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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So who told you that you would need to subsidize your own career for 10 years before you might make a livable salary on  your own?  Because nobody told me that, or this lady that.  I just sort of gave up on my dream on my own because I was a first generation student who went to an Ivy and I wanted some money to show for it.  But I don't consider that a big victory for me.  And again, nobody told me, I just took a hard look at my salary after a while and I negged out of there.[/quote]

I am the PP who said this. No one told me. I was really interested in a literary job in NY so I read a ton about it. I think before the internet it would be hard to learn this stuff, but basically once Gawker was a thing, you could figure it out. I'd read that site and similar once, including pieces they'd publish about literary internships and how it was a scam because it's just free labor and they hire rich kids so they don't have to pay them. I'd read essays and books of essays by people who worked in that world and talked about the economics of it. I read novels by and about these people that talked about it, too. The overwhelming message was: no one gets rich doing this, and they might even get solvent.

I was fine living with roommates and eating on the cheap or whatever when I was young. But rent is always an obstacle. Even a shared apartment in Brooklyn in the early 00s was going to cost me 10-15k a year, and then you need to eat, ride the subway, buy clothes. Pay for plane tickets home for the holidays. And then that goes on for how long? I didn't know exactly what I wanted out of life when I was 22, but I knew I didn't want to be living with roommates at 35. And honestly, for me, I wasn't thinking marriage at that age. I wanted to be independent, both financially and personally. So I never considered trying to find some rich guy to fund that lifestyle. I am good looking but don't always play nice with others -- I knew even by 22 that rich guys generally didn't like mouthy, argumentative, strong-willed women. They were looking for something else.

I was still dumb and naive. But I knew enough to know that path wasn't really available to me. Later I learned even the path I chose wasn't that easy either. When you don't have family resources, life is hard. Full stop. Providing everything for yourself is tough. And basically no one respects it, either, honestly. There are no accolades for just successfully maintaining the middle class lifestyle you were raised in, even though it's genuinely not that easy these days.[/quote]

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