Its interesting to see what the future of college will be if it continues to be the case that basically no one can get an entry level job. I can see in 10 years only elite schools and possibly state flagships will remain, private schools will close en masse, and regional public schools will shift to nursing/vocational schools only. What do you think?

I recently sat down with the HS dean and a panel of counselors and staff. I laid it out on them and accused them of systematically contributing to the entitled behavior of my son. We can no longer discipline and prepare our children for the harshness and cruelty of society anymore. There is no preparation but a cliff they're about to fall off when they transition from school to work.

The reason I had a meeting with the school because the school offered my son a program which will help him do his missing project and HW. If he is unable to turn them in they will have assistants do his HW and turn them in on time for him. I spoke to my son about his missing HW and I challenged him to follow up on his HW or else lose his electronic devices and all computers at home past 8PM.

My son reported to the school that he cannot do his school work because his dad is threatening to turn off his computer so he cannot complete his assignments. That's when I had a phone call from the dean and explained to her what had transpired. She scheduled a meeting with me.

During the meeting I laid out on them, they are not to assist my son in anyway without my consent that he is not to be supported by the school other than tutoring. He needs to be held accountable rather than get by with the school's rubber stamping his grades. The dean and school counselor told me they have a mandate to provide my son any kind of support necessary to ensure his "success."

This is a systematic failure of allowing our children to fail through school without any consequences. While some parents will gladly be happy their children is passing school and going on to higher education. It means they've learned nothing. And will be a failure once they stepped into the working world.

Whether it’s because of massive burnout, surprisingly low pay, or a culture that demands too much - what industry did you dedicate yourself to that you now tell people to run away from? What was the final straw for you?

I think it's fine if they are, but should this be the standard?

This is one of many societal mechanisms that forces individuals to continue working within the traditional 9-5 system, even if they don't want to.

Additionally, part time work, fractional, seasonal, independent, and freelance workers are often hung out to dry in terms of benefits because they don't hold a traditional, full time, 9-5 job.

I keep hearing one report after another of football players committing murder or domestic abuse, and getting slaps on the wrist while getting paid millions of dollars to work about 52 days a year.

Meanwhile, teachers are paid pennies to the dollar, required to study to get a masters degree, and are treated like second-class citizens and expected to work more than nearly every other profession.

"But other countries have sports!"

Football isn't played internationally, Soccer is. But those countries don't make sports the point of their culture.

In many of those countries, teachers can EARN A LIVING ON A SINGLE JOB.

Our teachers have to work two jobs and donate plasma just to get by.

In those countries, we have so many stadiums that are used barely 70 days a year. Meanwhile the schools are underfunded and poorly maintained.

The football players get richer, teachers are getting poorer, and somehow nobody sees a problem with this?

Our workforce is suffering a lack of education, our economics systems, our political systems...all of which could be helped through a better financed education system...

But somewhere along the way both education and educators have become hated, while athletes have become glorified...

I don't want this to be a venting post. I'm just curious to hear if anyone else has similar experience. I'm still responsible for my own actions, and I don't want to blame others for my mistakes.

I've never been an ambitious person. When other kids were figuring out what careers they wanted, I had literally no idea what I wanted to do. Nothing interested me. I figured it was okay, because my parents and teachers kept telling me I "still had time" to figure things out. High school comes around, and I still don't have a clue what to do. It's fine, "I still have time." High school ends, I'm too bad at math to get into STEM or engineering, so I just do a year of history. It's fine, everyone says, "you still have time."

I'm now almost 26, getting a useless in degree in something I didn't even know I disliked until now. I wish I'd been told in stricter terms to figure something out before high school. I wish I'd been told to study something useful, not just what I was "interested in." I didn't actually have all that much time. I've lost so much time and money doing shit jobs and studying bullshit, when I could have actually built a life for myself. Can anyone else relate to this? I feel like it must be a common problem, but I rarely hear anything anyone discuss it.

Why do people say the previous generation had it easy compared to the newer generation like nowadays people struggle to keep up with the cost of living, stegnant wages and influence of social media. Hard to afford a house. But back then they could afford houses and life wasn't as stressful as it is today

I'm 21M and I'm fortunate to not need a summer job or a part time job as my parents are nice enough to support me and I don't ask for a lot of things and help them around when they need it.

My question is this: if you didn't HAVE TO have a summer job or part-time job while in school/college, would you (or did you) get one anyway? If so, do you regret having to be at work instead of relaxing and doing the things you like or while your friends were doing other things? Or the opposite, if you didn't have a summer job/part-time job do you regret not getting some job experience?

Ever work in a place that swears by safety? Safety is the most important? But then see certain things get swept under the rug to get more numbers for the company?

