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Ugh. Rant. |
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failsafe United States. May 06 2009 14:57. Posts 1040 | | |
I'm graduating from university on Saturday. My degree is in economics and I've got what amounts to a minor in math.
Overall I'm not real happy about it.
I applied to several Ph.D programs and none of them panned out. Either I was rejected or I declined at every school. My GRE quantitative was a 780 which is passable for top tier economics programs, but I'm applying from an obscure state university and my GPA is only just over 3.6. Plus I've got virtually nothing else going for me so apparently I don't measure up to the standards of top-tier schools.
I wasn't delighted at the prospect of getting a Ph.D in the first place, but it was basically the only route that seemed to make sense as jobs are scarce and I've got no source of income. Anyway after being rejected at or declining every university, my only option in academics is to stay at the same state university for another year while I pursue a 1-year post-graduate and reapply to Ph.D programs. This is a pretty shitty option as I've lived here my entire life, and I'm bored of it. Moreover the education I get here is generally poor, and in spite of - or perhaps because of the easy courses, I tend to lack motivation and thus both learn less and perform (relatively) poorly.
As I said, I live in Alabama and I always have. It sucks here for all the reasons you'd imagine, and education here is as poor as advertised and possibly worse. Lately I've been trying (despite often lacking real enthusiasm) to make up for lost time and do some self-education plus take the most difficult classes available in math and econ. Unfortunately there are no difficult econ courses here, so that didn't work. Also I've been forced to fill in some curriculum requirements as this is my last semester, and those filler classes were truly horrible wastes of time and energy. One of the math courses, on the other hand, was difficult. It was a topography / analysis course that ended up requiring my full effort, and even then I ended up a little short. I like to think that it was because I had several bullshit classes that wasted my time and sapped my will to study, coupled with my terrible math background, but even so I've never really had any trouble with an academic subject before. So it was a humbling and somewhat draining experience.
Several other aspects of my life sort of suck as I've gradually severed ties with a lot of friends and now only have a sort of core group that I've known all my life. Unfortunately even among my closest friends none of us are really similar enough to have a super solid friendship. It's a strange thing to think and I feel uncomfortable with it, but at times it seems to me that even among my closest friends we're only friends because we've known each other for so long. It seems like we’re dissimilar in every way. Among some of us there are ghosts of serious tension from the past and there’s almost never an atmosphere of relaxed goodwill. Among others there are just no mutual interests or anything like the spontaneity that characterizes healthy relationships. Probably worth acknowledging that I haven’t had a steady girlfriend in over two years, and more recently I’ve become so disgusted with the culture here and the kind of people that it attracts that in the past half a year or so I haven’t made the slightest effort in social situations.
Poker is also going poorly. Don’t really feel like there’s much to be said about it other than that I’ve been able to excel in most other aspects of life and it’s frustrating and humbling to be pretty unsuccessful at poker. I can console myself with the idea that I haven’t put in the time to really be good, but it feels like a hollow reason. Until I succeed at something I usually take lack of success pretty badly and possibly irrationally so, but whatever. It’s still frustrating and with everything else looking dim it’s just one more thing that’s bad rather than good.
Anyway this is really depressing piece of writing and I feel like it’s not even entirely appropriate to post publicly. I guess the relative anonymity of LP makes it pretty inconsequential so I’ll probably post it anyway. My main motivation for writing this was the hope that at some point I’d either see that I was being ridiculous or if I wasn’t being completely ridiculous, I was hoping to spark some idea of what I could do it improve things. Unfortunately no solution has really hit me.
I guess to conclude with a poker analogy, I feel like if life were an NLHE hand then I’ve misplayed it pretty severely thus far. Unfortunately open-folding / check-folding life doesn’t get the next two cards dealt unless you’re a Hindu. So ruling out the fold button really just brings me back to step one. Hopefully I’ll catch a lucky turn or something. But it makes me wonder how many people are in a similar spot and opt to fish. Gotta think that in poker if you’re drawing you mostly miss.
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SakiSaki  Sweden. May 06 2009 15:22. Posts 9685 | | |
Just letting you know, you have recently been upgraded to most awesome lper ever on my list. You beat both ket and mig so its kind of a big deal.
