Anonymous wrote:Stop whining about your parents. You are an adult. You made choices. Unless you were seriously abused, stop stop stop stop stop blaming your parents for your life choices. It’s insane. I’m so sick of people doing this. You have hard YEARS to find mentorship. To change careers. You went to an IVY LEAGUE college. What more do you want? What could they have done more than they did? Stop looking around at everyone else’ paper. I felt empathy when this thread started. Now I think you need some jolt of reality.

News flash: education is only one aspect toward success. Ivy League degrees do not predict future wealth. Your ego is your problem. You think you deserve more than you have acquired. You don’t. Just get the hell over yourselves.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Sorry, I was trying to be somewhat anonymous -- I mean how many Ivy league grads work for Fed contractors But I did miss the question about age, but I graduated 95-99 timeframe. For reference, Glassdoor founded in 2007, and LinkedIn in 2002. My first jobs I mailed in my applications!

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).

Here's how this happens. It's not ultra common, but it does happen, and it's not so simple as "make better choices". Because many of the choices are made before the person has the necessary info, and often they are working on information that is bad or very misleading:

- Larla grows up in rural or remote part of the country. Low cost of living, middle or working class parents who don't struggle a ton to make ends meet because low COL. Larla has pleasant childhood without a lot of class strife thanks to this.

- Larla is very good at school, and opportunities in this area are limited. It's not near a larger city. The area doesn't have a ton of arts, culture, or commerce. Larla very quickly develops interest in leaving area because of these limitations and because they are very successful academically, this starts to feel like a real possibility.

- Larla goes to college far away, a "good school" likely with some or a lot of merit aid. Larla's grades and test scores qualified her for school, but her admission probably has a lot to do with her - background too -- these schools like diversity and being from some remote place stands out.

- Maybe the school is in a big city, but maybe in little college town, but either way, winds up in a student population with people from much more cosmopolitan backgrounds. Some are wealthy, some are UMC, some might be MC or WC but from places with greater diversity (of people and experiences). This means everyone understands a lot more about how the world works than Larla, even the other kids on financial aid and who have to work. Larla is straight up naive.

- Larla makes friends, and her friends educate her a bit about the world. The problem is, they are naive too, because they don't even understand what they know. They explain stuff to Larla, but it overemphasizes the fairness of the system. They gloss over stuff like the value of family connections or the fact that they are from families that really, really support and emphasize higher education (something Larla's family probably doesn't value to the same degree because of very different environments and circumstances). Larla starts to think she's figuring things out, but she's only getting a very small part of the picture.

- Larla makes career choices, decides where to move after school, based on her naive assumptions coupled with a pretty incomplete explanation of the world gleaned from young people who are really still just figuring it out. What Larla could really use at this point is a parent or relative who can say "Whoa, wait -- some of these kids have trust funds. Some of them can live in their aunt's apartment while they intern. Some of them have parents who will will do anything to cover the cost of a graduate degree because it's important to them. You need to make different choices based on your specific situation. How about Philly instead of NYC? How about marketing instead of publishing? Maybe what you really want is to write -- get an ed degree, teach high school English, and write! Or pursue an academic degree but get used to living in midwestern college towns, which are at least cheap."

- So instead, Larla figures this out on her own over the course of a decade or so. It's revealed in fits and starts, and often she only learns a key piece of information after it's too late to do much with it (like that an MFA is treated as required in publishing, but has no actual value in terms of earning, something that should actually be a required release of info before anyone enrolls in an MFA program). She also gets deeper into a career and social circle that will simply reinforce her value system, making it harder and harder to pull herself out. She might contemplate moving to Chicago or Portland or Denver, but her NY friends will say "OMG no, I could never" and she's only 28 and her family doesn't understand her anymore either, so she holds onto those values even though they don't serve her.

It's a sucky thing. Yes, she was naive and stupid and made bad choices. But it's also kind of hard to blame her because she's kind of been thrown to the wolves. Her university probably should have offered her some kind of practical economic education, but that would require being honest about their student body and their funding and the value of their degree, so: no. Same with the MFA. Her friends are self-interested in believing that they earned their way (to a degree they may have, in other ways not). Also, Larla doesn't have a stereotypical hard luck upbringing. She's not from poverty, her parents have steady jobs, she had a nice childhood. The fact that it in no way prepared her for the life she is now leading doesn't concern anyone because she is a [almost certainly white] middle class lady with a fancy college degree. It's just that none of those things are really helping her right now and she'd have to go back in time, or totally upend her entire values system, to change it. It's what she should do, but it's understandable that she is struggling.