Places in the US only care about your safety because they are forced to. OSHA forces them to care. If they don’t care and you get hurt they get extreme fines or risk being shut down

Back when OSHA wasn’t around did you notice how much companies didn’t care about employees? They didn’t care if you got hurt because there were no repercussions for them.

I’m sure some of you are gonna be like oh not my company! My company is great! My boss is great! Some individual bosses genuinely do care. But companies as a whole do not give a damn.

These companies do not care about you, they are forced to

I’m currently reading a book for a college class called “Evicted” by Matthew Desmond. It’s about low-income renters and landlords in Milwaukee after the recession. It’s an incredibly well researched and well written book, and I enjoy reading it, but some of the content is beyond infuriating.

The flippant disregard for safety, cleanliness, respect, and financial fairness on the part of the landlords makes me so upset, it’s difficult to continue reading at times. The book contains detailed stories about landlords evicting renters because they “seem like crackheads”, or landlords raising rent on dilapidated and neglected properties in bad neighborhoods because “a two bedroom is a two bedroom, and they have to live somewhere”. It just fills me with impotent rage and hopelessness.

I do recommend this book to anyone interested, but I haven’t experienced this level of anger while reading before, and it’s sometimes exhausting.

Like the timing of everything that day was just impeccable. I was getting paid on Wednesday for almost two years but for some crazy reason this specific day I didn't check my account before I left work but I already made plans to buy another ounce after work. When I found out I didn't have it I was hot.

I called the service center for my job and the lady kept saying the payday has always been Thursday(which on paper true) but obviously repeating that in a situation where it never happened before was irking me. I ended up cursing on the phone and my job is very strict about that.

I know part of it was a meltdown from my autism because I was screaming my head off and saying anything. The whole neighborhood probably heard me. I would've had another chance but I got in trouble twice for something at work that was physical. This last thing was just icing on the cake.

But as a result when I got fired I immediately stopped smoking weed and a month after or so I stopped cigarettes. It's insane how much money I can save now and the job I work now is only 18 bucks a hour and never has OT. My last job was 20 a hour with a lot of OT(I didn't mind though that job was cake) and my checks were ridiculous. But somehow I still never had extra money for myself

I now acknowledge my real cause of this which is my addictions, not saving money, and the autism was just icing on the cake to make me lose control over the phone instead of hanging up.

I’m 19, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of life I want to build.

I’m not chasing millions, luxury cars, or some extraordinary level of wealth. I want something much more ordinary, but meaningful: a stable life, a home of my own, work that allows me to live comfortably, financial security, a loving family, children someday, and enough freedom to enjoy life without constantly worrying about money.

I want to become the kind of man who can take care of himself and the people he loves. Someone who makes thoughtful decisions, understands money, handles difficult situations calmly, and doesn’t have to learn every lesson the hard way.

The problem is that there’s so much advice online, but it’s often difficult to tell who’s actually speaking from experience and who’s simply good at talking.

So I’d rather hear from people who have lived it.

If you’re in your 30s, 40s, 50s, or beyond, and you’ve built a life you’re genuinely happy with, I’d love to ask you a few questions.

1. What do you wish you’d understood at 19?

Not the generic advice you’ve heard a thousand times. What did you personally learn the hard way?

2. What decisions had the biggest positive impact on your life?

Was it a career choice, a relationship, a financial decision, a habit, or something completely unexpected?

3. How did you build financial stability?

I’m especially interested in the journey from having little money to being able to afford a home, a car, and a comfortable life without living paycheck to paycheck. What actually made the difference?

4. What mistakes should a young man avoid in his 20s?

Which mistakes cost you years, money, opportunities, or peace of mind?

5. What did you learn about relationships and family that you couldn’t have understood when you were younger?

What makes a relationship last? How do you balance love, work, friendships, and personal responsibilities?

6. How do you make good decisions when you have no idea what you’re doing?

When you’re young, you often have to make important choices without enough experience to know whether you’re making the right ones. How did you learn to trust your judgment?

7. What does a genuinely successful life look like to you now?

Has your definition of success changed with age? What turned out to matter much more than you expected, and what mattered much less?

And finally, if you could give one piece of advice to someone who is 19 today and wants to build a good life from the ground up, what would it be?

I’m not looking for perfect people or stories about overnight success. I’d rather hear an honest answer from someone who has made mistakes, struggled, learned, and gradually built something meaningful.

If you’re willing to share your experience, I’d genuinely appreciate it. And if there’s something you wish a younger person had told you before you made a big mistake, I’d especially like to hear it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Math and science made sense to me once someone explained the logic, but memorizing facts for history was much harder. I’ve noticed something similar with Sudoku: once I figure out the logic behind a pattern, the rest gets easier. Was school like that for you, or was memorizing the easier part?