You are like me, just smarter and more articulate |
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| what wackass site is this nigga? | |
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MayZerG United Kingdom. May 06 2009 16:58. Posts 2123 | | | |
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| I like to hold all the nuts - CrownRoyal | |
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Shabbzoy United Kingdom. May 06 2009 17:45. Posts 841 | | |
yeah I liked the read for whatever reason |
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sniderstyle United States. May 06 2009 17:48. Posts 2046 | | |
yeah when I think of people from Alabama, these words come to mind:
dumb
redneck
hillbilly
imbred
racist
You must be an aberration because by reading your post you don't seem to posses any of those negative stereotypes.
You seem like a smart, self-aware, dude that has done the right things but ran into a wall. |
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| Genginho: lose today 100 dollar only because of fishs they called and had luck on river | |
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andrewcbr Czech Republic. May 06 2009 18:10. Posts 373 | | |
| | On May 06 2009 16:48 sniderstyle wrote:
yeah when I think of people from Alabama, these words come to mind:
dumb
redneck
hillbilly
imbred
racist
You must be an aberration because by reading your post you don't seem to posses any of those negative stereotypes.
You seem like a smart, self-aware, dude that has done the right things but ran into a wall. |
maybe that's exactly why he doesn't like/doesn't want to live in Alabama anymore  |
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k2o4 United States. May 06 2009 18:40. Posts 4803 | | |
| | On May 06 2009 14:22 SakiSaki wrote:
Just letting you know, you have recently been upgraded to most awesome lper ever on my list. You beat both ket and mig so its kind of a big deal.
You are like me, just smarter and more articulate |
yeah jeff rules. It's funny cause I've known him for years but not until he started blogging on LP did he let his really smart side come out. Before that it was usually just funny jokes and the occasional drunken phone call at 2am to talk about how awesome our BW team was, lolz.
Jeff you'll be fine. You should just get the hell outta alabama. And not china this time. Go to cali or nyc or something. Do some research and find a place with other smart kids like yourself and just pack up and go. Wait tables for a bit, it's ok. You're young and don't need to be on a career path just yet. You'll find work as long as you make some effort to be sociable. Don't worry man, you'll be fine. |
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not sure how old you are, but, theres always that, guessing you're 22-24 and you got lots of time to do anything you want in life, and having a degree although for-the-most-part useless, proves you aren't a dummy, proves you can work hard, i dunno, its a really good thing to have, and you dont necessarily have to pursue further education now, you can go find something else to do for a few years and decide that maybe you want to do some sort of training, ma, phd, specialization, whatever kinda thing down the road.
its a really positive thing about your character that you've completed what you set out to do, regardless of what kind of direction you have, its 10000x better to be able to say, "i have an econ degree" than "i finished 2 years of courses then kinda screwed up and stopped".
but more than just being able to say to other people, it should be a positive reinforcement for your own self-image, just that you did it, trivial as it seems.
i can totally relate to the idea that i've always felt academia is a huge joke(1 parent is lawyer, 1 parent is teacher, i coasted through everything)and that feeling that "oh degree=standard" but you really have to step back and say well, no, not really at all..
but i mean cmon! it gives you CLOUT in most communities and thats always fun |
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| rockman255: its not easy being superman U N0 MySteeZ: mega man. rockman255: same thing U N0 MySteeZ: no | Last edit: 06/05/2009 18:44 |
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fira United States. May 06 2009 18:45. Posts 6345 | | |
jeff you should move to cali and chill with me
and while you're at it, get braid |
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seriously though theres a million other avenues in academia other than just going straight to phd in your program that you haven't really explored, and i haven't either really T_T but i know theres programs at my university that are like MA's in economics/statistics/finance kinda thing(which i know a couple math students went into them, so they're definitely not that restrictive of your former focus) all of which lead you in a decent direction job-wise and get you the heck outta alabama and probably give you a lot of time to rework some phd application if need be |
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| rockman255: its not easy being superman U N0 MySteeZ: mega man. rockman255: same thing U N0 MySteeZ: no | Last edit: 06/05/2009 18:50 |
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vegable United States. May 06 2009 20:14. Posts 2453 | | |
take comfort in the fact that millions of other kids have gone through the same thing you have. head up soldier |
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matdon460 United States. May 06 2009 20:51. Posts 1089 | | |
yeah I can really relate to this. I graduated with a fin/econ with a math minor and can't get a job and don't really have a direction. I've pretty much stopped playing poker because I've started to instatilt over now poker things. I think I'm going to just keep plugging while I try to improve my eating and exercise habits to feel better. |
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| Of course it was a good shove, I won | |
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failsafe United States. May 06 2009 22:05. Posts 1040 | | |
Huge honor from saki and thanks to everyone else who posted. Also, Chen you need to be available more often |
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