I feel really bad for people in this situation. This is why it helps to have savvy parents who get how the world works, why you are lucky to find mentors or honest friends who tell it like it is. It can save you. Some people never get that and they get stuck.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/210/791426.page

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.

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 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Sorry, I was trying to be somewhat anonymous -- I mean how many Ivy league grads work for Fed contractors But I did miss the question about age, but I graduated 95-99 timeframe. For reference, Glassdoor founded in 2007, and LinkedIn in 2002. My first jobs I mailed in my applications!

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).

Here's how this happens. It's not ultra common, but it does happen, and it's not so simple as "make better choices". Because many of the choices are made before the person has the necessary info, and often they are working on information that is bad or very misleading:

- Larla grows up in rural or remote part of the country. Low cost of living, middle or working class parents who don't struggle a ton to make ends meet because low COL. Larla has pleasant childhood without a lot of class strife thanks to this.

- Larla is very good at school, and opportunities in this area are limited. It's not near a larger city. The area doesn't have a ton of arts, culture, or commerce. Larla very quickly develops interest in leaving area because of these limitations and because they are very successful academically, this starts to feel like a real possibility.

- Larla goes to college far away, a "good school" likely with some or a lot of merit aid. Larla's grades and test scores qualified her for school, but her admission probably has a lot to do with her - background too -- these schools like diversity and being from some remote place stands out.

- Maybe the school is in a big city, but maybe in little college town, but either way, winds up in a student population with people from much more cosmopolitan backgrounds. Some are wealthy, some are UMC, some might be MC or WC but from places with greater diversity (of people and experiences). This means everyone understands a lot more about how the world works than Larla, even the other kids on financial aid and who have to work. Larla is straight up naive.

- Larla makes friends, and her friends educate her a bit about the world. The problem is, they are naive too, because they don't even understand what they know. They explain stuff to Larla, but it overemphasizes the fairness of the system. They gloss over stuff like the value of family connections or the fact that they are from families that really, really support and emphasize higher education (something Larla's family probably doesn't value to the same degree because of very different environments and circumstances). Larla starts to think she's figuring things out, but she's only getting a very small part of the picture.

- Larla makes career choices, decides where to move after school, based on her naive assumptions coupled with a pretty incomplete explanation of the world gleaned from young people who are really still just figuring it out. What Larla could really use at this point is a parent or relative who can say "Whoa, wait -- some of these kids have trust funds. Some of them can live in their aunt's apartment while they intern. Some of them have parents who will will do anything to cover the cost of a graduate degree because it's important to them. You need to make different choices based on your specific situation. How about Philly instead of NYC? How about marketing instead of publishing? Maybe what you really want is to write -- get an ed degree, teach high school English, and write! Or pursue an academic degree but get used to living in midwestern college towns, which are at least cheap."

- So instead, Larla figures this out on her own over the course of a decade or so. It's revealed in fits and starts, and often she only learns a key piece of information after it's too late to do much with it (like that an MFA is treated as required in publishing, but has no actual value in terms of earning, something that should actually be a required release of info before anyone enrolls in an MFA program). She also gets deeper into a career and social circle that will simply reinforce her value system, making it harder and harder to pull herself out. She might contemplate moving to Chicago or Portland or Denver, but her NY friends will say "OMG no, I could never" and she's only 28 and her family doesn't understand her anymore either, so she holds onto those values even though they don't serve her.

It's a sucky thing. Yes, she was naive and stupid and made bad choices. But it's also kind of hard to blame her because she's kind of been thrown to the wolves. Her university probably should have offered her some kind of practical economic education, but that would require being honest about their student body and their funding and the value of their degree, so: no. Same with the MFA. Her friends are self-interested in believing that they earned their way (to a degree they may have, in other ways not). Also, Larla doesn't have a stereotypical hard luck upbringing. She's not from poverty, her parents have steady jobs, she had a nice childhood. The fact that it in no way prepared her for the life she is now leading doesn't concern anyone because she is a [almost certainly white] middle class lady with a fancy college degree. It's just that none of those things are really helping her right now and she'd have to go back in time, or totally upend her entire values system, to change it. It's what she should do, but it's understandable that she is struggling.

I feel really bad for people in this situation. This is why it helps to have savvy parents who get how the world works, why you are lucky to find mentors or honest friends who tell it like it is. It can save you. Some people never get that and they get stuck.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/210/791426.page

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 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, I'll join the group.

