Illuminating the Facts About Behavioral Health and Rising Above the Stigma
Another long December has come again, another year of trying to forget the way you made me feel, another year of trying to forgive myself for what I let happen, another year of searching for ways to finally heal.
Another long December of regretting the night we laid in a hotel bed, you left me there alone but the memories still persevere, I knew I’d never see you again from the sinking feeling of dread, as you walked to the door so cavalier.
Another long December of remembering how I fell to the floor from the words she said, it was Christmas Eve and you asked your ex-fiance to break-up with me on your behalf, as you didn’t have the courage to say it to me yourself instead, an act so true to your nature of being cowardice riffraff.
Another long December of hating you and hating myself more, I haven’t dated another person since you left me 8 years ago, when I watched you walk out of that fucking door, not knowing how bitter I’d become or how cold I’d grow.
Another long December and I’m still emotionally vacant, another year of not letting anyone get past my wall, my heart may still be there but my love is latent, I just can’t bring myself to trust anyone at all.
Another long December of wondering where at night you rest, lingering thoughts of how much more time in jail you’ve spent, or if there’s still a warrant out for your arrest, or if your daughter even remembers that you’re still her parent.
Another long December of seeing your face on everyone, of foolishly thinking you’ll find your way back to me, as if somehow seeing you again will undo what you’ve done, like we could just start over so easily.
Another long December of ghosts and sunsets, another year of an untouched pillow and a cold sheet, of hopelessness and unhealthy mindsets, longing for a place and a time where our hands could meet.
Another long December of wanting to believe that this time could be different, that this time I’d be the only one and there’d be no silence and secrecy, that your ex-fiance won’t get involved and be so belligerent, perhaps she’ll finally let go of you and her jealousy.
Another long December of constant delusional thought, of confusing who you were with who I wanted you to be, I need to stop being so hung-up and distraught, to find a way to finally let go and be free.
Today is World Suicide Prevention Day!
Some of us have had suicidal thoughts in the past.
Some of us are currently having suicidal thoughts.
Some of us have put those thoughts into actions and have had abandoned attempts.
Some of us have fully attempted suicide and survived.
Some of us have lost loved ones to suicide.
Some of us have experienced all of these things.
Today is personal for us. Personal for me and for some of you, my family, friends, former colleagues, and strangers who fit into one or more of these categories.
Today, we remember our struggle. Today, we confront our struggle. And for some, we remember someone who’s been lost to the struggle.
We shine a light on a topic that too many people run away from, who wish to cast it into the darkness to be forgotten and unspoken. But these people do not understand that in the darkness it festers and spreads, for it thrives in the darkness.
Today we stand together in defiance of stigma. That wretched societal abomination that surrounds us like walls, holding us captive and unreachable. Keeping us alone in the darkness at times in our lives when the last thing we should ever feel is alone.
Not only is stigma a visual impairment, hiding us away from the world, but so too is it a silencer. Hushing our voices in fear of shame and ridicule. And so we not only stand today, but we shout. We shout loud and clear into the face of stigma, reminding all who are near that we exist and that while we struggle – we are more than the struggle. We are human.
Today I have tears in my eyes not just out of sadness for the people we have lost to suicide, but also out of joy at the people we have saved from suicide.
Nineteen years ago I did not die, instead I saw hope, breaching across the horizon in the warmth of the setting sun, as if it were a hug from a friend saying to me “Goodnight, I will see you tomorrow.”
Reminding me that after the close of the day there would be a new dawn and every dawn is a new day and every day is a new beginning. Today I am still alive because of hope, hope that change will come, hope that tomorrow will be better. Hope that was born from love. Love of myself and love shared with other people.
16-year-old me was clueless to what he would one day be able to do because of that small amount of hope he received. He was being tossed about and tumbled by the waves of emotion he was experiencing, like waves ebbing and flowing on an ocean on a moonless midnight. Too blinded and silenced by stigma to consider what the future might hold.
So, I ask you, whomever you may be and whatever your story, that you stand with me and defy stigma today and always. Shine the light of hope into the darkness and pierce the veil that has been cast upon us all. Unseal your lips and be brave enough to start a conversation that matters. Lives depend upon it. One person cannot save the world, but one person can save a life.
Give someone hope.
I woke up the other morning thinking about how when I quit my job more than seven months ago, I never thought I’d experience nostalgia about my twelve-year career there. At least not to the degree that I have.
It wasn’t the first time that I had quit a job, not the first time I left behind coworkers, not the first time I walked out of my work building for the last time. But there was a unique combination of the large amount of my life that I had spent there, the people I met, and the experiences I had that left me ruminating.
Working in three different positions and offices stretched out over twelve years of your life when you’re 35 years old, you just don’t get to walk away from that without feeling anything. When I stood in that parking lot next to my car on the evening of my last workday and I turned and looked back at that building, I told myself I wasn’t going to miss that place.
I was thinking about all the negative experiences I had while working there, especially those of the last three years. But what I hadn’t allowed myself to think about or feel were the positive experiences. Maybe because I was too spiteful or maybe because it would make getting into my car and driving away difficult.
Lately, I’ve been trying to put into words what my experiences have been like. Trying to find a new job has been far more of a challenge than I honestly thought it was going to be. I expected to be unemployed for no longer than 4 months, 6 months max. Maybe it’s the labor market or maybe all those years of bosses telling me my performance was great and my skills marketable – perhaps they were all just lying to me. After a while of unemployment you begin to lose confidence and convince yourself the latter is true.
At any rate, these last several months of unemployment have allowed me time and space to ruminate about the seventeen years I spent in the workforce in full-time employment, and the six different job titles I held over those years.
Being unemployed has mostly been a new experience for me, as I started working full-time right out of high school and except for a few short weeks here or there, I had remained employed at one job or another ever since. So for me, this experience has felt like a break-up or like a divorce. A strange and new experience I have never known.
One of those situations where you assumed you’d be together forever until you hit a few rough years and you’re so over the relationship that your prolonged bitterness initially makes you view the whole thing as a totally negative experience, only to later remember the good shit after you’ve separated and had time away to reflect.
That’s not to say you’ve forgotten all the drama or the bad things, nor even forgiven them, it just means that you’ve allowed yourself to see the bigger picture and remember that it wasn’t all shit all the time.
I had a conversation a while back with a friend who used to work a retail job in his twenties at an entertainment store that sold books, videos, games, etc., and I specifically remember him talking about how the pay and hours were shit, but that he had really enjoyed the overall experience and had nostalgia about it. This was not the first time someone had said something like that to me about low-paying past employment, it seems to be common.
Could there be something to that experience or is it all just nostalgia about what used to be? Is it merely a coincidence that so many of us look back on jobs we had when we were younger, jobs that had low pay, with a sense of fondness? Or are we all just under the illusion of nostalgia and in fact it was generally a crappy job that we’re all the better for leaving?
I don’t know the answer to that, but I share in the experience. I won’t go into the details of the last position I held at my former employer (the one I quit several months ago), but I really don’t have nostalgia for that position, at least not yet. What I’ve been having nostalgia over is the first position I ever held at that employer, during the timeframe of 2008 – 2017.
