1279 replies to this topic

[legacyme3]

I missed my Muscles and Guns day! (March 11)

 

So happy belated Muscles and Guns day to myself! It's been 2 years now!

 

[Monkeydog]

That picture is so beautiful.

I should really set something up to make that more obvious.

Happy MaG day Leggy!

[SpazCat]

It's okay, I have no idea when mine is. I think we all posted about it somewhere. Happy belated MaG day!

[kspr]

shut up and give me $31k

[kspr]

3 hours til i go head to head with Foreigner in a battle for live entertainment ratings supremacy. They're playing ONE block away from the theater. it's sold out, so i think i'll walk by afterwards and put my ear up to the wall and try to pick through the scene. i hope it doesn't rain later. 

[panda]

So not only did WSU win against KU (yay), I actually got to strike up a conversation with a girl at the bar. Then I asked for her number. Then we kissed.

That's four things that almost never happen.

[legacyme3]

And consequently, those are in order of least import to most import.

 

That's both wonderfully awesome and wonderfully orderly of you.

 

Congratulations!

[lazlo falconi]

Been gone for a few days at a convention. It was a lot of fun, met a bunch of cool people, saw some people I haven't seen in a while, rolled a sweet D&D Next monk... All in all, good weekend.

[Monkeydog]

Been gone for a few days at a convention. It was a lot of fun, met a bunch of cool people, saw some people I haven't seen in a while, rolled a sweet D&D Next monk... All in all, good weekend.

What kind of convention?

 

I'm going to one tomorrow, but it's not an exciting kind.

[legacyme3]

So... I find myself contemplating going back to college.

 

My girlfriend and I have been talking a lot about our future lately, and soon, she plans to get an apartment near her college.

 

I looked into the college myself, and am overjoyed to learn that you can take classes online there. And they also have a cross country program.

 

And they are about 1/4 as expensive as my old college, so I won't be in monstrous amounts of debt. And if I move in with her (which she has asked about), I can even go to the college to get hands on help when I need it.

 

And I'm always more motivated when I'm around her. I don't know what it is about my current homelife, but I'm unable to even do basic tasks here. When I went to California for two weeks, I found myself able to do things that I found depressing.

 

I dunno, maybe I'm overexcited about nothing. But it's nice to feel overexcited about something at all. Life has been rather depressing lately, with all the death in the family over the past two years.

[Hyperlisk]

I'd say just do it and take a chance. Of course, only do it if you are actually going to do it. No point going if you don't plan on actually putting in the effort.

[legacyme3]

Yeah, if I decide I want to do it, I'm going into it all in this time. 

 

I don't like passing blame, so this isn't an excuse. When I was in college the first time (I had JUST turned 18 my first week in college) it was my first foray into living on my own and having to acquire things I needed on my own. I was struggling to juggle a personal life, a school life, and my athletic life (I'm a runner). When things started getting too much, I had to go to the school counselor.

 

Through a couple of visits and then one to a doctor (counselor thought I suffered from mental illnesses), I was first diagnosed with "major depression". It was around this time that I nearly died in a race, which only further lowered my morale, and led to other isolated incidents.

 

I ended up dropping out for a combination of reasons. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, I was struggling to even care for myself, and I couldn't juggle three different (and important) aspects of life at once. I was more or less grossly unprepared for college life. Being the first person in my family to attend college didn't help matters, as I was more or less figuring it out on my own (my mom, grandmother, nobody I knew, had actually even graduated high school). And being as immature as I was (I still am, but I was much less mature, and would not have advised me going to school straight out of high school) it was a recipe for disaster.

 

Now, knowing what to expect, I can properly judge whether or not college is a good idea for me and my mindset, having conquered my inner demons (I only rarely struggle with depression, now, and have managed to find ways to cope with it), or at least, more accurately ascertain what sounds like a good idea to me.

 

TL;DR - I think that as a person, I have grown a lot in the nearly 5 years since I dropped out of college. I still have failings, but all people do. And now I have a better network of people I trust, along with a better understanding of the life I will be getting into if I chose to return to college. If I do decide to go back, it's not on a whim. It will be because I am serious about it.

[Stars]

It should definitely help having a clear idea of what you're getting yourself into this time around. I had it a bit better than you when I started out, but I was still very much unprepared, and my first year of college was basically a wash. Things definitely went more smoothly after that experience though.

[kspr]

i dropped out after 1 semester and joined the navy because i couldn't get money to go back. you're already lightyears ahead of me at your age. 

[legacyme3]

i dropped out after 1 semester and joined the navy because i couldn't get money to go back. you're already lightyears ahead of me at your age. 

 

That's another route I might have to consider. I haven't gotten into the college, because I haven't applied.

 

But I will definitely need financial aid. If money isn't there, I might be shoehorned into that path, at least momentarily. 

[Hyperlisk]

Yeah, I only mention it because that was my downfall. Laziness. Not going to class. Not doing homework. It would have been easy had I just REALLY done it. Though I am a lucky person that happened to land a nice job without the degree, I could be much worse off had I not gotten my job and been able to pay off my loans I accrued during my unproductive time in college.

[kspr]

i just asked a jew for advice on a slave joke.

 

wait lemme back up.

 

so the voyager satellites have both left the heliosphere, and the interesting thing about them is that they have golden records on them with all sorts of images and recordings of our different civilizations. they're all pretty awful, but one of them is a slave song. i think this is just an incredible oversight by nasa, because once the aliens find them, they'll know we're ready to get to work. i thought it would be pretty funny to open my next standup set with that bit, and try to get the audience to sing a slave song with me. the song is actually a gospel song, but try and picture white people in an office singing it. the point is, i want to try and provoke someone in the audience so i can argue with them, and then close with something like: if this was 50 years ago (uncomfortable pause and eye contact with a minority) we wouldn't have been born yet and our parents would still be happy. 

 

i wasn't sure if that crossed any lines or not, so i asked another comic. she said she didn't know. i think it still counts as advice. 

[Monkeydog]

Though I am a lucky person that happened to land a nice job without the degree.

You're a lucky person I'm a lucky person as well. :P

 

And we got the jobs that we did at the time that we did.

 

If you don't want to go to school though, unless you really want to and are going to put in the effort, just don't do it. Don't put in the heartbreak. It's far more worth it to learn some kind of skill and try and find a job. You have to be lucky, of course, to find a job you might actually consider a career, but if you go to school and quit it again all you'll end up with is a whole lot of nothing a debt. 

 

I didn't go to school. I probably should have. I did a little community college and it was boring. I very luckily found a job at a company I really enjoy, doing something that I might have never saw myself doing, but enjoy anyways. Maybe I'm still a failure, maybe I could have been even more successful. But I enjoy my life, I had good years despite not going to school. Not going to college isn't going to make you a failure. But taking on debt and going back and not completing is more of a risk and a hole than not even trying.

[lazlo falconi]

You can say you're a failure, but you're already doing what I want to do, you're a couple years younger than me, and have no college debt (While I have tens of thousands of dollars). So I guess you're at least doing better than me?

[legacyme3]

I don't really care one way or the other about how much money I have, or how much of a success people consider me to be.

 

My goal is to find something I want to do, and do it, regardless of how much income it brings me.

 

The issue of course is I still have no idea what I want to do.