I am an Ivy underachiever and I don't even have the excuse of coming from a rural background.

I grew up in normal suburbia and was totally lost at my Ivy school. I was an English major, and no one told me this might not be a good idea. I got good grades, did a few EC but I had no clue about internships or job or careers. I was slightly depressed my entire college career. I worked at camps and in restaurants during the summers. I never connected to any mentors. I had no vision for my future. I am actually pretty proud that I have made as much of my life as I have. But sometimes I feel really terrible looking back at college and wondering why I wasted all those opportunities, and yes I am a little annoyed at my parents who were classic 1980s parents -- not involved.

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.

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 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you’re having a midlife crisis. This will pass soon enough.

The fact is that an Ivy League education is not the basis of all success, which you are now realizing too late. You have a good life. Be happy.

I KNOW THIS IS MIDLIFE CRISIS. doesn’t make me feel any better, and in fact know it’s too late to change course more or less.

3 kids, which are my joy, but worried I’m making them obsess about income and career from my own failings.

Anonymous wrote:

Sorry, I was trying to be somewhat anonymous -- I mean how many Ivy league grads work for Fed contractors But I did miss the question about age, but I graduated 95-99 timeframe. For reference, Glassdoor founded in 2007, and LinkedIn in 2002. My first jobs I mailed in my applications!

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).

Here's how this happens. It's not ultra common, but it does happen, and it's not so simple as "make better choices". Because many of the choices are made before the person has the necessary info, and often they are working on information that is bad or very misleading:

- Larla grows up in rural or remote part of the country. Low cost of living, middle or working class parents who don't struggle a ton to make ends meet because low COL. Larla has pleasant childhood without a lot of class strife thanks to this.

- Larla is very good at school, and opportunities in this area are limited. It's not near a larger city. The area doesn't have a ton of arts, culture, or commerce. Larla very quickly develops interest in leaving area because of these limitations and because they are very successful academically, this starts to feel like a real possibility.

- Larla goes to college far away, a "good school" likely with some or a lot of merit aid. Larla's grades and test scores qualified her for school, but her admission probably has a lot to do with her - background too -- these schools like diversity and being from some remote place stands out.

- Maybe the school is in a big city, but maybe in little college town, but either way, winds up in a student population with people from much more cosmopolitan backgrounds. Some are wealthy, some are UMC, some might be MC or WC but from places with greater diversity (of people and experiences). This means everyone understands a lot more about how the world works than Larla, even the other kids on financial aid and who have to work. Larla is straight up naive.

- Larla makes friends, and her friends educate her a bit about the world. The problem is, they are naive too, because they don't even understand what they know. They explain stuff to Larla, but it overemphasizes the fairness of the system. They gloss over stuff like the value of family connections or the fact that they are from families that really, really support and emphasize higher education (something Larla's family probably doesn't value to the same degree because of very different environments and circumstances). Larla starts to think she's figuring things out, but she's only getting a very small part of the picture.

- Larla makes career choices, decides where to move after school, based on her naive assumptions coupled with a pretty incomplete explanation of the world gleaned from young people who are really still just figuring it out. What Larla could really use at this point is a parent or relative who can say "Whoa, wait -- some of these kids have trust funds. Some of them can live in their aunt's apartment while they intern. Some of them have parents who will will do anything to cover the cost of a graduate degree because it's important to them. You need to make different choices based on your specific situation. How about Philly instead of NYC? How about marketing instead of publishing? Maybe what you really want is to write -- get an ed degree, teach high school English, and write! Or pursue an academic degree but get used to living in midwestern college towns, which are at least cheap."

- So instead, Larla figures this out on her own over the course of a decade or so. It's revealed in fits and starts, and often she only learns a key piece of information after it's too late to do much with it (like that an MFA is treated as required in publishing, but has no actual value in terms of earning, something that should actually be a required release of info before anyone enrolls in an MFA program). She also gets deeper into a career and social circle that will simply reinforce her value system, making it harder and harder to pull herself out. She might contemplate moving to Chicago or Portland or Denver, but her NY friends will say "OMG no, I could never" and she's only 28 and her family doesn't understand her anymore either, so she holds onto those values even though they don't serve her.