That low-paying position where I was struggling to keep my head above water, living paycheck to paycheck, complaining all the time about how I didn’t have enough money, terrified all the time that I was about to face financial ruin if my car broke down or if I got fired. Even though I’ve now been unemployed since February 2021, I’m still in a financially better place than I was the nine years I held that job.
Seems wildly absurd that I would have nostalgia over that time in my life. When I was hired into that job in 2008, it was a different world, or at least it felt like it was to 22-year-old me. Young and less concerned with the on-goings of the wider world, I didn’t have a lot of worries. A simpler time.
However, I don’t feel nostalgic over that job merely because I was younger. It’s the people I met and experiences I had over those nine years and two months that I spent there.
In many ways the job was easy in its mundane and monotonous nature, some times so boring you wanted to slam your face into the keyboard for the sake of a little excitement. So, not every day was butterflies and rainbows. I might have nostalgia but I’m not delusional about the reality of what took place there.
Like any workplace, there was all kinds of drama, gossiping, backstabbing, and the like. Admittedly, some of that drama was caused by me and my poorly treated mental illness, triggered by the stress I occasionally encountered. There are people I worked with during those years that I’m glad I no longer have to deal with or even see.
Despite all of that, there are things I miss. A lot of people joined and left the team I was a part of during those nine years, not only the full-time staff but also the temporary staff that we hired on a seasonal basis. I can safely estimate that I met and closely worked with over 1,000 people during that time in my life. Most of their names and faces I have long since forgotten because the nature of the temporary job only allowed them to work with me for six months.
That’s not to say I forgot them all, in fact I keep (or attempt to keep) in touch with many of them, the ones that made the biggest impact on me. Some of the most profound or memorable experiences of my life happened during this period due to the interactions I had with some of those people. A primary reason I harbor so much nostalgia about that job.
So much time has passed in the years since I left that some of the people I worked with are no longer here among the living and have already been gone for nearly a decade. I’m sure there’s some kind of life lesson in here somewhere, about savoring the time we have with the people currently in our lives. If there’s anything true about life it’s that it changes, all the time.
What feels like forever in the future, will quickly become a memory of a distant past. I think we all look back ever-so-often and think about what used to be, perhaps we do feel somewhat bitter about the more recent things, but the more distant the time and place the more grateful we become.
On July 2, 2021, I joined about a hundred-million other Americans and partook in a medical practice that has occurred for more than two centuries, I received my second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, specifically Moderna.
I didn’t want to get the vaccine right away when it became available for the group in which I belong, I wanted to wait and see what happened, I wanted to see the data. On its effectiveness and on the long-term effects. Some of my hesitancy was also due to fear and uncertainty caused by the speed at which everything was happening and by the fears shared by others online and in the news. Fear too is contagious after all.
I watched as federal and international agencies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO), spoke in circles about best practices in response to the outbreak, about effective preventative measures, and treatment options. I heard contradictory information from politicians on both sides and their peddlers and commentators, all of whom were flying by the seat of their pants in the whirlwind of uncertainty, speculation, and worst of all – agendas.
I watched as people in my hometown died of the virus, I watched as my friends and coworkers contracted the virus – some never having a symptom and some becoming long-haulers experiencing debilitating side-effects long after initial recovery. I listened to strangers talk about the loss of their mother, father, son, or daughter, old and young alike. I listened to news outlets that made it seem like the world was coming to an end and I heard then President Trump compare it to the common flu – nothing to be particularly concerned with.
We all have reasons for the decisions that we make, some of our reasons are legitimate and worthy of consideration, but some of our reasons are not. Some are unfounded, illegitimate, or are based on our emotions.
Sometimes we justify those emotional responses with someone else’s emotional response, especially when we trust that person or group of people as representatives of our own concerns or values.
Like most people, I’ve heard all kinds of things about the COVID-19 vaccine, positive and negative. It shouldn’t be surprising that the negative statements are repeated much more frequently, as we humans love our drama, our scandals, our fears.
Walk into your office on Monday and tell a coworker that you’re in love with your spouse and the information spreads no further, but tell your coworker that you’re in love with your spouse’s sibling and everyone in your office will hear about it before the day is over.
Doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, no one cares whether it’s true, people care that it’s shocking, surprising, exciting, intriguing, scandalous, outrageous. People care because it’s drama and people love drama. It makes their mundane lives more interesting and exciting.
Drama, however, is blinding and so are emotions, especially fear and anger. These things discard and obscure what is true, or sometimes even prevent what is true from being discovered and shared.
Like most of us, I wanted answers about the vaccines, real answers if at all possible. Not rumors, not confabulations, not lies that serve an agenda. Especially not a political agenda. I watched, I waited, I listened to hear what more intelligent people than myself had to say.
But this was hard because every time I listened to the news or logged into social media to see what other people’s experiences were like, I was inundated with political propaganda about COVID-19 and the vaccine, articles shared from people and Facebook pages I did not know – some proclaiming or pretending to be experts, news outlets and sites with no reputation but lots of opinions, some random person’s viral and misleading political meme, and so on.
I was surrounded by drama and political motivation. This has been an ever-increasing problem, not just about this health risk but about everything and it’s particularly prevalent online. There was a time when I too was part of the problem – only listening to people and entities that agreed with me. We all wish life was black and white, right and wrong, because absolutism is easier than the complexities of reality.
It’s easier to believe that there is a government or pharmaceutical conspiracy than it is to find the truth for yourself. Sometimes truth-seeking means that you don’t have a definitive conclusion, at least not right away. The truth often means you have to work for it, it means you have to swim through the bullshit, it means you have to be willing to hear what other people say – people who don’t share your perspective, it means you must do the thing that scares us the most – question ourselves and our biases. And sometimes the truth just takes time, more time than we have and we are left with only the best information available but no definitive truth.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Google searches, news outlets, and so on, have been breeding grounds for subjective information, sensationalism, fear-mongering, politicalization for liberals and conservatives, and for radicals who just want to see everything burn. These past several years have been horrendous.
All of this is not to suggest that I was attempting to get medical advice from social media or a news outlet, I’m just saying that misinformation spreads across these systems like a virus, pun intended, and these systems are always just a few taps of the keyboard away. No one should ever get medical information or advice from an obscure Facebook page, or unreputable news outlet, or a person on Twitter who is uneducated on the topic, or anyone who doesn’t provide sources.
Even if you deem the source of the information as trustworthy, you shouldn’t immediately accept everything as truth. They need to provide citations for their information, a pathway for you to independently verify their information. Understand that people are generally lazy and will not fact-check anything. This is especially true if the information already complies with their political beliefs.
Confirmation bias dictates that a person accept information as truth if the information validates what the person already believes to be true. This must be avoided at all costs.
We now live in a world where everyone needs to be a skeptic, not out of luxury but out of necessity. Your life could depend upon your ability to practice scrutiny. A skeptic is not someone who denies all claims, but someone who does not accept any claim as truth without either independent research or verification from reputable sources.
This won’t be easy because you’ll be getting information from people and people lie, even highly educated or otherwise respectable people lie. With politics festering and infecting every aspect of our lives, even the medical industry cannot be viewed wholly as a bastion of reason and logic.
This is why you must broaden your sources of information, set aside your bias and seek input from a variety of medical sources, whether they comply with your political views or not. No, I’m not saying seek out a shaman, I’m saying read more than one cited article or reputable study, talk to more than one licensed physician.
