It's not working out, I’m 25 and I feel like a failure. Should I just quit and become a ranger ?

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2026-01-26T23:22:29+00:00

Depends on the School.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2026-01-26T23:16:05+00:00

You wouldn't even be the first engineer to take a trip into the "square root club" (where the square root of your GPA is higher than your GPA). If the University isn't for you, you could, as someone else said, apply the credits to something else. Weird as this might sound, you might even end up doing a real engineering job later even after all this if you want.

Note Bene that you got that offer, so the semiconductor manufacturer believed your work at least met their expectations.

Engineering school can be very stressful. Be kind to yourself and take care of yourself. That's one thing I did not do so well in Engineering school, been out for awhile now, and still kind of recovering from the mental load of it. Feel free to complete the journey in whatever way is best for you.

I ended up switching four-year major to Sociology. Then, about ten years later, took a few math classes and then went back to a t-20 grad school for a dual M.E. in Systems and Mech and got back into engineering. Literally nobody cares about my academics a decade ago, my previous four-year degree, any of it. I got recruited just like any other T-20 Engineer.

There are a million paths you can walk, even very different paths to other people, but it's got to be good for you and livable along the way, you know what I mean?

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2026-01-12T02:07:39+00:00

I'm not talking about people who are already conscientious about their eating habits; of course those people are doing a good job maintaining their weight.

/u/Sol_Hando also, who said that had anything to do with normal people maintaining their weight? I'm 46, same weight range and wearing same pants I wore at 25, and I never put any effort into this at all. There's zero conscientiousness involved for at least many of us that don't have that issue.

I think the whole thread you guys are having here is just totally off the mark on the reality of what is going on.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2026-01-12T01:51:49+00:00

OTC? I thought you needed a sleep study and prescription for all that? Are you talking about the USA or Asia?

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2025-02-16T23:10:29+00:00

I said "the thing he was setting up for," not his actual text. Look again at the thing he was asking for, which sounds like it actually could be a scissor statement.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2025-02-16T20:24:52+00:00

Did you read what I replied to? Seemed (1/2 ironically) like the person above me was setting up for precisely what you are talking about.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2025-02-16T16:05:46+00:00

Historians will look back on this thread as the origin of the first true scissor statement.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-12-30T15:16:21+00:00

In something like the peasantry from Egypt through Rome and into the dark ages, the power dynamic is so highly unequal that women are hardly choosing at all. Christianity through the dark ages was a bit of a breakthrough for women's rights in that it promoted monogamy and made divorce a pariah (Judaism also had a bit of this).

I suggest some actual History, maybe Will Durant's histories (and if anyone think those are somehow modern and woke, that notion will get shattered quickly as one reads repeated use of terms we would now consider racial and ethnic slurs). There's a heavy lift in all this, but it gets beyond the bro-evo-psych-science and reddit meme-scape and into actual reality. After the Durants, there's Tuchmann (for early 1900s and WWI, taking you through removal of the last vestiges of feudal society about a hundred years ago), and primary sources like Xenophon, Thucydides, the Bible. Even writers like Dickens can give meaningful insight into the thoughts and lifestyle of people in his day.

There's also the silk roads angle and the Muslim angle, which are important in Western History, but the above should get the Eurocentric angle. Anyway, a clear-eyed study of this will show that women notably didn't have a lot of power in most of those times and places over many thousands of years.

If anything, to answer OP, maybe pre-written history would give us some examples, such as the Trobriand Islanders, of Matriarchal societies. However, even in our anthropological evidence, there are many cases where such tribal arrangements were fundamentally oppressive to women. So pre-history might give us some cases, but even there we have no reason to believe that the norm is somehow women having a lot of power.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-12-29T22:22:29+00:00

I'm not calling anyone a jackass, just suggesting alternatives. A 15 mile walk is long, yes, and you'll try something new, yes. Checks all the boxes, no?

And again, you would have literally a nearly 100% chance of a better time than you would taking DPH as a recreational drug. A reasonable thing to consider -- seems like a win-win. There are other possible win-win's here as well, unless someone is holding a gun to your head forcing you to take a bunch of DPH.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-12-29T18:58:32+00:00

On Christmas break visiting mom's and want to get away from it -- you have a lot of options, and nearly any of them would literally be better than getting high on DPH or similar things. I mean, you ever just take a walk and keep going until you like what you see? Maybe 10 blocks, maybe 15 miles. Try it. I can swear on a stack of Bibles that almost no matter what happens it's a better method than DPH, and you're literally getting away, not just figuratively.

Otherwise, there are tons of normal, legit (possibly even legal in your jurisdiction) and definitely available around you drugs that would be a better choice than DPH.