It's a sucky thing. Yes, she was naive and stupid and made bad choices. But it's also kind of hard to blame her because she's kind of been thrown to the wolves. Her university probably should have offered her some kind of practical economic education, but that would require being honest about their student body and their funding and the value of their degree, so: no. Same with the MFA. Her friends are self-interested in believing that they earned their way (to a degree they may have, in other ways not). Also, Larla doesn't have a stereotypical hard luck upbringing. She's not from poverty, her parents have steady jobs, she had a nice childhood. The fact that it in no way prepared her for the life she is now leading doesn't concern anyone because she is a [almost certainly white] middle class lady with a fancy college degree. It's just that none of those things are really helping her right now and she'd have to go back in time, or totally upend her entire values system, to change it. It's what she should do, but it's understandable that she is struggling.

I feel really bad for people in this situation. This is why it helps to have savvy parents who get how the world works, why you are lucky to find mentors or honest friends who tell it like it is. It can save you. Some people never get that and they get stuck.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/210/791426.page

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop whining about your parents. You are an adult. You made choices. Unless you were seriously abused, stop stop stop stop stop blaming your parents for your life choices. It’s insane. I’m so sick of people doing this. You have hard YEARS to find mentorship. To change careers. You went to an IVY LEAGUE college. What more do you want? What could they have done more than they did? Stop looking around at everyone else’ paper. I felt empathy when this thread started. Now I think you need some jolt of reality.

News flash: education is only one aspect toward success. Ivy League degrees do not predict future wealth. Your ego is your problem. You think you deserve more than you have acquired. You don’t. Just get the hell over yourselves.

I am incredibly sad if I came across as whining about my parents. They really lifted me up and helped me achieve my dream: to get to that fancy college and out of my rural small town. The sacrificed to make that happen and certainly supported me.

Even now as an adult I still have no idea how to find mentorships (and I'm so old I need to be the mentor honestly, and I am to some of younger staff), maybe something about the way I look or talk is off putting in a way I'm unaware -- but despite working had and always having good reviews, no one has ever been in a position that I felt I could ask them for that kind of relationship, nor anyone made any hints at helping me advance my career in ANY WAY. I think the positions I ended up in were always on the periphery in some way...

Actually, once I had kids, I spent a DECADE trying to change careers. I have no idea why it never came to pass (offers that were lower than I make now, or just ghosted after the final interview) but I think just the mix of market timing (tech wasn't really ascendent after the dot.com crash until I was a decade into gov work and well over 30). I maybe could have gotten an MBA and tried to get into finance, but I KNOW I would have just gone for some local MBA not understanding how its top 10 MBA or bust (according to DCUM).

I like the idea of an ego being the problem, but what I really am dealing with is regret and shame -- I wasted this amazing opportunity and I can't even figure out how. I would feel a lot better if I instead partied at college, really didn't give a darn, and was happy pulling an "Office Space" Peter Gibbons -- instead I'm having the middle age version of "Booksmart" angst!!

To be completely honest, except for the fact my moving for college meant I met my amazing DW, I think I would have ended up much happier going to my local state flagship, getting some professional job in a city like Tusla, and living at the top of my smaller world. And I wouldn't have taken my Ivy spot from someone who was actually going to do something great in the world...

Or you can consider altering your very limited ideas about the purpose of your education.
While I share your wish that I had had help navigating and effectively utilizing more of the resources that were available to me, I realize that my very presence as a student in my college was revolutionary— in many ways that I did not realize at the time. I tried new things, learned a lot, made lifelong friends, and successfully jumped the next set of academic and career hurdles that I faced. I wasn’t “prepared” the way the Prep school kids and the legacy kids were. I did, however, do the best I could with what I had to work with, and I “swam” even as others sank. I have done great things in the world — even though they have been small great things rather than larger or flashier ones. I’m wondering if some cognitive restructuring might encourage you to not necessarily see your educational experiences differently but to VALUE them differently. And, you know that your own experiences may be making many things exponentially easier and more available for your kids.

NP here. Do you mind talking more about this and being more specific? I am in a similar situation as the OP and have severe clinical depression because of it. I find your comment vague and insensitive -- being in the position I am now ($125k in a non-glamorous career) is embarrassing. I don't consider that "swimming" at all.

Sorry, I was trying to be somewhat anonymous -- I mean how many Ivy league grads work for Fed contractors But I did miss the question about age, but I graduated 95-99 timeframe. For reference, Glassdoor founded in 2007, and LinkedIn in 2002. My first jobs I mailed in my applications!

Here's how this happens. It's not ultra common, but it does happen, and it's not so simple as "make better choices". Because many of the choices are made before the person has the necessary info, and often they are working on information that is bad or very misleading:

- Larla grows up in rural or remote part of the country. Low cost of living, middle or working class parents who don't struggle a ton to make ends meet because low COL. Larla has pleasant childhood without a lot of class strife thanks to this.