Ask yourself questions such as: (1) How does this person know what they claim to know? (2) Where are they getting their information? (3) Does this person have an agenda, do they gain something from making these statements? (4) How does this information compare with the information I’m receiving from other sources?
Politics is a disease that has encroached upon the sanctity of our humanity. Politicians and their political peddlers and commentators lie for a living, it’s what they get paid to do and they do it well. They don’t care about you and your problems, they don’t care whether you as an individual live or die, they only care about themselves and the political institutions that they all mutually prosper from.
They prey on your emotions because that’s where you are weakest. Once they have your attention, they can get your support, from your support they get money, and from money they get power.
So, this brings me back to the vaccine. I cannot and will not tell anyone else whether or not to get the vaccine. Why not? I’m not a licensed physician, I don’t know your medical history, I don’t know how your body will react.
What I will tell you is that you should investigate from reputable sources, communicate with people who have the educational background to form an objective and informed determination. And then decide for yourself. Whatever choice you make, you must live with the potential consequences – for yourself and those around you.
I found this conversation between neuroscientist Sam Harris and cardiologist Eric Topol to be rather insightful and informative on the topic. They discuss vaccine hesitancy and related misinformation, as well as the problem of political and social siloing, concerns about mRNA vaccines, the Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA, the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines, vaccine efficacy vs effectiveness, the Delta variant, the misuse of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
They also discuss concerns about long-term side effects from vaccines, bad incentives in medicine, ivermectin, government and corporate censorship, the curious case of Bret Weinstein, vaccine mandates, and other topics.
An adult or independent non-traditional student is typically defined as a student attending a college or university who is 24 years old or older and has surpassed the usual age of a college or university student and is not dependent on a parent or legal guardian for financial support. If you’re reading this then chances are you are 24 years old or older and have asked yourself, and probably Google, some variant of the question, “Is it too late for me to go back to school?” Or maybe your search query was “Should I go back to school as an adult?” If you’re anything like me, this is probably not the first time you Googled that question. Probably hoping, like I was, to find some definitive answer or justification, to be convinced that it either is or isn’t a good decision at your age or stage of life to go back to school.
Perhaps, like me, you considered quitting your full-time job and dedicating the next four years of your life to returning to a college or university in pursuit of that bachelor’s degree you never received. Maybe you convinced yourself (or maybe others convinced you) that without at least a four-year degree you’ll never reach your professional career goals and that you will continue to work a low-wage job that barely pays the bills and certainly doesn’t afford the lifestyle you wish you had. Not one of luxury perhaps, but definitely one of financial stability. Or perhaps like me, you have also been looking for a more fulfilling career?
In this behemoth of an article I have reviewed the statistical data on whether or not it’s worthwhile for someone who has surpassed the traditional college age range (18 – 22 years old) to return to college for the degree they didn’t complete during their youth or never pursued to begin with. Not only do I cover the data, but I also go through the process of how to return, which includes reviewing schools, making a selection, the admission process, and a review of financial aid. While this isn’t everything you’ll need to think about or do if you want to return to school, it is a huge hurdle that has to be crossed in order to truly begin the journey.
By the end of this article you may come away feeling empowered and motivated to return to school, or you may feel like it’s a total mistake and decide that it’s a phase of your life to which the door has already closed. Each person has to make the decision for themselves and while many people will give you advice or their opinion, you’re the only person who has the final say on what you choose to do. No matter what decision you make, the consequences will impact your life for years to come.
I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve wondered whether or not I should return to college or university. In fact, I have enrolled and withdrew four times since I was 18 years old, and I’m now 35. My first attempt was the longest I spent in a college or university, when I had managed to stay enrolled for two weeks before quitting because I was an 18-year-old in the midst of a psychological breakdown and was in no condition to be sitting in a classroom, certainly not pursuing an associate’s degree I didn’t want, in a subject matter I didn’t understand. Overwhelmed by an internal battle and external pressures, I quit school and unknowingly launched myself into the next 17 years of my life where I would routinely wonder if I had made a mistake all those years ago.
I often found myself considering whether it was too late or if I still had the option of going back to school. Sometimes I’d think about it after meeting someone who worked in a career field that interested me but that required a bachelor’s degree. Sometimes I thought about it after scrolling through job postings and realizing that I was woefully lacking in post-secondary education. Sometimes I would apply for a job that preferred candidates with post-secondary education but that noted work experience would be considered a potential substitute on a year-for-year basis, only to later be told that not enough of my 16 years of work experience were relevant.
Many times I felt as though everyone around me had received post-secondary or higher education, I also felt trapped or stuck in my career, believing myself professionally stagnant by the fact that I didn’t have a four-year degree and that I had spent too many years working in the same field, a field that I was good at but didn’t enjoy. Not all of these were rational sensations, in fact I was doing well financially at a salary of almost $40,000, as according to the U.S. Census Bureau the average 2019 American only earned about $31,000 annually.
If my desire to go back to college could not really be justified as a need for higher income, then what was it and would there be any benefit in actually returning and receiving a bachelor’s degree if by the end of the experience I would be lucky to be earning a few thousand more than I was already making without it? Have you found yourself perplexed by the same dilemma, pondering whether all of the financial costs and other challenges would actually be worth it? In order to answer that question, we need to look at the data.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) – the U.S. government’s center responsible for tracking and publishing all education statistics, the rate for undergraduate students enrolling at degree-granting institutions decreased by 5% from 2009 to 2019, suggesting that fewer high school graduates were interested in pursuing higher education. In 2018, only a reported 31% of 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled as undergraduate students in a four-year college or university. An additional 10% were enrolled in a two-year institution, but the remaining 59% were not pursuing post-secondary education at all.
Of the 94% of 25- to 29-year-olds who had received a high school diploma or higher by 2019, only 9% reported they had received a master’s level degree or higher, only 30% had received a bachelor’s degree, only 10% received an associate’s or two-year degree, and the remaining 45% completed high school or the equivalency but demonstrated no interest in higher education.
Of the U.S. high school graduating seniors who enrolled in a four-year or bachelor’s degree-granting institution (including public, private non-profit, and private for-profit) as full-time undergraduate students in 2012, a total of 62% attained their degree by 2018 (over a six-year period). On average, only 41% of full-time undergraduate students attending for the first-time will receive their bachelor’s degree within the traditional four-year timescale. This issue has become so commonplace that the term “super-senior” is widely used to refer to a student who has exceeded the traditional four-year timescale. This is an issue because it adds an additional significant financial burden on the student that they should have otherwise avoided. There are three main causes for this problem: students being indecisive about or changing their majors, students taking less than 15 credit hours per semester, and students experiencing financial issues and leaving school for a semester or more.
If you’re considering returning to college, you likely have spent time thinking about what you might want to study. The below figures show the most popular fields of study within associate’s and bachelor’s degree programs, respectively. Each also includes a graph identifying the ratio of men to women who received the degree in the specific field of study.