I'm a sous chef who got a little part time job at a preschool. It's a little extra pocket change, and keeping me out of trouble. I've worked in hospitals and retirement homes, too, and I've seen firsthand the "mean girl to caregiver" phenomenon. Well, I've seen it my whole life. My mother was a mean girl turned caregiver, a foster care parent, but there's only so many altercations you can have with different kids from different centers before your supervisors and caseworkers start blaming you. 🙄

These types of mean girls, they have no idea how to have respectful and open communication with other adults. So they get jobs where they can yell at kids or the elderly and blame it on them for being disobedient. I've only been at this preschool for a month, and so far the assistant manager has yelled at me three times for not following instructions she technically never gave me. ("Shouldn't you just know? You're a cook, right?") I ask her to show me how she makes their lunches, and she won't taste my food BECAUSE she wants me to cook like her. Then she goes off loudly whispering to staff, "You can't just eat everyone's food. Some people don't know how to cook." Lady, we aren't Church mothers competing over potato salad, I want you to show me how you season the food so that I just copy you.

And the kids ... A 2-year-old boy is crying and won't sit down to eat, so I need to his level and ask him what's wrong. The teacher would rather yell at him and tell him he won't eat if he doesn't get his act together. It was 15 seconds at the most to calm him down. Teacher ignores us both, starts doom scrolling on her phone and avoiding eye contact with a toddler. Assistant manager says I'm babying them by talking them through their emotions.

The last retirement home I worked at, same thing. Too many bad eggs who were legitimately angry they had to serve people. There's being mad you had to go to work. There's being mad at a rude patient/guest. But the deep-seated resentment that your job is service at all... Why are you in a nursing home?! A vegan resident asked if he can have a side dish without the dairy sauce mixed in, which is simple to do... Who gets mad and tells him no?! We are his ONLY source of food. It is literally nothing for me to grab the veggie mix without sauce, some olive oil and vinegar and toss a single cup for him. That same chef wasn't any better of a leader. New dishwasher gets hired and he ignores the kid for 2 weeks, and get updates on him through gossiping with staff. Literally won't speak to his own employee. I had to point that out to him and he went and apologized to the kid.

I'm just so frustrated that people with the worst communication skills gravitate to working places with vulnerable clientele to avoid fixing their own issues. You work with the elderly so you try to gaslight them into thinking you changed the menu? Dude, they are old, not senile. Plus these people used to be doctors, lawyers, businesspeople... They are literally staring at you like you are stupid because you're trying to trick them about something that they are taking meeting notes about from month to month.

I remember being so excited to graduate high school and how exciting the real world would be. I spent a lot of time studying in high school and didn't go out that much, so I thought things would be different in college. Nope, turns out it was a bust. For once thing, I was so dumb it took me 10 years to get a non-STEM bachelor degree. I also never found "my people" in college, so I just randomly stuck myself into situations and see what would happen. Despite that, I'm still not an interesting person. I was so desperate to try to do something interesting that I quit my job and tried moving abroad, only to be fired after two months. I feel like the last three decades of my life have accounted to nothing. I turned 30 recently and I feel like a complete failure. I'm now working a part-time service industry job for high schoolers.

I'm wondering if there's anyone in my position who can relate.

Going to areas like Akron Ohio, it's interesting to see what the Silicon Valley of the day was 100 years ago. At the time tech was industrials and manufacturing and this was where the killer wages and new cutting edge ideas were. In the 50-60s wages were super high for manufacturing jobs if you included pensions.

But that all left. As the rest of the world got it's stuff together from the post WWII chaos and secure supply chains emerged, the huge wage costs of the US made manufacturing uncompetitive and the jobs went elsewhere. And that was in an industry where there's huge physical relocation and retooling costs. There's more manufactured than ever, the US still does high end manufacturing, and there's profitable companies, but from a career perspective the pipeline is nothing like what it used to be.

Looking at tech, there's the same inflection point where companies are increasingly hammering on the wage cost of domestic US employees. Meanwhile remote work, secure digital pathways, and AI translation is eroding barriers that were in place for non US employees. The global pool of people who can do software has never been larger, especially being turbocharged by never ending content to learn from and AI tools to help get mediocre workers up to decent levels.

I see no reason why US software jobs won't suffer the same fate. It's even easier for all the offshoring to happen with software which doesn't have physical elements to redeploy. In the future, there will still be US software companies that are profitable and the global supply of software will be much better and more numerous, but the amount of jobs at the same wage premium just won't be present in 30 years from the worker vantage point. And there will be unrest from un / underemployed US software workers just like occurred from former manufacturing workers in the 90s.

