EPT10 Things I Learned in My 20's - Page 2
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ghrur
United States3785 Posts
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alukarD
Mexico396 Posts
But going back to your 10 points, instead of the things you learned from your 20's it seems they are the things you learned from college (which includes friends and jobs). Still, great things you point out. I noticed something by reading your blog and other people responses: everybody follows the same guide-lines. And if they don't follow them, at least they know which ones they are, which are: study, get good grades, study more, save money for your college, get better grades, apply to the best colleges, wait for the responses, take the one that suits you the most (or like the most), don't slack, ITS COLLEGE, do your best, do internships, finish college, get a nice job, start earning money, and wait until you get married, get children of your own, and teach them to do the same cycle you did. I think I'm missing my own point... Humm I guess my point is,that's the easy part. It's a one way road, you just gotta follow it. Sure, it might not be easy, but, as you can see if you look around, most of the people who follow it get to the end-line, without being geniuses or supernatural humans or really making any "real" decisions. The real fun and challenge begin when there's no more road to follow. Where to go. What to do. You start earning money. What should I do with it? Save for a car or house? Invest on a business or in acquiring more abilities? Use it and enjoy it traveling and partying while I'm still young? Not work and just relax,play my guitar and be a hippie about life? Well, finally it seems I'm getting the actual point myself of my own nonsenses: the only constant in all of this is money. And money comes and money goes. And all or most of our lifes are sadly around money. So all my life should I give my all and eventually get rich? Well, that's not necessarily a fact. So what?! What are we supposed to do... Be happy. Happiness is inside of us, not outside. Don't need things or people or anything to be happy. Just be it. Because all the things you can think of eventually will go missing, and if your happiness depends on it, well, I think you can guess the outcome. Yeah sure we are bounded to follow this road as much as we want to get out of it. But every step you take, be it forward, backwards or sideways just make sure you are enjoying it. Nothing else matters. Things, like friends, money, your soul-mate, etc., will just eventually get to you. Life works ins mysterious ways. Don't try to understand everything. Just enjoy it while it lasts. Don't be to hard on yourself when making mistakes. Just laugh about them and try to be a better person. Don't worry too much in always making the right choice, because you won't. Agh gosh I don't what happened I just started typing and kept on going. Hopefully someone gets something positive about all of this. As I said: I just finished college,and I'm 23. I would love to be 30's one day and look back and point out what went right and what went wrong. This is going to be legen WAIT FOR IT dary. | ||
itsjustatank
Hong Kong9148 Posts
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On March 05 2015 16:06 itsjustatank wrote: old def. | ||
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On March 05 2015 12:01 ghrur wrote: Hey Haji, what do you mean by taking advantage of campus recruiting? I'm a junior in college and have a summer internship lined up, and hopefully a job next year, but should I still be attending job fairs, getting recruiter information, speaking with people, etc? On-campus recruiting is where your school is a "target school" for certain very-large companies. This means that people from these companies will come to your campus to actively pitch you about opportunities at their company and urge you to apply. They will hold interviews on-campus for the first few rounds rather than have you fly out to their HQ or do remote interviews right away, and will have much higher quotas for acceptance for your school compared to non-target schools. For instance, Goldman Sachs will come to Princeton to aggressively recruit undergrads but will probably not come to Cal Poly SLO across the country, even though SLO is a great school and I've have nothing but pleasant encounters with its alums. Essentially, as a "current student" on campus, you get preferential treatment as a job applicant compared to someone right out of college but is no longer a current student. This is the case for even companies that post job openings on your campus recruitment portal but don't send a warm body to campus. Simply put, you are like a car where the moment you drive off the lot, your life gets a lot harder. If you get an offer from the company you're interning at and you're happy with the terms and enjoy working there, you can (1) accept the offer right away, or (2) use that offer and try to get a better offer elsewhere via the on campus recruitment timeframe, but either is just fine. | ||
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On March 05 2015 15:40 alukarD wrote: Nice read. I'm 23. Recently finished school. Engineer as well. Can't really say those same 10 points apply to me or people in general in my country. It's entirely possible that this advice may be only pertinent to people like myself: US Citizen, going to a US school, career in the US, upper middle class or above background, tool'ish study habits, etc. But going back to your 10 points, instead of the things you learned from your 20's it seems they are the things you learned from college (which includes friends and jobs). Still, great things you point out. fwiw only the first three points were learned from college. The rest came in my late 20's. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if people in developing nations (as defined by those orgs that define these things) are forced to become wiser about life much earlier than us in the so called first world nations. It's probably both a blessing and a curse for both of us in either camp. I noticed something by reading your blog and other people responses: everybody follows the same guide-lines. And if they don't follow them, at least they know which ones they are, which are: study, get good grades, study more, save money for your college, get better grades, apply to the best colleges, wait for the responses, take the one that suits you the most (or like the most), don't slack, ITS COLLEGE, do your best, do internships, finish college, get a nice job, start earning money, and wait until you get married, get children of your own, and teach them to do the same cycle you did. To be honest, this still works in the US, and is the objectively wisest path to take, all things being equal. Of course, things frankly just aren't equal for everyone, and at some point things start to fall apart and we start to realize that the objectively optimal paths just don't work for us. The real fun and challenge begin when there's no more road to follow. Where to go. What to do. You start earning money. What should I do with it? Save for a car or house? Invest on a business or in acquiring more abilities? Use it and enjoy it traveling and partying while I'm still young? Not work and just relax,play my guitar and be a hippie about life? I currently run a small startup, and I agree that this is the most fulfilling and rewarding time of my life. That being said, if I hadn't worked pretty hard at each stage of my life despite all my mistakes and worked to make the most of my suboptimal situations, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to be where I am today. Opportunities are fleeting, and it's important to be able to just have faith in the fortune that brought you those opportunities. Well, finally it seems I'm getting the actual point myself of my own nonsenses: the only constant in all of this is money. And money comes and money goes. And all or most of our lifes are sadly around money. So all my life should I give my all and eventually get rich? Well, that's not necessarily a fact. So what?! What are we supposed to do... Be happy. Happiness is inside of us, not outside. Don't need things or people or anything to be happy. Just be it. Because all the things you can think of eventually will go missing, and if your happiness depends on it, well, I think you can guess the outcome. Yeah sure we are bounded to follow this road as much as we want to get out of it. But every step you take, be it forward, backwards or sideways just make sure you are enjoying it. Nothing else matters. Things, like friends, money, your soul-mate, etc., will just eventually get to you. Life works ins mysterious ways. Don't try to understand everything. Just enjoy it while it lasts. Don't be to hard on yourself when making mistakes. Just laugh about them and try to be a better person. Don't worry too much in always making the right choice, because you won't. I don't optimize for money, but tbh money is still a factor that shouldn't be downplayed. Being in a position to not have to worry about money (including my own circumstance) is a tremendous stroke of fortune that needs to be appreciated. That being said, as you say, after a certain point more money gives very little rewards (I think that the greatest reward of money is security, freedom, and flexibility in life decisions), and it's a good time to reflect on what gives you great satisfaction in life. Agh gosh I don't what happened I just started typing and kept on going. Hopefully someone gets something positive about all of this. As I said: I just finished college,and I'm 23. I would love to be 30's one day and look back and point out what went right and what went wrong. This is going to be legen WAIT FOR IT dary. GL!  | ||
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On March 05 2015 03:51 QuanticHawk wrote: Good blog as usual I agree with all but #3. I agree with the premise of it, but not that you should do it in the first year. I would say do gen eds, use your electives on things that interest you, and commit to a major by your 2nd year. All the hard stuff is in your major anyway. There's no rush to commit at 17/18. Get a little more experience first. Yeah, the specifics will probably differ from school to school. | ||
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On March 05 2015 11:29 dudeman001 wrote: All very fine points. And just think, when you turn 40 you're STILL going to have 10 more new things you learned  What's life without continued learning.  | ||
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Superiorwolf
United States5509 Posts
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Grobyc
Canada18410 Posts
 .Two things that I would definitely have in my list so far, which I really only learned the last couple years: - Travel. Go see the world. Not just a week vacation to Hawaii, go actually explore. It changed my life massively in the best way possible. It's made me realize and discover things about not only other people and places that intrigue me, but especially about myself since I spent the whole time together and only had myself to rely on. - Put in effort to keep a healthy lifestyle. This mostly refers to nutrition/personal health, but spiritually/mentally as well. This applies throughout your whole life naturally, but it's best learned earlier sooner than later. A lot of people don't stop and review themselves to evaluate their happiness and health. You'll be on this planet a long time, do yourself a favour. | ||
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alukarD
Mexico396 Posts
I agree as well with the other two points: take care of your health and travel. The first one, well, should be for obvious reasons. But I'm not sure everybody thinks so. People only really care about health when they don't have it. We should always take care of ourselves, I can't stress this enough. You don't really have to follow the "I want to live forever road": be a vegetarian, run 5 miles a day, go 3 hours to the gym, don't go to much under the sun and use sunscreen, etc. But rather just make sure you stay away of the "I want to die soon" road: eat junk food, pizza, tacos, and fast food every single day, be lazy even to take a walk, party every weekend, drink and do drugs like if there was no tomorrow, don't wash (clean habits) yourself, etc. And the second, travel, well, I truly believe that its a great point as well. This one is a tricky one in my opinion though. Traveling involves most of the time substantial amounts of money and time. Also, for some people is harder just the fact to travel, having VISAs and other things that just deny you the privilege of it. If your parents can support you, or you already have successful businesses by your early