Popular Fields of Study for Associate’s Degrees
Popular Fields of Study for Associate’s Degrees by Sex
Popular Fields of Study for Bachelor’s Degrees
Popular Fields of Study for Bachelor’s Degrees by Sex
In terms of the financial burden of attending college or university, 43% of first-time undergraduate students attending full-time, received a loan in addition to any scholarships or grants they received during the 2018/2019 school year. Student’s who graduated with an associate’s degree on average borrowed $19,700 and those with a bachelor’s degree borrowed $31,800. Among bachelor’s degree holders, those who attended public institutions received the lowest cumulative loan amount at $28,600, followed by those who attended private nonprofit institutions at $33,900, and those who attended private for-profit institutions at $43,900.
The reason for this should be pretty clear, education is expensive! Even after scholarships and grants have been applied to the average cost of attendance, students still face significant costs: first-time undergraduate students attending four-year institutions for the full-time were still required to pay $13,900 after scholarships and grants were applied at public institutions, $27,200 at private nonprofit institutions, and $23,800 at private for-profit institutions during the 2018/2019 school year. Of course, trying to understand the average cost is difficult and doesn’t really paint a clear picture because students have so many factors that determine how much they will eventually have to pay, including how long it takes them to actually attain their degree.
The Cost of Attendance
Among full-time undergraduate students in 2018, a reported 43% were employed while attending post-secondary education, compared to part-time undergraduate students who had an employment rate of 81%. For 25- to -34-years-old who graduated from a post-secondary institution with a bachelor’s degree or higher, 87% had full-time employment in 2019, compared to 74% of the same age group who had completed high school or the equivalency but did not attend any post-secondary institution.
In terms of annual income for 25- to 34-year-olds who were employed full-time in 2018, the average income of those who had received a master’s degree or higher was $65,000, for those with a bachelor’s degree it was $54,700, for those with a high school diploma or equivalent it was $34,900, and for those who did not complete high school or the equivalency, the average income was $27,900.
Most of what we’ve covered so far sounds fairly reassuring if you’re thinking about returning to school, but we have to remember that the term employment as it is used here, does not solely refer to field-related employment. In other words, the jobs these recent college and university graduates hold may have nothing to do with the field of study they have a bachelor’s degree in and some of these jobs may not even require a degree at all.
When an employee with a bachelor’s degree works in a field or position that doesn’t require it, this is referred to as underemployment. Essentially meaning the employee could be working elsewhere with the expectation of earning higher income. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who keeps a running tab on the labor market for recent college grads with data collected from various sources including the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, underemployment for recent college graduates is quite common. As of March 2021, slightly more than 40% of 22- to 27-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees or higher were underemployed, meaning they held jobs that didn’t even require a four-year degree.
So, what exactly does this mean? It means that for recent graduates with bachelor’s degrees, it’s hard to get a job in their chosen field of study right out of college or university, or even five years later. While this may sound startling or concerning for anyone considering going back to college, this information is mostly relevant to the young. Most college or university freshmen are 18 years old and likely have no full-time employment experience. Even though some colleges and universities provide internship opportunities, most of the students will graduate after 4 to 6 years without any meaningful employment experience in their fields of study, making it challenging for them to actually be employed in a job that requires a four-year degree and is applicable to their field of study.
This brings me to my next point: employability. For those of us who have been in the workforce for a long time, we know that it takes more than just work experience to attain gainful employment, it also takes post-secondary or higher education. When flipping this around, the opposite is also true: in order to attain gainful employment one must also have work experience. For adult non-traditional students, we have the advantage because we already have years (sometimes many years) of work experience under our belts. And more often than not, when we return to college it is for a field of study we have already been employed in or is at least in some way applicable to our past work or volunteer experience. So, when we do finally graduate, we are far better off than our younger counterparts in achieving full-time employment in a field applicable to our degree.
Now that we’ve covered the essential data, you may have a more clear sense of what you should do, but more than likely you’re still undecided, just as I was after reviewing the information. You also may not be aware of all the things you’ll need to do to actually become a student. There are two primary components that must be considered before you take any serious action towards becoming a full-time adult non-traditional student: consider your finances and choose a field of study.
We’ve already discussed how costly returning to college or university can be, so you really need to look at your own finances to determine if it’s really an option for you. Remember that 43% of all first-time undergraduate students who are enrolled full-time, take out loans in addition to the scholarships and grants they receive. So unless you’re quite wealthy or only plan to attend part-time, you will likely need to take out loans to afford your four years of higher education. Not to mention that many scholarships out there are not intended for adult non-traditional students, the majority are geared towards high school seniors.
Luckily, there are scholarships and grants specifically intended for adult non-traditional students. Your best bet for learning about these is to visit the website for your state’s department of post-secondary or higher education. You also need to know that many scholarships and grants for adult non-traditional students still have requirements that limit the number of people who can apply and almost all of them have strict deadlines for the application process. Your potential eligibility may be determined by your age, educational background, location, race, ethnicity, gender, income level, employment status or history, and the list goes on and on. These types of scholarships and grants may pay for some or even all of your tuition costs, so they are absolutely worth looking into.
Returning to school is not a decision that should be taken lightly, it could have significant financial consequences for your life for the next 14 years. Yes, I said 14 years. Most student loans are required to be re-paid within 10 years following graduation, meaning after a six-month grace period that follows graduation, you may be making loan payments for the next 10 years. The amount of this monthly loan payment can be quite varied, usually between the $100 to $400 a month range, all depending on how much you borrow, what kind of loans they are (subsidized or unsubsidized), from whom they are issued (federal or private), and what the interest rate is and whether or not it’s fixed or varied.
But I feel like we’re getting ahead of ourselves and haven’t addressed the elephant in the room. Why do you want to go back to school and what do you want to study? Don’t be wishy-washy about this decision, you need to think strategically. The time for creative exploration has long since passed, you are not 18 years old anymore, you have serious life responsibilities as an adult and if you choose to go back to college or university, you are going to face challenges that the younger version of you would have not faced while attending post-secondary education.
The labor market should absolutely impact your decision making. I suggest you review the Labor Market Outcomes of College Graduates by Major section of the report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. There you can review data in regards to the unemployment and underemployment rates for recent college grads based on their major (field of study), as well as early and mid-career median wages for each major. It is incredibly valuable data that reveals to us that just because a field of study is popular or fun, doesn’t necessarily equate long-term value in employability.
While it shouldn’t be the only factor in your decision making, you obviously still need to choose something that actually interests you. There’s nothing worse than working a full-time job that you hate so much your mental health is deteriorating. No amount of money is going to keep that from happening. Yes, financial stability makes life easier and is very important for that reason, but it doesn’t automatically make life better or even satisfying. Working a job that you hate is a surefire way to develop a mental health condition that will dilute any brief happiness that such financial stability might bring. You can spend that money for short-lived zaps of dopamine, but nothing can replace the satisfaction you will get from a job that is meaningful, fulfilling, or purpose-driven.
This is critical for your future success: will your field of study and eventual career choice bring you a sense of meaning, fulfillment, or purpose? If you can’t answer yes to at least one of those, don’t do it! This doesn’t mean you have to like all of your job responsibilities every day, but you should find some aspect of your job that you love and that makes it worth it in the end. The most potent and satisfying factors for any career are that they provide a sense of meaning, fulfillment, or purpose. If you can select a field of study that will lead to this type of career, then you will be miles ahead of every other student, most of whom are too young and lacking in enough life experience to have any understanding of what satisfies these requirements.
