Squandered elite education
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Anonymous
I think I was pretty demoralized at that point and wasn't sure I would be able to cut it. I am not a very competitive person. I just was not at all a super star, pretty introverted, kind of clueless about the world. Like the PP, I probably should have gone to a less competitive school and been a bigger fish. I went into journalism but honestly only because I was a good writer and I really had no idea what else to do with an English degree. |
Anonymous
I was an English major at an HBCU. I'm in consulting. I'm not wealthy by any means but I'm clearing more than $200k. |
Anonymous
That's great. I am actually glad for you. Like I said, I struggled with low self-esteem and depression in college and I just didn't really know how to enter the adult working world. When you go to an Ivy, some of these kids are such amazing stars-- they are accomplishing so much at such a young age. I think I felt like a failure for "only" graduating. I just wanted to agree with others who said that going to an Ivy did not propel them into some kind of amazing life. |
Anonymous
Well yeah, clearly you were driven by money if you went into consulting. I assume you went into consulting right out of college? If you don’t it’s very hard to enter with it’s up or out ethos. No one does consulting for any other reason, that is actually the best path for low status highly educated graduates as success mostly comes from grinding work out, which most of them are very capable of. |
Anonymous
Maybe add under-employed attorneys as well. |
Anonymous
PP. Thanks, OP, and I owe you an apology. Thanks for coming back and clarifying. I respect your concerns. I'm also going to post a thread like this that popped up a while ago. One poster included an analogy that I think may soothe your soul - she does a great job of balancing compassion and accountability. This related to a woman who went into the arts and didn't figure out until middle age that all her peers were trust funders - she was MC. The thread also broadly discusses why some people have more savvy than others in figuring this stuff out (a point also raised here).
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/210/791426.page |
Anonymous
I’m not sure which part you’d like me to say more about. Since you brought up your salary and “glamour “, I’ll start with that. I’ll also state upfront that there’s no need for your values to in any way resemble mine — but it might be helpful to look deeply at your own values and how they may have changed, because you may well be a smashing success by your own standards if you can manage to stop moving the goalposts. I’ll add too, that it’s not my intention to be insensitive, or to pretend that anything that I could say here could impact someone’s clinical depression. I guess the simplest thing I can say is how important it has been for me to reframe how I look at my accomplishments. It’s also important for me to compare myself with my own goals and progress, particularly if I’m going to also compare my accomplishments with someone else’s. I went into a completely foreign environment — and made good friends, made good grades, accomplished significant academic goals, and used those things to get a job that was a good fit with prestigious employer. I accomplished those things despite difficult and even traumatic circumstances. Those are multiple data points that are worthy of acknowledgment and even celebration. I’m not going to overlook those things and only focus on comparing my salary with someone else who had a completely different set of advantages and struggles, and a completely different set of goals. I got what I wanted, and succeeded by some measures, against enormous odds. I’m not going to stop seeing that. “I exceeded my ancestors’ wildest expectations “. That doesn’t keep me from setting new goals or making choices that I hope will give me more money, or more time, or more flexibility, or more security or even more joy. But I will do that knowing that I used my talents as well as I could given what I originally had to work with. |
Anonymous
Wow, damn, I am Larla! Replace publishing with museum work, and NY with Boston/DC, but that's it. And I thought I was successful because I have a job in the *high* five figures, even if it's a hefty commute from where I can afford to live to my DC job. That's the sad thing - if it weren't from DCUM, I'd be able to think of my wealthy successful friends as the outliers and me as the norm, but this forum really does have a consistent message that everyone makes six figures with a college degree except morons. |
Anonymous
Similar situation for me. “Obsess” seems a rather strong word. You want them to think about income and career, yes. That doesn’t mean they have to “obsess.” I wish someone had told me to think about income more. I interned for an intelligence agency and sometimes wish I had stayed on. At the same time, I had interesting adventures and would not have met my spouse had I stayed in that role. What you are doing is unfair to yourself yet I know it’s not easy to stop. |
Anonymous
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I’m feeling sympathetic, OP., and am working through similar feelings. For myself, I think it’s a very classic case of midlife … not crisis, more like midlife slump.
Everyone has such high expectations for life in their 20s and then hits their 40s feeling that they’ve underachieved and regretting wasting their potential. It’s exacerbated for people like us who pulled themselves out of the working class and so had even higher expectations in their 20s that are now being cruelly dashed in midlife. It really helps me to remind myself that it gets better on the other side, that it does get better for most people when they move into their 50s. And also to know that I’m not alone - and in fact, this whole millennial generation is probably about to go through a major wave of midlife crisis. All those tech workers who in their 20s thought they were going to “change the world” are in for a huge shock finding themselves as laid-off 40 year olds this year. Here are some books I’m reading to help move through this. Late Bloomers, Rich Karlgaard Dark Horses, Todd Rose The Happiness Curve, Jonathan Rausch I also took up some hobbies recently - novel-writing and long distance running are things I wanted to do in my 20s and am now finding to be easier to do in my 40s. It’s been helpful to find things I can improve at and gives me hope that I’m not stuck where I am |
Anonymous
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OP, in the real world, a bachelor's degree from a fancy school by itself won't necessarily land someone a $400,000 salary. It's also who you know, and most students at Ivies when we were in college were very well connected.
So you outperformed your parents. That's great. Maybe your children will outperform you. And who knows, maybe your kid will gain legacy admission themselves. |
Anonymous
That's not accurate. You can enter consulting at any career stage and you don't have to be motivated by money. I really enjoyed my time in consulting - the diversity of experience, the fast pace, the constant context switching all worked well for my brain. |
Anonymous
They are the outliers. Do the math. The salaries and HHIs that you see on here are 1% territory. That's way out on the far end of any bell curve. But in a large population, that small percentage is actually a big number. Plus, as others have said, this is a self-selecting group that probably lies half the time anyhow. Either way, whether your income is good or not isn't relevant. Speaking as a 1%, that's not a winnable game. You need a different lens through which to assess your life. That's your only path to contentment. |
Anonymous
+100 |
Anonymous
I’m so sick of nasty people like you. When you know better, you do better. Life comes at people fast. Have compassion. |