The Not Happy Thread

Wait, are you really just paying back €800? That's $900. To put that into perspective, my student loans are about $65,000 (€57,806) at varying rates of interest. When I graduated they were $50,000 (€44,466). Collectively, all the students paying loans owe over a trillion dollars. So yes, I will take the fuck out of that wellfare state, thank you.

 

Yeah after I'm finished I'll have about $30,000 in debt.

 

No, that's not all. But it's what's a problem right now -- for other reasons as well.

 

There's someone on another forum I frequent who consistently gives awful, inaccurate advice but presents it as fact, in such a way that he sounds like an authority on the subject. I'm not even sure if he's a troll or just so far up his own backside he can't see that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

I have him on ignore but I still see his posts when other people quote them and ARGH I JUST WANT TO CORRECT HIM EACH TIME. It's not good for my blood pressure though, or my anxiety.

I'll just continue hoping his fingers fall off so he can no longer type.

 

You may as well just join the "don't pay your student loans back" club and wait for someone to finally pass a debt amnesty.

 

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say "college prepares you for the real world, so if you're stressed now, you'll be even more stressed later!"

Like... as someone who has dealt with "real world" stress and academic stress, no, they're not the same. Real world stresses are real and they matter, but being anxious over money and rent and food I can handle a lot better than academia. I can always get a second job (okay, I know that's not the case for everyone, to be fair) and even if work is stressing me out, I can at least leave it behind once I've left for the day. School follows you around, costs a lot, and is an investment that pans out in the future - maybe - whereas work is an every-two-weeks reminder that you're doing something. They're both highly stressful and yet I can cope better with one than the other; they're not that comparable.

 

I think the worst thing about American college is that students are sort of set in the whole 'college happens immediately after high school' thing and it causes a lot of problems. College should be something you, generally, do once you've got a profession in mind and have been working at it for a few years. College shouldn't be what you do to get it a job, it should be what you do to advance in one. Obviously some people truly do know what they want to do and in cases like becoming a medical practitioner you sort of NEED to go to college before ever working at it, so that's what I said "generally".

 

Wow, I just spent five hours typing out my notes for my two classes today. I sure hope I do well on the quizzes after all that crap!

 

Dedication + Education = Edification
Keep up the good work and it will all pan out!

 

Beat Mass Effect 3 (the original version, not the corrected version), and I can see why many got upset over the original ending. Just...really? Really?

 

Hooray for predatory law schools that leave students on average $136,000 in debt to give graduates a 26%* chance of finding any legal job within 9 months of graduation!

*By 26% chance, obviously I meant a 92% chance! After all, employment numbers should be calculated through the following method: A) Only base your figures on the responses you get back from a questionnaire that was only sent to a hand-picked subset of the graduating class; B) Lie that an extra 15% of the graduating class is employed in a JD-required job when you have no data on them; and C) Include jobs such as "a pool cleaner, waiters and waitresses, and retail store clerks" as JD-required.

 

Everybody knows there are too many people with law degrees. Of course I think education should be free, but students graduating from college should know better.

 

I would expect a person putting down six-figures on a degree to look closely into the degree they're considering, but in this case the person evaluated the school based on the "official" employment numbers posted on the school's website. I hope you're not suggesting we can't expect law schools to not purposely lie about their employment numbers?

 

No you're right. I hope they win of course

 

I thought that's what you meant, but wanted to make sure. Even though the school is clearly wrong in this matter, I agree with you that people should be doing ample research before taking on a ridiculous amount of debt.

 

Tom Paxton agrees with you:

 

I hate it when I forget to do shit, especially when I know there's an element of laziness involved cooperating with my ADHD. Goddamit, it's an unholy union! Seriously though, I need to get better at that.

 

I know the pain, except my laziness has formed an unholy pact with my Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The latter is getting kicked by the meds, but now my laziness has set forth a full frontal assault to cover its beaten ally.

 

I was on a writing roll then I had a bit of a nasty shock and lost my mojo. Finding it difficult to get back in the zone.

Maybe it's just because I've picked it up at that difficult middle third of the novel. Trying hard not to let it sag.

 

You'll get there. I believe in you!
Anyway, I would seriously recommend moving it to the back of your mind. Do other stuff but think about it sometimes. Often it's in that state that I get the best ideas. Of course, once you have something good, you should then be thinking careful and consciously about it and weighing whatever concerns up and answering whatever questions. But don't just sit there at a laptop trying to force it out. You'll make your brain hurt.
That's my advice at least.

 

I just saw on cnn.com that we lost one of America's finest writers today. Jim Harrison, author of "Legends of the Fall," has died.

I have several of his books, including his collected poems. He once wrote a novella that bears my favorite title of all time: "The Woman Lit By Fireflies." Just yesterday, I received from Amazon his most recent collection of novellas, titled "The Ancient Minstrel." (I couldn't pass that up, could I? My forum name and my age!)

R.I.P. Mr. Harrison, and thank you for your work.

 

I feel you. I so feel you. I found a news article recently where this one commenter called Colleenll went on a rampage of angry bigoted comments on the subject of transgender people bathroom rights. She said things like; "People like you are the reason we have separate restrooms for women, so freaks don't force themselves upon us. You're also the reason we have mental institutions so they can explain to you the difference between boys and girls.", "Only to the mentally ill like yourself. Your attitudes of bullying real women are not going to be tolerated by sane people." and "The hate and bullying is perpetrated by the insane LGBT nazis like you." to people who were just talking mostly peacefully about law and rights. She enflamed everywhere she went, making it angrier and triggering increasingly ad hominem discussion. No matter what your opinions are or what the issue you shouldn't act like that. I had to remind myself that unmoderated comment sections inevitably turn degenerate and should just be left alone. I already swore of Youtube comments. Not going back.

 

Recently there was a thread here on the Debate Section discussing a video of a black woman antagonizing a white guy with dreads, going as far as to threaten to cut them off with a pair of scissors.

Then, out of nowhere, a voice deep in the recesses of my brain blurted, “Proof that it is statistically impossible for people of different groups to get along each other! We all secretly hate each other, no matter how much we mask it!” I was horrified and I tried to cheer myself up by visiting happy tropes from TV Tropes and the It Gives Me Hope site, but the voice argued that these were simply the exception to The Rule™. Oh, and then making me feel like a prick for staring it in the first place.

So I feel really shitty now. The voice/feeling keeps telling me all that, and I know that's not true but it won't listen. It's trying to convince me of something irrational and hateful and won't listen to reason.
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Sorry if it seems weird/off-kilt, but that's what I'm feeling like right now. <hides in a barrel>

 

Contrariwise, I believe that the vast majority of human interaction on a day to day basis demonstrates that people of different backgrounds, socioeconomic status, beliefs, races, religions, and the like can get along harmoniously. The viral nature of videos and stories to the contrary magnifies that side of the equation.

 

I'm not sure I follow. What do you mean by that?