Keeping up Appearances

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My motivation is not to get sex. While I've really enjoyed spending time with my girlfriends, my original motivation wasn't even to get a girlfriend. Getting a girlfriend started as a means to an end so people wouldn't tease me for being the dateless wonder. Before that I was happily single.

The original plan was to get a job so I can impress girls so I can get a girl so I can impress other guys with my girl. If you think that sounds shallow you're right. That's why I feel a little conflicted.

I see what you mean.

The way I look at it, it's two sides of the same coin. We might just want sex to "impress our friends/other dudes", but we still want sex nonetheless.

To be completely honest, while I like sex, what I enjoy more than anything is just cuddling on a lazy sunday and watching netflix. But I still think our reproductive drive is the foundation, even for people who say "I don't care about sex, I just want companionship".

Not that I don't enjoy sex. My previous girlfriend was bordering on nymphomanic. It put me off sex for a little while. I needed to take a break from sex to recover.

I still can't divorce myself from the desire to impress other dudes. When Ting Li completes her diet she'll be smokin' hot and having friends or complete strangers see me with her will feel like the best thing that ever happened to me.

I don't really agree with bettering yourself for someone else unless they make the effort to do the same.

Better yourself for yourself.

I wasn't happy with having mental illness, neurological problems and no life and career, so I decided I at least wanted something going for me.

I work as hard as I do to make up for my short comings, not for other people, but for myself. For me, low self esteem stemmed from not being anybody or achieving anything, plus being on the bottom rung to start with due to health issues. Having no traits that make me feel of any value would spiral me into suicide. I can't let that happen. That's why I try so hard. I don't want to be that person I think is a loser. Battling with thoughts of self worth is bad enough.

It's up to me to fix my problems. So that's what I am trying to do. Friends come with fixing your problems. You don't have to try, they come. People want to know you when they realise you try extremely hard and want to make something of your life, and look at things in a positive way.

University is great in theory, but having a steady job that you climb the ladder in is much more valuable.
My biggest regret is not getting into the industry sooner.

Yeah, I do it for my self esteem too except for me I need other people to see me bettering myself, including family, friends, and complete strangers.

True.

Which industry?

The workforce in general. University age kids are really, unless they’re very lucky, unsure of what they want too.

Ideally, I would have liked to have gotten into a career when I was 21, after I finished uni rather than farting around in minimum age jobs until I was in my late 20s. A career has helped me grow up a lot.

Behind every successful man...

@hale_bopp "University is great in theory, but having a steady job that you climb the ladder in is much more valuable. "

That's a bit silly generalization, it largely depends on what you want to do.

You're not gonna get hired as a medical doctor without going to university.

There's alot of people who spend years getting useless degrees, but that's their own fault.

Some countries actually give stipends to students, encouraging them to become professional students. Then one day, when they genuinely need to support themselves, they find out that all the jobs for which they might conceivably qualify have been grabbed by immigrants. Not good for the political future of said countries.

In the US of course, we have the opposite problem — high tuition. But another problem is people going to college because it's expected, then finding they owe a great deal of money for something from which they got nothing more lasting than they would have from a round-the-world cruise. While the country can't find enough carpenters and plumbers to do the needed work in Houston, and will probably have to import same from Mexico.

Elite institutions like Harvard have large endowments so that they don't need to charge tuition.
Guess what? Harvard even provides travel money to students of low income families so they aren't isolated from home. Pretty much a full scholarship to those coming from families making less than 65k per year.

https://college.harvard.edu/financial-a ... fact-sheet

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2013/11/ ... e-tuition/

Yes but then they provide no assistance whatsoever to middle class students. Tuition assistance is need-based only meaning that to qualify, you need to be POOR. So attendance is limited to students from poor backgrounds and the wealthy who can go on their own dime. Those in the middle are basically excluded, in other words the demographic that elected our current administration.

BTW this is true of the Ivy League in general, not just Harvard.

"Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute from 0-10% of their income, and those with incomes above $150,000 will be asked to pay proportionately more than 10%, based on their individual circumstances. Families at all income levels who have significant assets will continue to pay more than those in less fortunate circumstances."

Defined by Pew as those earning 67% to 200% of the median income — $39,560 to $118,080 in 2016 — only about half of Americans can call themselves middle class. Lower-income households account for 29%, while upper-income households make up the rest, according to Pew.
http://www.ctpost.com/technology/busine ... 201166.php

According to this definition the middle class will pay no more than 10% of their income.

@BTDT does the 10% apply to yearly or per-semester tuition? It seems possible their policies have changed in response to public pressure. I am fairly certain what I reported earlier was accurate at the time I was aware of college tuition policies. If so I apologize both to you and the Ivy League in general!

Medical doctors, lawyers, judges engineers.... they all needed degrees.

These professions cannot be self-taught really.

https://college.harvard.edu/financial-a ... calculator
Appears to be per year. A family with an income of 100,000 could get a 58k scholarship and pay just 11k per year.

Spending $50K for a degree from Harvard is well worth the investment, assuming that one is healthy enough to work.

I wouldn't blame them. Getting a degree can be like gambling. You only know if it was useless in hindsight.

They say "get a degree if you want a good job" then after you got the and you're still poor they say "it's your fault for choosing the wrong degree". Hindsight is always 20/20.

I know a guy who spent 4 years getting a civil engineering degree. He applied for over two hundre civil engineering jobs but no one would hire him. Eventual he ended up working an unregistered IT job (one which doesn't require a degree at all).

I fear the same may happen to me if I get a degree. What if I get a software engineering degree but don't get the chance to work as a developer? What it a waste?

Maybe, maybe not. This guy never got to work as a civil engineer but maybe doing the degree increased his general intelligenceand problem solving skills. He had to solve many types of problem during his degree.

If completing a STEM degree increases your general intelligence and problem solving skills, then I missed the boat.

Australia has the same problem. High tuition compared to Europe.

Sometimes I feel like it's expected of me to get a degree. I'm the only one of my cousins who didn't or won't get a degree.

I remember hearing my aunt (who is a bit of a tiger mum) telling my then 16 year old cousin that a bachelor degree is not enough, she must go to grad school. And there I was without even a bachelor degree.

Is that no more than 10% of their gross income or 10% of their net income?

I guess it makes the Ivy League more affordable but disregarding the fees the Ivy League is still harder to get into than Fort Knox. The competition is fierce and if the tuition is heavily subsidized that would mean more competition. Every time something is sold for less than it's actual value there's always a frenzy of people trying to get in. Picture feeding time in the shark tank.

If your grades aren't in the top 1% maybe you have to go to a normal university. Maybe the normal university charges a middle class student full price for their tuition.

As for me, I could probably afford it. I could probably pay off a $50,000 degree but maybe it means my goal of buying a house is pushed back 5 or 10 years (and the sooner I achieve that goal the more money I save, not buying a house for 10 years means $16,000 per year rent for 10 years, the sooner I begin paying off the mortgage, the sooner I finish paying off the mortgage and get to buy an investment property).

Anyway, maybe I could afford to go but for me the scarcest resources are time and energy. If I try to get a software engineering degree while working full-time I'm very worried I'll have zero free time and be painfully exhausted all the time. For me, I need 6 or 8 hours of rest per day during waking hours (in addition to the time I spend sleeping). This allows me to work a normal full-time job but I'm not one of those people who can work and/or study from the moment they wake up to the moment go to the sleep.
If I getting a degree while working full time I'm worried I might get burnout