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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   678 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 16, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I want a degree so that I can get a job that pays well enough to let me live by myself and be independent. I do not want to be dependent on my mother my whole life.

I don't feel like I have any meaningful way to give input on changing motivations, but this part of things seems like a good area for focus. You don't need a degree to live your life and be independent. For many goals, a degree can be instrumentally useful, but if the core goal is really just earning a respectable living, you don't need one. You need to pick a specific skill, develop it, and show up and do it in a tolerably reliable fashion. Which skill? Whatever. Learn to do auto body, wait tables, drive a forklift, put shingles on... whatever. The specifics do matter to how much money and opportunity you'll have, but the point is that you'll make a respectable living and be a respectable man if you just pick something and do it well. You don't need a bullshit political science degree to make a buck sanding bumpers down for painting.

You are right I don't need one, but the lifetime earnings premium you get from a college degree is still very high despite the recent "college is a waste of money" trend. The lifetime earnings premium from a degree is still there even if you include super expensive for profit private colleges and stereotypical no money humanities degrees. If you exclude those, the numbers favor a degree even more.

Maybe spending some time every day thinking about your goal in a positive sense (focus on what's good about it) might help motivate you?

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