Be cautious though because some people attempt to turn a hobby into a career and overtime they realize that by turning something they casually enjoy into a job, it loses the sense of enjoyment it once gave them. It becomes just another stressful daily task they have to complete. That is no way to live life either. The reality is that we spend the majority of our lives at work and we need to get more out of it than just a paycheck or justifying our employment by saying it’s an easy job. Money and easy are not meaningful, fulfilling, or purposeful. Remember: you don’t have to like your job every day, but you have to love some aspect of it, one that gives you justification for going to work and satisfaction on your way home.
Whatever decision you make, just know that most degrees are versatile, so even if you get an engineering degree, it doesn’t mean that you can only become an engineer. The labor market data company, Emsi, identified in their 2019 report, Degrees at Work, that many students not only don’t get jobs in their field of study but that they also fluctuate in and out of different career fields throughout their lives.
Selected Field of Study vs Post-Graduation Career Field
The first thing you need to be aware of is what time of the year it is. Your window for filing your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is from October 1st to June 30th. If you are not familiar, this is a federal program that helps you learn what types of federal, and eventually state, funding that you are eligible for. You also need to be aware of school admission deadlines as some colleges and universities have very narrow timeframes for when you can apply to their school. Most schools will open for admissions in the spring, so March to May, but understand that this is not a standard observed by all schools and is merely an average. This is why it’s important that you create a list of colleges and/or universities you would like to attend, it will help you identify potential deadlines. Some schools observe a “rolling admission” process wherein you have a much wider timeframe for applying to the school, but of course that doesn’t mean you can simply attend classes any time of the year, they do still have a cutoff point for when you are able to attend fall classes.
Even though the FAFSA application timeframe might be wide, it doesn’t mean you should slack. You should always submit your application as soon as possible to ensure the best chances of securing federal funding. Not only that but each state has its own deadline for when you should file your FAFSA because they utilize the form in determining your eligibility for some state funding programs like grants. The federal government provides grants too, but they also offer federal loans and I will talk about them more later. When it comes to grants, the money is limited – there is only so much to go around. So for the sake of state and federal funding, you will want to file your FAFSA as early as you can. To learn more about the FAFSA and how to apply, access the U.S. Department of Education’s website at: https://studentaid.gov/h/apply-for-aid/fafsa
The federal application is free, but that doesn’t mean all school admission applications are also free. While it is becoming increasingly rare, some colleges and universities still charge a fee to receive applications. This fee is usually less than $50 and most institutions now utilize an online process, though if necessary you can still request a traditional paper application. As an adult non-traditional student applying to a four-year college or university as a freshman, you may find the process a little wonky and not adequately setup for you. I ran into this problem with a few schools that I applied to. For example there were times where I could not select my age because their online forms were programmed to only list years of birth that stretched back 20-odd years, or times where I couldn’t select my high school graduation date for a similar reason – it would only accept a date that occurred within the last few years!
Another situation I frequently encountered were parent or legal guardian requirements. At times I was required to fill out sections of applications or special forms that requested my parent or legal guardian information, with no option to bypass or ignore the “required” fields. When I contacted the schools about these issues, they would tell me to enter the oldest dates available on the online forms and enter my own information in place of the parent or legal guardian fields. If these institutions want adult or independent non-traditional students to feel welcome, they certainly should begin with adapting their admission software to allow people older than their teens and early twenties to fill them out. I regularly felt embarrassment by the fact that the software was, in effect, telling me I was too old to be applying to the school. There are other circumstances where your age may become an issue during admissions or even while just attending the school in general, but I’ll touch on those later.
It’s important to point out the difference between a college and a university because there are differences and these differences may influence what school you choose to attend. Some people think the word college refers to a public institution and university refers to a private institution, but this is not the case because both institutions can be public or private. A college is traditionally an institution that serves students seeking two- to four-year degree programs. Colleges may offer vocational training or job certification programs, usually lasting two years or less, and will offer associate’s degrees which are similar in nature and typically require a two-year commitment, as well as the traditional four-year bachelor’s degree. Universities also offer bachelor’s degrees to undergraduate students, but they also provide master’s and doctorate degree programs for graduate students.
Other factors in selecting schools that you might want to consider include distance and your living arrangements. Will you be living on campus in the dorms, in an apartment on or near campus, or will you be living off-campus? If off-campus, how far will you need to drive to get there, how long will it take you? If you have an 8:00 AM vs a 9:00 AM class, will that impact your family and their morning schedule? Most colleges and universities have restrictions on first-year students and whether or not they are allowed to live off-campus. For example, if you are older than 24 or live with your parents and live within a specific distance of the campus you may be allowed to live off-campus your first year. But if you are 20 to 23 years old and attending college or university for the first time, you may be required to live in the residential dorms along with the other incoming freshmen.
Some schools allow older students to live on campus in the dorms if that is of interest to you, so if you want to have that “immersive” college or university experience it might be possible. Other institutions do not allow older students to roommate with younger students, so you may be paired with another adult non-traditional student. Some schools even have special housing arrangements set aside for adult or independent non-traditional students. In some cases these buildings can even accommodate students who are married with children.
If you choose a strictly online program, distance shouldn’t be an issue for you, provided you are comfortable not having in-person contact with your professors and classmates. Be advised that the number of degree programs available online are limited, so your options will not be as varied in what field of study you will get to pursue.
There are many other things you will want to take into consideration and are just as important as the location of the school. If you intend to participate in school activities, such as athletics, make sure the school you’re looking at offers them. Also take note that there may be restrictions or limitations on what activities you can get involved in due to your age. For example, certain summer programs and extracurricular activities may not be available to you if you are older than 18 and a freshman, or in some cases if you are simply older than 24. Be sure to ask the admissions staff (preferably more than one of them) if your age will be an issue with your school involvement.
I ran into the issue where I was told I was eligible for two summer programs that would allow me to potentially graduate early. After I paid the costs out-of-pocket to participate in these programs, I was told that I was, in fact, too old to participate in the programs. When I requested a refund three separate times, I was finally advised that when I signed the forms I agreed to the terms which included a statement that the expenses were nonrefundable. The school stated that they would apply the funds to my student account and use the money for other potential costs. I later found out that they applied it to my fall tuition despite my intention to apply for a grant that pays all of my tuition.
Be aware that many school activities are geared towards the age range of 18 – 22 years old. You may find yourself feeling awkward and out-of-place if you’re in your thirties or above. You will have to decide for yourself if you’re okay with that because some colleges and universities mandate student involvement, and even if your school doesn’t – future employers may ask about your involvement during your time at college or university during an interview.
As someone who previously worked in human resources and occasionally sat on interview panels, I have heard supervisory and managerial staff ask employment candidates about their experiences at college or university and what types of things they got involved with, especially volunteer-related activities. A prime example that I hear frequently is the role of an RA, or resident advisor. Of course, as adult non-traditional students, we have a plethora of other employment background or at least enough that questions about our college or university life will likely be less concerning to future employers. It’s important to note though, I have seen an increasing trend in employers pushing their staff to be more involved in their community, so it may pay off for you in the future to get involved around campus while attending, if it is an option for you.