- Larla is very good at school, and opportunities in this area are limited. It's not near a larger city. The area doesn't have a ton of arts, culture, or commerce. Larla very quickly develops interest in leaving area because of these limitations and because they are very successful academically, this starts to feel like a real possibility.

- Larla goes to college far away, a "good school" likely with some or a lot of merit aid. Larla's grades and test scores qualified her for school, but her admission probably has a lot to do with her - background too -- these schools like diversity and being from some remote place stands out.

- Maybe the school is in a big city, but maybe in little college town, but either way, winds up in a student population with people from much more cosmopolitan backgrounds. Some are wealthy, some are UMC, some might be MC or WC but from places with greater diversity (of people and experiences). This means everyone understands a lot more about how the world works than Larla, even the other kids on financial aid and who have to work. Larla is straight up naive.

- Larla makes friends, and her friends educate her a bit about the world. The problem is, they are naive too, because they don't even understand what they know. They explain stuff to Larla, but it overemphasizes the fairness of the system. They gloss over stuff like the value of family connections or the fact that they are from families that really, really support and emphasize higher education (something Larla's family probably doesn't value to the same degree because of very different environments and circumstances). Larla starts to think she's figuring things out, but she's only getting a very small part of the picture.

- Larla makes career choices, decides where to move after school, based on her naive assumptions coupled with a pretty incomplete explanation of the world gleaned from young people who are really still just figuring it out. What Larla could really use at this point is a parent or relative who can say "Whoa, wait -- some of these kids have trust funds. Some of them can live in their aunt's apartment while they intern. Some of them have parents who will will do anything to cover the cost of a graduate degree because it's important to them. You need to make different choices based on your specific situation. How about Philly instead of NYC? How about marketing instead of publishing? Maybe what you really want is to write -- get an ed degree, teach high school English, and write! Or pursue an academic degree but get used to living in midwestern college towns, which are at least cheap."

- So instead, Larla figures this out on her own over the course of a decade or so. It's revealed in fits and starts, and often she only learns a key piece of information after it's too late to do much with it (like that an MFA is treated as required in publishing, but has no actual value in terms of earning, something that should actually be a required release of info before anyone enrolls in an MFA program). She also gets deeper into a career and social circle that will simply reinforce her value system, making it harder and harder to pull herself out. She might contemplate moving to Chicago or Portland or Denver, but her NY friends will say "OMG no, I could never" and she's only 28 and her family doesn't understand her anymore either, so she holds onto those values even though they don't serve her.

It's a sucky thing. Yes, she was naive and stupid and made bad choices. But it's also kind of hard to blame her because she's kind of been thrown to the wolves. Her university probably should have offered her some kind of practical economic education, but that would require being honest about their student body and their funding and the value of their degree, so: no. Same with the MFA. Her friends are self-interested in believing that they earned their way (to a degree they may have, in other ways not). Also, Larla doesn't have a stereotypical hard luck upbringing. She's not from poverty, her parents have steady jobs, she had a nice childhood. The fact that it in no way prepared her for the life she is now leading doesn't concern anyone because she is a [almost certainly white] middle class lady with a fancy college degree. It's just that none of those things are really helping her right now and she'd have to go back in time, or totally upend her entire values system, to change it. It's what she should do, but it's understandable that she is struggling.

I feel really bad for people in this situation. This is why it helps to have savvy parents who get how the world works, why you are lucky to find mentors or honest friends who tell it like it is. It can save you. Some people never get that and they get stuck.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up pretty lower middle class in a rural southern town. I escaped by getting into an Ivy League and getting tons of aid.

And then promptly squandered that opportunity by making all the wrong career choices (I never interned while in college, just went home and helped out my folks), didn’t understand the potential salary ranges for various careers nor the importance of prestige and clout for your work history (I looked for interesting work in towns I thought would be interesting to live in)

That’s how I ended up in DC, working for a gov contractor on DoD projects — post 9/11 working on defense seemed cool, jobs seemed stable, and I had never lived in a bigger East coast city. I especially appreciated the stability of the job after going through the dot.com crash.

But I could have done so much more with my elite college education, I just squandered it on jobs that fit my lifestyle (clock out at 5) and stability. No idea that you real people could make $400k or $500k — my parents house TODAY is only worth $100k, so this sounds like made up numbers only people like Gates make. As an old person I realize how dumb I was. Anyone relate?

