IQ test. the IQ score was not high. i am not "very intelligent". the IQ test score could have been misleading or wrong. (fine). but the correct IQ score, in any stretch of the imagination, ain't that high.

what gets on my nerves is how some precious lil "people" (like the licensed clinical social worker at school) had the nerve to tell me "i know you're smart." she acted like she was smart and important. big ego.

"That doesn't equate to academic success though as you know." IQ scores and academic success are correlated. but not as highly as someone would assume.

to be academically successful in some cases requires a high IQ score. (fine).

but the IQ test is just a test. someone could be good at taking IQ tests and not good at much else, not even school.

"I've attempted college 5 times now and have no degree to show for it." bill gates, mark zuckerberg, steve jobs ain't got no bachelors degrees and they were vocationally successful. likewise, plenty of precious lil "people" have advanced degrees and are not as financially productive. for example, a 58 year old told me he got a Masters in Math from uc riverside. then he was a tenured math instructor at community college. then 17 years at Oracle as a Software Engineer. then he told me that his whole division got eliminated. and he could not get a similar job for whatever reason. he ended up having to work at Trader Joes for 14 dollars an hour. (minimum wage is 12.25hour, in that city, in that year). he worked at trader joes stocking shelves for one year. then he got a job at Sylvan Learning Center. part time. 15 dollars an hour. precalculus tutor. a similar after school program invited me for a job interview as precalculus tutor. after i tried to review precalculus, i realized i could not do it anymore. not to say that i ever could. and i cancelled the job interview.

"I wouldn't feel important because I wouldn't feel fulfilled." do you have to feel "fulfilled" to be "important"? quite frankly, i would imagine, that being "important" meant that you served a vital functional/practical role. your actions were required and necessary for some great reason.

but, what is "important"? that's vague and subjective.

I've had a similar predicament that I'm still paying off to this day. I found out the hard way some years ago that university wasn't the right sort of learning approach for me. Right now I'm on the minimum wage as a technician at a computer shop, one of many jobs that's now going a bit "rust belt" due to changes in technology, and retraining is well out of my financial scope.

On-the-job training and other vocational approaches would suit me a whole lot better - not dissimilar to how the Germans and Scandinavians do it. But in the Anglosphere at least, it's far more convenient for companies to hire skilled migrants than to train up people with dated skills who need it most, and the recent political upheavals in USA & UK have exposed the rawness of the issue. More people are going to university, not to broaden their minds, but because there's often no other choice in the absence of a proper vocational policy.

I have some further reading on the issue, but as a new user I can't post URLs due to spam-proofing. I'll try and post them again below.

I'm still bound by anti-spam measures , so I'll just have to post the headlines and let Google do the rest.

* Inc.com: "As Trump Stifles Immigration, Expect Tech to Turn to Apprenticeships" by Salvador Rodriguez
* LSE US Centre: "The US’ failure to provide vocational training is a massive policy failure which supports Donald Trump" by Dennis Snower
* Financial Times: "To build a shared society, focus on technical skills education" by Miranda Green

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
- Albert Einstein.
I've had to get a grip on this one too. We are raised to believe that there is only one path in life - be a good child, do well in school, get good grades and have good friends, then finish secondary school and continue into university or college, graduate and enter into a successful job, get married at a proper age and have children with a suitable wife/husband, raise children and work a normal 9-5 job, play golf and barbecue on the weekends, before retirement and more golf or charity work as an older person, always ready to babysit as grandparents when our own children take up their place in the script right on cue.
But that's less people than society in general would like us to believe, and it seems, less autistics still.
I'm done thinking I'm defective because I can't rock a white picket fence, and I hope you are too. Maybe unconventional people are actually meant to live amazing, unconventional lives, and don't require "fitting in."
Maybe you're meant to stand out marvelously on your own in your own way.