Since I’m on the topic of interviews, I want to mention something I hear people talk about but have never actually seen for myself and that’s the topic of “school value,” the idea that the perception of one’s institution of higher learning either hinders or helps their employability. Over the years I’ve heard people spread here-say about employers tossing resumes and job applications into the trash or fed into the shredder if the applicant attended unfavorable, unpopular, or low-cost colleges or universities. In my personal experience, I have never seen this happen, nor have I ever sat there and discussed with the other members of the interview panel any applicant’s college or university of attendance. Neither they nor I honestly cared where someone went to school, we concerned ourselves with whether or not they could apply the things they reportedly learned there. That’s the thing that matters to employers.
Now, if we’re talking about a high-profile employer, okay maybe they might be looking for graduates of ivy league or highly-reputable traditional colleges or universities, but for the average American looking to provide for themselves and their family, attending your local affordable community college is not going to flush your future career down the proverbial toilet. Generally, as employers we know that some of the most effective, efficient, and brilliant people in the world never even attended college or university or dropped out without a degree, so relax, your community college degree is valid and valuable – provided you can apply and share the knowledge you received.
Some colleges and universities go to great lengths to make sure their soon-to-graduate seniors or super-seniors have employment setup before they even leave campus. The job opportunity that the senior might be encouraged to apply for may not be directly related to their degree program, but most respectable institutions will do what they can to help students secure relevant employment rather than just waving them off and shouting “bon voyage” on the last day of classes. Most institutions have employment offices setup specifically for this purpose. Examining their track record of assisting students in finding meaningful employment may be something you might want to add to your checklist when evaluating your college or university options. When you speak with the school, ask them directly what policy or protocol they have in place to help support students in achieving employment after graduation.
Once you have chosen schools to apply to, you’ll receive a tuition and fee estimate, which is a breakdown of their annual cost of attendance (tuition) plus fees. These fees can be quite varied, fees for living or not living on campus (resident or commuter), medical fees, activity fees, parking fees, class fees, school supplies fees, textbook fees, meal plans, security fees, and the list goes on. Fees can cost you hundreds to thousands of dollars per year and not all schools provide these fees upfront, for example I didn’t find out how much my textbooks would cost until after being enrolled and registered for classes. Accepting these costs and moving forward with enrollment can feel overwhelming because at this point you may not have even begun applying for scholarships, so you have no idea how much money you really have to pay towards these costs, which is why so many students apply for loans. Thankfully, most loans can be rejected or returned by the time school starts, if it turns out that you don’t need them, but we’ll take a closer look at financial aid soon.
Aside from telling you how much potential debt you might be facing, the college or university will request several different types of documents as part of the admission process. Some of these are obvious, such as your high school transcript or college transcript if you did attend a different college or university in the past. Make sure that you have documentation to support your dual credits if you received them while in high school, most high school transcripts won’t include this documentation so you will need to reach out to the college or university the dual credit program was through and have them submit your transcript to the college or university of your choice. Be advised there may be a fee involved in this transfer of your dual or college credits and not every college or university will recognize or accept credit hours completed at all other institutions.
Another obvious document they will request is your immunization records. For young people this process is generally easy because they are coming directly from high school into college or university and their immunizations have been recent, but for those of us who’ve been out a while it can be more difficult to locate our immunization records from ten, twenty, or thirty years ago and some of those immunizations may need to be received for the first time or again due to the time that has passed (booster shot). Common immunization requirements for attendance are proof of two Mumps, Measles, Rubella (MMR) immunizations and one Meningococcal (MCV4 or MPSV4-Menactra, Menomune or Menveo) vaccine for all residential students. Due to the current times we are living in, most schools are also strongly encouraging students to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. While they cannot legally mandate it like the other vaccines, they can and do implement restrictions if you do not provide proof of vaccination. This is true regardless of which of the immunizations we are talking about.
You can typically get copies of your immunization record from the doctor’s office that administered them, from your local city, county, or state health departments, from your high school, or from your previously attended college or university – if applicable. In accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), none of these entities can deny you access to your own medical records if you are 18 years old, or 17 years old and enrolled in a post-secondary institution, so if any of them deny your request for a copy because they don’t want to be bothered with the effort of retrieving it, don’t just assume you can’t access those records. If you have questions about this process, you can contact your state’s health department or department of higher education for further guidance.
The most overwhelming aspect of this entire process is the financial side. The majority of all dependent and independent students who quit school, do so because of financial reasons. As we covered in the previous section, it’s not just the cost of tuition that new students worry about, it’s all the fees and secondary costs not already calculated into the tuition. One of the most helpful things you can do is figure out your budget and finances. How much money do you have coming in and how much are you spending? Review your bank statements, not just your monthly expenses like your house payment or rent, but also look at what products and services you have subscriptions for.
I recently did and found that I was spending about $1,200 a month, or about $15,000 a year on cost of living expenses, service subscriptions, entertainment subscriptions, and other retail purchases. In order to figure out how much I was spending on each thing every month, I calculated the average by adding up each payment or purchase for each category that I made in a year and then divided it by twelve months. It had been a couple of years since the last time I had done this and I was surprised at how many new expenses I had acquired since then and how much I had been spending. I broke my expenses down like this:
Your budget and finances will not look exactly like this, everyone’s is different and is based on their living situation or arrangements, their lifestyle, how far from work they live, what they enjoy in life, etc., each person’s numbers will be different. The important thing here is that you breakdown all of your payments and purchases so that you know how much you’re spending each month. Evaluate whether or not you want or can continue these expenses if you become a full-time student and can no longer work a full-time job. More than likely, you’re going to have to start getting rid of a few things.
When it comes to the financial aid that is available, none of it is truly free, at the very least it will cost you time and energy – especially when over half of scholarships utilize an essay-style application process. Most of these essays are requested to be 500 to 2,000 words in length and require the basic tropes you’d expect: your background, why you need financial assistance, what your future goals are. I have seen some get a little more creative and require the applicant to create a video. While scholarships don’t require a financial investment or purchase in order for a student to apply, they almost always have eligibility requirements and as I previously mentioned, most scholarships are geared only towards graduating high school seniors. There are, however, scholarships that are open to people older than 18, you just need to make sure you read all of the eligibility requirements before you take the time to write your essay or fill out your application.
Some of the most common eligibility criteria evaluated by entities or individuals offering scholarships include:
The below list are the most commonly used websites to search for and apply to scholarships. These websites were provided to me by federal and state agencies, and various colleges and universities. While none of these websites require you to pay anything to find and apply for scholarships, most of them require you to create an account on their site and in some cases sign-up for their newsletters, in order for you to use their website. I highly recommend that you read the U.S. Department of Education’s webpage about scholarships, before jumping into these other private websites and you should always use caution when giving out your personally identifiable information. While I have personally used some of these websites to find scholarships, I am not affiliated with any of them for any kind of marketing and receive no compensation for providing their links.
They are listed here in alphabetical order:
Federal and state grants also don’t require you to make any kind of purchase, but they have limited funding and frequently come with a catch. The federal and state funds are awarded under specific conditions and circumstances, and if for some reason the student no longer attends a college or university or fails to meet or sustain one of the other conditions during or after attending school, they may not only be declined any future funds but they may also be required to pay back the funds they’ve already received plus interest, thus a grant can sometimes convert to a loan.