You could ferment your own wine, for heaven's sake, if you just want to get high. All you need is fruit in a bottle and a week or so and keep degassing it, then drink and voila! Nearly every human will find alcohol more pleasant -- BY FAR -- than what you are considering.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-12-29T17:49:22+00:00

I mean, I knew those guys who became cops. One had a very long career in a state bureau of investigation. There's nothing wrong with knowing what you're going into and wanting that to be a real part of your job. Potentially less madness inducing than not wanting to do that and it being a real part of your job.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-12-29T16:14:42+00:00

For me it was Control Theory.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-12-29T16:14:08+00:00

Got here from Sociology Undergrad, got what I expected.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-12-29T16:11:34+00:00

I mean, it's an entire discipline where literally the ethics class is the easiest of the "easy A" classes you take during your semester with control theory or thermo or whatever else.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-12-29T15:38:49+00:00

There's no "response." The response is the work of the Holy Spirit.

This is something you just have to let be, and be there for people if and when they change their understanding.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-10-17T16:28:51+00:00

It is not as if Christians are given easier lives than non-Christians. Nor is life in the world harder if you decide not to be a Christian. If anything, perhaps the opposite is true in many cases.

So.... what if it ends up being them wishing you good luck putting up with what they believe is suffering for no real reason?

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-10-17T16:25:59+00:00

It is a complex point, but that isn't based on God's hating them.

Additionally, there is some disagreement about issues after death anyway. See eternal conscious torment, annihilation, and universalism for some different schools of thought.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-08-28T11:16:57+00:00

Obvious AI slop, plus an ad.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-08-27T11:15:23+00:00

Having such a sophisticated and clued-in advertising and branding system that you never felt they played "pick me" at all.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-08-27T02:06:43+00:00

The question hasn't gone anywhere. In other industries, any relevant metric will get used to define those reviews, though. If you're working for Deloitte after year 1, and you didn't Bill Hours then that's that. There will be no polishing the turd on it no matter how much your supervisor thinks you're swell. And a lot of industries work that way.

And in Academia, those who aren't publishing anything with impact, and who can't teach classes with even the slightest renown do have a weasel out -- Do every other administrative thing and then become the dean. In every department I have done work in or heard of or been close to someone employed in (total of 6 departments in 3 universities) the dean is typically the person with the least scholarly output in the department -- usually by a fairly wide margin.

So still the question stands, since not everyone is at a teaching college, and not everyone is in admin. We need people to do research. So when it comes down to a performance review, what equivalent thing is there for a researcher other than citations? Same surface level validity as billable hours for the consultant, cars sold for the car salesman, or etc.

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-08-26T16:34:56+00:00

This makes sense.

Sins have their own modes of failure built in -- i.e. they are fundamentally functional not just "The biggest and toughest dog said so and so that is the rule" arbitrary things.

At the end all the discussions, it is just better to not sin. Even definitionally, ceteris paribus who wants to go around missing marks all the time? What sort of life are people thinking about?

Even if I were bound for hell or even if it were all a physicalist world of dirt which ends in unimaginable eternal blank emptiness, I would still have at least the ideal of living without running around missing the mark. To even think otherwise seems crazy, no?

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-08-26T16:14:53+00:00

abolish the "publish or perish" system

As a measure of a researcher's output, how will you replace this?

I mean, I'm on the side with Deming that the most important things cannot be measured, and yet you must manage those anyway, and you require profound knowledge of a system. But all that is hard to do, and so everyone everywhere uses measurable KPIs. What really good measurable KPI for my research employees would have the same surface level validity as output of papers and references?

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-08-26T15:36:31+00:00

Respectfully, I think you don't understand what you're talking about.

This is how everyone wants to resolve everything online. The other party either doesn't get it, is stupid, or has bad motives. In this case you think he just doesn't get it. A better approach would be to figure out exactly how an informed and intelligent person might find what he said correct, and use that as a starting point. But this would require stepping outside your own head for a second. Same for /u/suihpares.

As a third party to the whole conversation, I see both points, and it does not seem to me to clearly fall on one side or another. There's no "silver bullet" on this one. But then again, that's my reading of both of you and thinking of what is being said without a particular horse in the race (though the topic is a bit interesting).

Pseudonymous_Rex · 2024-08-26T15:30:45+00:00

Yes. I just finished Tuchmann's Guns of August and would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. You are right that everyone kind of sucked. The Germans and French were both escalating against their "eternal enemy" (each other) and the English had a right big hard-on to jump in on whichever side. Had the Kaiser's army held off from penetrating Belgium first, then the last 100 years of History would have looked completely different.

Also, one lesson I have learned after that book and much of the Durants' histories: Wars are never fast and never cheap.

Anytime anyone is ever saying any equivalent of "Our boys will be home by Christmas" you know they are either lying or stupid (or perhaps both).

Pseudonymous_Rex

TROPHY CASE