I recall being in grad school and by virtue of a massive dose of procrastination (I plan to thank my Dad for that…soon) I was watching…er…maybe binge watching 30 Rock and that particular scene (“Who’s the worst? Grad students!”) came up.
I did not finish that particular paper that particular night weekend.
Oh the times I’ve wanted to shout, “THE WORD IS THAN. NOT THEN. IT’S FUCKEN THAN, AND IT’S DIFFERENT FROM THEN AND YOU SHOULD KNOW THE GODAMN DIFFERENCE.”
No they don’t mean well. But they do mean well to needle you for half points to inflate their grades as much as you are willing to comply. And they know, too. They have cameras and 6th senses and know when you wake up in a happy good mood that day and then they pounce. First one email, then another, then a flash flood of emails all demanding extensions and re-submissions and re-grading and could you just look at question 7 and would you be willing to re-read it if I sent it again and… GAH! If I made a tally of all the dogs and cats, grandmothers and grandfathers who died, all the car troubles, issues at work, illnesses and incapacitations, and then correlated that data with the rest of the population, that R-squared would be ZERO. No correlation, because students are a breed apart.
Okay, so the price of a really crappy used car plus $600 for shipping before bidding ends. They say you shouldn’t spend more than the price of a car on your hobbies, and I can’t claim to not be intrigued. Still too rich for my blood but who knows what people are going to try and get rid of in a couple years when I have the money for one.
I just realized what a mangled mess of a blockquoteastrophe that was… No idea how I manged it.
My friend works for an Italian electrical company (yes, I know), and his job is making sense of poorly translated schematics. Including, I kid you not, figuring out all the polarities on the wiring diagrams…
Well, I’ve failed that test. The last used car I’ve bought was $1800 (and it runs great, needs an engine flush). I’ve spent thousands on plants. No regrets.
So…my tech career world kinda came crashing down around me after a colon cancer scare.
I had a couple of my own small OEMs serving small to medium businesses for servers, networks, accounting software, PCs, whatever. I closed those because running a small business sucks. Nerding for other people didn’t pay quite as well but at least I had a life.
Anyway that’s all had to change for a while and now it’s come to a head.
And my sister’s bad fortune, which entails a dying friend, is sending me to Disneyland. Fuck me? I don’t know what to make of it sometimes. I hope this doesn’t suck. I think it’ll be ok…
That sucks. I think the biggest fallacy in “being your own boss” is how much less stressful it is. Or that the satisfaction makes up for it, or something. I’m a little confused though, are you literally going to Disneyland?
I’ve found that when things come to a head, it’s nature’s way of stabilizing an unstable situation. Doesn’t make it suck any less, but there’s often some relief in being on firmer ground in the end.
Agreed. I’ve been my own boss, and was successful at it, but it didn’t make me a fortune and the heartburn wasn’t worth it. I’ve also been a manager for others and didn’t care for that either. I played startup roulette several times, but never won, though I know several people who have. Now I’ve found a niche as a problem-solver in a huge multinational corp, make an excellent salary and benefits, and it suits me just fine. I’m dug in like a tick. I try to avoid the corporate politics and I work around the bureaucracy. It’s not terribly exciting but I don’t need exciting right now in my life.
I do freelance work and don’t make a lot of money, so sometimes I wonder what life would be like on the other side of the fence. However, today I rented a car and sat in traffic in the rain for about five hours. I’m living the dream.
(And I didn’t even get to where I wanted to go. I’d still only driven just over half of a two hour journey in 4 hours, so I gave up and went home.)
I left a cushy, cushy job for startup roulette. Why did I do that? The pay is worse, the hours are worse, it has ruined my short term health, and likely ruined my two decade marriage.
Kids, don’t do startups. Do drugs instead, they are safer.
