Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college?
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 8 hours agoMany people live in towns with fewer than five companies, with poor internet access. Many people have to keep odd schedules because of family care obligations. Many people are functionally illiterate. Many people have criminal convictions. There are a lot of things that can limit your ability to leave a job you already have.
Many people do accept work conditions worse than they have to, but not every worker is flexible enough to choose their work.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Then they have to move.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I’m glad for you. It sounds like you were smart or skilled enough to be presented with opportunities to leave and had the foresight to take them and the dedication to fully benefit from them. Not everyone is or has those qualities and that’s not a moral failing.
You overcame difficult circumstances, but that’s due to you being an exception, and whether that’s because of qualities inherent to you or luck is impossible to determine. The idea of it being luck is scary, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who doesn’t behave exactly as you did is to blame for their circumstances.
Surely you know people from your hometown who earnestly tried, but were just too dumb to really keep up in school or with complicated conversations among friends. Do you think they would be able to achieve what you have? What about the smart kids with severe ADHD who were flaky due to no fault of their own? If so, what use is your intelligence or ingenuity?
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I was not gifted with anything dude. I made choices. I didn’t party, I studied. I didn’t do drugs, I did clubs to pad my resume. I ignored all the shitty advice and pressure from my family and friends to be a losers like they were. I endured physical and verbal abuse for years because of my choices. But I never gave up. After college I focused on paying down by debts, getting into graduate school and working. I didn’t spend years screwing around trying to ‘find myself’ buy going into massive debt traveling and partying, like so many of my peers did.
No, I knew lots of people who are miserable assholes who blame everyone else for their shitty choices. Just like my parents did, just like their parents did. Nobody forced them to drive drunk, to work shitty jobs, to fail out of school. They chose that. Once I got out of school I never went back to that shitty town and my parents died anyways so I never had to.
Everyone is smart and capable. Everyone has opportunities. Some people decide to piss them away and mock and deride people who made better choices. Nobody is dumb or flaky, they are just lazy and unwilling to put in the work. Sounds like you are talking about yourself? Blaming your ‘bad luck’ and using that as an excuse to never improve your life?
The thing you are missing is that rich people get bailed out of their shitty choices. They aren’t lucky, they are just rich. They can fuck up school, go into massive debt, and they get bailed out by their parents. Poor people don’t get bailed out, so you have to be on the straight and narrow. I know lots of people like me, often they were immigrant kids who did the same thing because they also knew their only way out was working their asses off and they had no luxury to party or be lazy or relax. If you are poor and you choose to make bad choices, nobody is going to save you. Life isn’t fair, but the only person who is in charge of your life is yourself.
Go achieve your desires. Nobody is stopping you but yourself. if you want to sit around and whine about how ADHD ruined your life… then that is going to be your life… forever. Just sitting around whining and blaming and being bitter and jealous other people made better choices than you did.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Swing and a miss. I decided to leave my home country because it’s broken, so after a decade of working and saving my own money, I did what I want to do. I went to a state school that gave me a full ride instead of a private school that I’d have to take loans out for, so I didn’t have any student loans holding me back and I could go back to school and get a masters in my new country. I actually just started teaching full time after training for the last couple of years.
I just have the empathy (and vicarious experience) to understand that not everyone is as fortunate as I am. It took a lot of hard work and diligence, but also a lot of luck. I wouldn’t assume that anyone who isn’t able to immigrate to a new country and begin teaching other new immigrants the language is lazy, likely to settle, or a failure. It’s difficult and like everything worthwhile in life, requires some luck to meet a lot of preparation at the right moment.