Growing up, my siblings and i were always in the same place. Same house, same noise, same small everyday routines. Now everyone is trying to build their own future in different places i know it’s part of growing up and chasing opportunities, but sometimes i still miss the simple things like random conversations in the kitchen or watching TV together with no real plans.

If you moved away from your siblings or family, what’s a small moment you still miss?

I work in Tech Support when this stuff first caught my radar a couple years ago, I decided to try and branch out look for alternative revenue sources to try and soften what felt like the envietable unemployment in my current field.

However, it seems that people are just going keep pushing this thing everywhere all the time, until there is nothing left.

It's just so awful and depressing, I feel overwhelmed and crazy because it seems like no one else cares or even comprehends the precipice that we are careening over.

For the last year or so I have intentionally restricted my ability to look up this up topic to protect my mental health. Now I find it creeping in from all corners of the box I stuck my head in.

What is our attraction to self destruction as a species? Why must this monster be allowed to be born? Why doesn't anyone care? Frankly I don't know how much more I take.

It's the death of creativity, of art, of thought, of beauty, of what is to be human.

It's the birth of aggregate, of void, and propagated malice.

Not to be too weird and talk about religions I don't believe in (raised Catholic...) but does anyone think maybe this thing could be the antichrist of revelation? I mean the number of the beast? How about a beast made of numbers?

Edit: Apparently I am in fact crazy and need to be medicated, ideally locked away obvi. Thanks peeps, enjoy whatever this is, I am going back inside the cave to pretend to watch the shadows.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much "toughness" a person needs to navigate life. It feels like if you aren’t firm or a bit hard, people eventually start walking all over you. I want to be a kind person, but I don’t want to be a doormat.

How do you find the balance between staying true to your personality and developing the "thick skin" needed to stand your ground? I’d love to hear your perspectives or any personal experiences on how you learned to set boundaries.

I’ve noticed something about myself over the years — I’m obsessed with going down research rabbit holes. If someone gives me a topic, I’ll spend hours (sometimes days) digging through articles, forums, reports, and random corners of the internet trying to understand everything about it.

It doesn’t matter if it’s true crime, geopolitics, science, tech, or some random niche topic. I genuinely enjoy the process of finding information, connecting dots, and explaining things clearly.

The problem is: I don’t know how to turn this into a career.

Most jobs seem to require very specific degrees or skills, but my main strength is curiosity and deep online research. I feel like there must be fields where this kind of obsessive research mindset is valuable.

For people who work in research-heavy roles — what careers should I look into? Things like investigative research, intelligence analysis, journalism research, OSINT, market research, etc.?

Are there jobs where someone basically gets paid to dig deep into topics and produce insights?

I’d really appreciate any suggestions for career paths, industries, or even freelance opportunities where this skill could actually make money.

Thanks!

I wrote a basic scientific paper for one of my classes on the effects acetaminophen has in the body, specifically the liver and I used the phrase “hepatic effects” instead of effects on the liver because I thought it would be better to use scientific language related to my research topic. I know what hepatic means (relating to the liver) because I took intensive science classes in high school and I like using an extensive high level vocabulary and now I’m being accused of using AI and plagiarizing because of it. No way is AI taking credit for the paper I put 8+hrs into researching for and writing. When I was in high school there was no AI so I never had to deal with this. Never thought I’d have to explain why I know the definition of a basic word related to my research.

Everyone has heard the phrase “find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. I’m seventeen, I have plenty of time to grow up, plenty of time to discover. What I don’t have, however, is a clue of what I want. I’m hoping some of you have experienced similaur things and may be able to give me insight: I haven’t found a passion, sure there are things I like, but never something I just LOVE. I want to have a good job, like all people, that I like, and that pays well. The skills I have now, don’t seem to translate to many of jobs that I’d like and that’d pay well, only one or the other extreme. I hope you bring me some advice that may have helped you as you grew into adulthood and took on the job market. Thank you.

for the people that read ,I never annotated my books but I realized that writing makes me understand things more and I don't know really how people annotate their books.
I'm looking for advice and techniques on how to get the most out of books, I meanly read classics, non fiction book evolving around different topics : neurology, neuroscience , psychology, philosophy...

I dont know why I dont feel motivated to do anything, its just like I am floating through everything and not really engaging in anything, I know what everyone is gonna say 'Gotta do it to put food on the table','Dont be a cry baby and just do it, you will realise it in future that having a boring job you hate is actually worth it' how do you guys do it?

Recent industry data reveals a stark correlation: the more a job pays, the more likely it is to be remote. While Finance and IT sectors are seeing nearly 40% remote participation, lower-paying essential sectors like Retail and Food Services remain almost entirely on-site. Is this creating a new "class divide" where flexibility is only available to those at the top of the pay scale?

https://www.wfhalert.com/p/remote-work-high-paying-industries