to mid 20´s, well that's an easy answer: travel a lot. Go explore. Go meet people. Go learn other ways (cultures). Eat different stuff. Try different weathers. Live a different life. What's there more rewarding of getting to really know your world? Usually what this makes is that it will either assure you of who you are and understand why you truly love where you live and all the people around you and it will just make your passion burn stronger to keep on going and reach your goals. That, or the opposite, such as realize you don't really enjoy where you live, your current situation in your country, going back to the same habits just makes nonsense and you're willing to start a new you, be it there or somewhere else. This is great, instead of the great majority I think that can't really afford this luxury and just have to settle with what they have, who they are and where they are, make the best out of their unique situations without really knowing for certain if that's for you, if out there is something that suits you better... But for people that don't really have easy choice, there are a lot of tradeoffs, as for example myself: should I earn enough money to go travel somewhere? I really want to. I'm sure I'll have the greatest time of my life. But when I get back, it'll be like beginning from scratch again, with no savings, I just force myself to work more time, and it just delays all my plans in life. Or should I wait until I have my own business and my incomes can truly support my traveling experiences? This could as well never happen. Oh well, that is life I guess. Taking risks. I could as well just settle down, decide just to focus on my simple, quite life, read the news, smoke my pipe, and one day, a pack of dwarves and a gray wizard will just talk me into going with them into an unexpected journey. | ||
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Burrfoot
United States1176 Posts
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Dknight
United States5223 Posts
Last year, I had one of my worst academic conference presentations of my life at a really poor time as I'll soon be on the market for hopefully an R1 position (top research position at a university). That only motivated me to make sure at this current conference I'm at, I'll be much more prepared, and it resulted in the best presentation of my life with some key people in the audience. Does this mean our memories from Paris with Blake and James means we're not friends Haji?! | ||
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phiinix
United States1169 Posts
Traveling on the other hand, while I think it's great, I don't think it's for everyone. | ||
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LaughingTulkas
United States1107 Posts
I'm not quite sold on number 7 though. I'm not a big TV watcher, and I think that's okay, the people who love to watch and talk about TV are "not my people". I can talk about sports or family or jobs or even movies with people if I'm meeting someone new, and I've never felt like I couldn't make connections with people because I don't watch the same TV shows as them. I definitely don't think you should take hours of your life watching shows when you'd rather do something else just for talking to new people. I definitely wish I had hosted more board game nights though, now I want to have them way more and it's hard to find time more than a couple a month. | ||
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Scorcher2k
United States802 Posts
A little background about myself: I'm a 30 year old white male from Vermont who lived in New Mexico for the last 5 years and have been living/working in silicon valley since November now. I grew up playing every sport there was (most weren't organized), playing video games, hunting, working on computers, climbing trees and hiking, chorus, you get the idea... My work history includes working in a large steel fabrication company and doing every aspect of that fabrication, providing tech support for a school district, a stint as a legal assistant, and I'm currently with a start up working with semi conductors. Hopefully this should give some insight as to why I might not identify with a single group of people. The people that are closest to me are people who just enjoy your company as much as you enjoy theirs. Not all of your passions have to align for this to happen and not all of the people are going to fall into the same group. In fact I think if you find yourself only hanging out with one type of person or group of people you're probably missing out on some things. The best advice I've ever heard was "Do what you fear because you'll never grow doing what you already know." | ||
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Yurie
11640 Posts
On March 06 2015 12:08 phiinix wrote: Traveling on the other hand, while I think it's great, I don't think it's for everyone. I have travelled a bit. It is honestly the best conversation piece, besides that I don't really like it. The break from the everyday life is the only part I really like compared with normal days at home. That break can be gotten easier than having to travel though. Perhaps I have just gone to the wrong places (Seattle, Frankfurt, London, Helsinki, Copenhagen, various places in Sweden) but I honestly don't see the charm in spending money on it. If I could travel for free I would probably like it more but that isn't the case. | ||
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Meta
United States6225 Posts
I majored in Mechanical Engineering when I probably should have went EE or CS. Glad to hear that you would have rather done CS than EE. Grass is always greener, I guess | ||
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D-light
Finland7364 Posts
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JSH
United States4109 Posts
I don't watch anything on TV, except Football, and if I didn't have that I would be so awkward with people hahaha It's just something almost everyone can relate to Other People: What do you like to do? Me: Read Books, play video games, listen to music. Others: What kind? Me: Non-Fiction, Starcraft, Classical Others: ... Interesting Me: ... I also watch football Others: Oh cool! Did you see the playoff game last night? Me: Yeah I can't believe how they literally threw the game at the end etc etc... Also good tips OP | ||
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