You will learn what federal and state grants you are eligible for via the FAFSA, provided that you file it on time for both the federal deadline and the deadline for the state you reside in. Common eligibility and conditions for sustained use include: having and retaining a specific grade point average (GPA), being a certain age or within a certain age range, studying in a specific field, being a full-time or part-time student, being employed or agree to be employed by a certain industry and within a certain timeframe, live and/or work in a specific location, and the list goes on.
Loans, while very common for college students, are best to be avoided as much as possible. Every respectable financial aid officer will tell you to take out as little a loan as possible, applying for only what you need and nothing that you don’t. All loans must be paid back, and most also require the student to pay all of the interest as well, with the exception of subsidized loans – wherein, for example, the federal government will pay the interest while the student is in school, has recently graduated and is in a grace period, or if the loan has been deferred temporarily due to such circumstances as financial hardship.
What federal loans you are eligible for will be determined after you file your FAFSA, but generally speaking you will want to take out federal subsidized loans before any other kind. If you still need additional loan money, apply for federal or state government unsubsidized loans because their interest rates are usually lower than private loans from schools, banks, credit unions, and other such private lenders. Whether federal, state, or private, it’s a good idea to apply for loans with a fixed rate before applying for those with a variable rate. While you may initially get a lower rate with a loan that has variable interest, it puts you at risk of a very high interest rate in the future, especially if the markets are unstable. You can learn more about federal and private loans by visiting the U.S. Department of Education’s official site for information on accepting student aid at https://studentaid.gov/complete-aid-process/accept-aid.
When you file your FAFSA and apply to a school, you may also discover that you are eligible for the Federal Work-Study Program, a program wherein you will work part-time on campus or through another entity that participates in the federally funded program, earning an income. Its only similarity with the grant process is that the opportunity is offered to students based on their financial need. Organizations are paid federal funds to hire college students, but these funds are not limitless and whether or not you are provided the opportunity to participate is largely based on how soon you apply and are accepted. Once the job opportunities are filled by other students, you’re out of luck. Not all colleges and universities participate in this federal program, so if this is something you want to do while in school, be sure to ask the schools you are applying to if they participate before you accept their financial aid offer.
Generally the income is minimum wage and some of the most common jobs performed for the college or university are in the school cafeteria, activity centers, financial aid office, or for one of the professors as a research assistant. Some schools allow you to choose which jobs you want to apply for and you will undergo the normal interview process to make sure you are a good fit, other schools may simply assign you a job with some consideration for its applicability to your major or field of study. Some organizations off-campus have agreements with your school and participate in the program, typically these are non-profit and not-for-profit private organizations, local and state public agencies, and on rare occasion private businesses. In all cases these jobs are usually located on-campus or off-campus and nearby, meaning the commute is generally quite convenient if you are a residential student or at least live near the campus.
Another advantage of this program is that these organizations are receiving federal funds to participate in the program and are required to provide you with flexible working hours so that it doesn’t interfere with your studies. For students fresh out of high school, it also provides them with the benefit of gaining work experience, which they will be in need of when they graduate. For most adult non-traditional students who have already been in the workforce for some five or more years, this perk doesn’t really apply, unless perhaps you have no prior work experience that’s applicable to your field of study – then if you are able to get a part-time job with the school or another participating agency in a position relevant to your field you’ll have some work experience by the time you graduate, hopefully increasing your odds of getting hired. If nothing else, at least you’ll have some spending money while being a full-time student.
Aside from all of that stuff, there’s also regular employment. As we’ve previously covered, around 40% of full-time undergraduate students have some type of job while attending school. The job may be part-time or even full-time in some cases, and if you pursue employment on your own outside of the Federal Work-Study Program, you may be able to find a higher paying job than the one the school would otherwise offer you. The real question here is can you juggle being a full-time student and working a full-time or part-time job? This can only be answered by the individual, there is no wide-sweeping absolute answer. Some people can handle working multiple part-time jobs while attending school, others can even handle working a full-time job while being a full-time student and single parent.
Each individual person must decide for themselves what they can handle. Your specific course-load and student involvement requirements will also play a huge factor here. If you are taking 16 credit hours your first semester back in school after more than 5 years away, you might find yourself struggling to keep up with your studies while working 5 or more days a week. It shouldn’t have to be this way, but it really is like being forced to juggle academic success with financial stability, it’s not right and it makes the whole process of returning back to school a hardship that the majority of Americans who quit college or university, never return to, and those who never attended in the first place, never choose to pursue it.
To bring this juggernaut to a close, I want to come back to a question I asked in the beginning of this article, “Why do I want to go back to school?” Instead of answering that question, I want ask it in a different way, because in all honesty I actually don’t “want” to go back to school. I feel compelled or encouraged to go back, I feel pressured to go back, but I cannot say I want to go back. I want the outcome, but I don’t want the experience and the immense financial burden it carries. For that reason, I think a more appropriate question to ask myself would be “What would be required for me to consider going back to school?” I think this question is more effective and more useful, it demands objective information without relying so much on subjective emotions.
Aside from the obvious ability to financially afford to return, other requirements are that my chosen major must be a field of study…
I call this objective information because I can look back across my life these past 17 years and identify reasonable evidence that the path I’ve chosen meets all four of those requirements.
I don’t need to go back to school to feel satisfied in life. I don’t need to NOT go back to school in order to feel satisfied in life. School is not a destination, it’s merely a pathway to something else. Some people walk the pathway of employment after high school, some continue to walk the pathway of institutional education after high school, and some of us meander around and end up walking both pathways. All pathways lead us to middle age, and some people on those pathways are miserable, and some people who have walked those pathways are satisfied. What I’m trying to say is that there is no right or wrong path, there is only a choice and an outcome, you have to decide what choice you’ll make, why you’ll make it, and if you’ll be okay with the outcome.
These past several years I have really been noticing a significant rise in bravado, grandiosity, self-aggrandizing, and a false sense of social importance, particularly among young American men. This pretentious view that one is special and important, and that the choices they make have great potential for incredible impact on the world is actually quite dangerous and feeds the ego that will one day become their greatest adversary and impediment to a fulfilling life.
In this article I’m going to further define this behavior, outline its potential causes, and explain how this mindset is leading many young men down a path of disappointment, inflated self-worth and self-esteem, and to the eventual and consequential development of mental health issues. In particular the anxiety and depression among teens and young adults increasingly prevalent the past twenty years. I will also identify a healthier mindset for combating the ego.
Starting in childhood, our parents and other family members begin telling us we are special, that our every effort and accomplishment a moment to be celebrated, no matter how ordinary it might actually be. Whether we are successful or not, our every attempt is applauded and praised as a unique and profound ability. This sets the groundwork for the ego to arise and begins to lay the foundation for a lifetime of seeking to satisfy that reward-center of our brain: the mesolimbic dopamine system.
By the time we enter school, the process of inflating our fledgling ego is well under way, but it’s in school when this ego begins to be fed to a dangerous degree, partially because of school practices but also because of societal norms, social media, and teen culture. Our teachers begin offering an overabundance of reassuring compliments and actions that further feed the delusion that we are special and powerful, and that our words and actions can change the world.