Sorry but how did you not know to do internships? I was also a first-gen college student at an Ivy from a rural, low-income background. I realized that getting internships was crucial even as an underclassmen because so many of the students around me at my Ivy were very aggressively searching for internships. I knew that sophomore and junior summers were CRUCIAL in getting internships + a job offer post-grad, even as my parents had no idea how to navigate the white-collar professional world.

Then again, I graduated in 2012, so different times. But still, the internship search + corporate recruiting was a big part of the campus culture, so I knew I had to figure it out.

Well first off, this was the 90s. Money was not talked about as readily as it is today, and the necessity of internships rather than just a nice to have was not clear. I actually wasn’t gunning for a corporate job; I didn’t care about being rich just comfortable. Unfortunately with housing, college costs, etc, a $130k job is not comfortable in most cities. I mean houses on Howard County are $900k. I would love to move some where cheaper but pay drops usually in step with COL, and college costs are high no matter how cheap your house is. Maybe if I had a friend who knew the ropes they may have set me down, but I hung out with other kids on scholarship by nature of the social scene on campus.


Also internships didn’t pay as much (there was a whole ruckus about how unpaid internships were elitist in the 2000s). How did you afford paying for housing and board in the internship city? Most of my classmates either went home to their home cities and interned there — I went home and worked at local factory to earn tuition money. An internship would have been at BEST net zero or more likely cost money.

OP, I'm in the same boat - I went to an Ivy in the 90's and in a certain sense, squandered my opportunity. I really appreciate what a previous poster said, though, about each generation doing better than the previous one. By that measure, I am doing just fine. I certainly know much more about how to guide my own children. Anyway, would you and the others who have been responded be interested in some sort of Ivy Underachievers meetup or support group? I have to figure out how to make a burner email address for this. I really do think that we could all support each other! And share advice for the next generation...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, I'll join the group.

I am an Ivy underachiever and I don't even have the excuse of coming from a rural background.

I grew up in normal suburbia and was totally lost at my Ivy school. I was an English major, and no one told me this might not be a good idea. I got good grades, did a few EC but I had no clue about internships or job or careers. I was slightly depressed my entire college career. I worked at camps and in restaurants during the summers. I never connected to any mentors. I had no vision for my future. I am actually pretty proud that I have made as much of my life as I have. But sometimes I feel really terrible looking back at college and wondering why I wasted all those opportunities, and yes I am a little annoyed at my parents who were classic 1980s parents -- not involved.

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 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, I'll join the group.

I am an Ivy underachiever and I don't even have the excuse of coming from a rural background.

I grew up in normal suburbia and was totally lost at my Ivy school. I was an English major, and no one told me this might not be a good idea. I got good grades, did a few EC but I had no clue about internships or job or careers. I was slightly depressed my entire college career. I worked at camps and in restaurants during the summers. I never connected to any mentors. I had no vision for my future. I am actually pretty proud that I have made as much of my life as I have. But sometimes I feel really terrible looking back at college and wondering why I wasted all those opportunities, and yes I am a little annoyed at my parents who were classic 1980s parents -- not involved.

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 wrote:Hi OP, I'll join the group.

I am an Ivy underachiever and I don't even have the excuse of coming from a rural background.

I grew up in normal suburbia and was totally lost at my Ivy school. I was an English major, and no one told me this might not be a good idea. I got good grades, did a few EC but I had no clue about internships or job or careers. I was slightly depressed my entire college career. I worked at camps and in restaurants during the summers. I never connected to any mentors. I had no vision for my future. I am actually pretty proud that I have made as much of my life as I have. But sometimes I feel really terrible looking back at college and wondering why I wasted all those opportunities, and yes I am a little annoyed at my parents who were classic 1980s parents -- not involved.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, I'll join the group.

I am an Ivy underachiever and I don't even have the excuse of coming from a rural background.

I grew up in normal suburbia and was totally lost at my Ivy school. I was an English major, and no one told me this might not be a good idea. I got good grades, did a few EC but I had no clue about internships or job or careers. I was slightly depressed my entire college career. I worked at camps and in restaurants during the summers. I never connected to any mentors. I had no vision for my future. I am actually pretty proud that I have made as much of my life as I have. But sometimes I feel really terrible looking back at college and wondering why I wasted all those opportunities, and yes I am a little annoyed at my parents who were classic 1980s parents -- not involved.

Did you not consider going to law school? Virtually all the English majors at my Ivy either went to law school (and if they didn't, they had rich parents).