It is so easy to misjudge people that take time off and “drop out” to borrow a Learyesqe term. So what? I took 15 years off. I can tell you exactly which wits have been dulled and in many ways I didn’t care if they were or not.
It is no big secret that I have led a pretty solitary and somewhat ridiculed existence since around 2001 in Minneapolis. There are a lot of ways to live. When you have an undergrad in Philosophy, what the hell else makes sense? Mainstream yourself into a hipster that drops ref to people that I used to drop ref to before they did?
“Your problem Matt, is that you never had kids. You would have understood a thing or two about pace and familial communication.” I guess I would have to agree with you on that. I concerned myself with completely different things like abstractions that had no root in reality. The abstractions haven’t changed and generation after generation there are others that think they are spending their time wisely studying them. Just think for a second how many people graduated with degrees in philosophy from 4 year colleges all across the US in 2018. Would you believe me if I told you that the only reason that they actually declared a major like that is because they didn’t understand peer competition or competition in general?
When you are 19-22 there is still time to turn your life around. You can focus on what exactly will be of value whether or not anyone tries to tell you differently. You can run stats. You can see what the job market needs. I am not really addressing those that always intended to go mainstream and just wanted a BA to tuck under his/her belt like a milestone. I am addressing the people that genuinely thought there is value in studying the questioning of value.