For students who happen to be athletes, the ego is fed ever the more. Coaches and other training staff set out to stroke the ego of their athletes in the belief that if you work hard, results will always follow. While a positive mindset and an established practice of self-improvement and determination can truly go a long way in life, there is a point where we are no longer being grounded in reality and are cast adrift into the space of endless possibility and glorification of the self. A mindset that concludes positive results will always follow our hard work. The notion that if we’re doing our best, everyone will notice, applaud, and offer us rewards for our achievements.
It might be that if parents and schools were to set limitations to this process of feeding the ego, it may simply result in a healthy egoism. However, society has changed and the practices common in parenting and school no longer limit recognition of achievement. Rewarding behavior has become overabundant and consequently saturated. Children, teens, and even young adults now have unrealistic expectations about what they “deserve.”
In my former career as a professional development instructor, I both taught career skills to employees and sat on interview panels. Through these processes I encountered managers and supervisors who expressed concerns over the behavior and mindset of young people entering the workforce today, referring to them as woefully unprepared for real life. They described their new young employees as having a type of privilege, an expectation that they should be rewarded for merely showing up and working.
I think a major part of the problem is society and culture grooming young people into the idea that life will somehow miraculously unfurl before them like a red carpet premiere, that opportunities will just throw themselves at them because they showed up. Unfortunately, beyond the security and comforts of home and the safety structures of school, adult life is relentlessly hard and unforgiving. Rewards and success are few and far between, recognition and acknowledgement only follow behavior that exceeds expectations, and even when you do go above and beyond it doesn’t always deliver what you think you deserve.
Hype culture is one of the things that makes me cringe the most, especially when young people carry that behavior and mindset into the workplace. The notion that anyone can think that they should receive attention or reward for exaggerated self-importance is one of the most unbecoming things I’ve seen from Generation Z and the younger members of my own generation, Generation Y (Millennials).
The painful truth is that we are unremarkable. Very rarely does any one of us accomplish something unique. Startlingly enough, most of the population is rather ordinary. Despite what their social media accounts might suggest, their lives and accomplishments are rather unimpressive. Even the rich and famous eventually fade into oblivion.
I’m sorry to inform you that you’re not a legend. In the grander scheme of things, you will live and die without anyone beyond your family, friends, and coworkers ever knowing you existed at all. Whether you have 300 or 300,000 followers on Instagram, in a 150 years from now, no one alive will ever know you even existed at all, save a few descendants who take the time to do genealogical research.
That trophy, medal, or plaque you received for winning first place in high school or college athletics is awarded to someone every year, you are just one of many. It doesn’t make you more important, better, or more capable than any other candidate in a job interview. Yeah, you were determined, you worked hard, you sacrificed time, energy, blood, sweat, and tears, but guess what my friend, some people do that every day just to survive.
Oh, what’s that you say? You have faith that your “god” has a plan for you and so that makes you special? You that 1 of 8 billion human beings, living approximately 75 years on one little blue planet of eight in our solar system, which is one of potentially hundreds of billions of other solar systems in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is 1 of 54 other galaxies in the Local Group, which is just 1 of 100 galaxy groups in the Virgo Supercluster, which is one of 10 million superclusters in the observable universe. You are one person on one planet of approximately 21,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 sextillion planets in the observable universe, but please tell me more about how special you think you are.
If your god exists, then it doesn’t know you exist anymore than you know a single specific microbial organism at the bottom of Point Nemo in the pacific ocean exists. Your god has no more of a plan for you than the 2-year-old that he/she/it just gave a terminal brain tumor to not but 30-minutes ago. Stop duping yourself into believing that you deserve a bright future and a long life, while your neighbor’s toddler deserves a terminal illness and a funeral in six months.
In other words, your god doesn’t know or even care that you exist. Your god probably doesn’t exist either, but if it does, it certainly doesn’t deserve to be acknowledged. I know, the truth hurts, I faced this reality a decade ago and the mere contemplation of it caused a crisis of faith and radically changed my perspective on life, purpose, and meaning. It also shattered my false sense of importance and that’s why I bring it to the forefront of attention here. We have got to shake the sleeping and dreaming self, we have to wake up to the reality that we are not as deserving as we’ve been fooled into believing our whole lives.
While all of this may sound dreadful, severely disappointing, and potentially life-crisis inducing, there is a bright spot in all of it. The only people whose attention and judgment you should ever concern yourself with are your family, friends, and colleagues. You interact with these individuals on a nearly daily basis, you should be striving to nurture these relationships and working to aquire their admiration and respect.
When you accomplish something, celebrate it. Not with strangers on Tik Tok, but with your family, friends, and colleagues. It’s part of their role in your life to give you the support and acknowledgement needed for a healthy dose of self-worth and self-esteem. No one person can change or save the world, but one person can change or save a life, and it’s with the people closest to us and that we encounter in our daily lives that we can begin this process of influence and lasting legacy.
There are going to be times where you feel like a failure, where you feel like life is unfair and that’s because we are all failures and life is unfair. The notion that things are going to go perfectly for you is a delusion that’s been spoon-fed to you your whole childhood and adolescence. There are no training wheels in adult life, just falls. Most of the time you can learn things from your mistakes, and sometimes there’s nothing to learn and only wounds to tend to. Maybe they’ll heal and maybe they won’t.
I sincerely hope this article has been a reality check that humbles all who read it. The practice of temperance as a virtue is severely lacking in modern society and I am seriously concerned about American youth who are being set up for a painful awakening to the disappointments of adult life. There needs to be a strong cultural shift away from the obsessions of fame and fortune and the delusional belief that self-worth is the culmination of social media engagement.
While personal achievements are noteworthy, it is the actions carried out for the benefit of others that truly deserves recognition and reward. We should want to raise youth who go out of their way not for personal gain, but for selfless service. For any young person in high school or university, you should think less on the things you can do for yourself and reflect more on what you can do for others. Then and only then, will you be worth remembering.
This is my third and final installment on the three core sutras that define Mahayana Buddhism. It has taken me four years to complete a study of these ancient Buddhist scripture in order to walk away feeling as though I have some grasp of their teachings as a Buddhist practitioner, but I am by no means a Buddhist scholar and this review is not intended for that purpose.
It is highly recommended that you read the previous two installments Prajñāpāramitā Part I: the Diamond that Cuts Through Illusion and Prajñāpāramitā Part II: The Heart of Insight before proceeding with part three. If you are not at all familiar with Buddhism, I highly recommend you read my introduction to the basics in The Middle Way and the Turning of the Wheel: A Brief Examination of Buddhism.
Though I have implied as much with the title of this review, the Lotus Sutra is not technically part of the Prajñāpāramitā sutras, and is in fact a standalone collection of text. It focuses on similar themes that I explored in the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra and reads much the same way. All sutras were originally memorized as poetic verse, long before ever being written down.
The entire Lotus Sutra scripture took more than two centuries before arriving at its current written form. During the process of transforming from oral teaching to literary scripture, the verses were expanded and translations saw these teachings converted to prose, or at the very least accompanied by prose, in order to more fully explain the purpose and meaning of the teachings.
I will not be exploring the areas of study and practice we have already covered in the previous installments, and will instead focus on areas not previously discussed, or at least those not previously discussed in any depth. The Lotus Sutra is made of 28 chapters, but the first one that really stuck out to me as new and interesting was Chapter 14, wherein the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) has a conversation with one of his closest followers, Manjushri.
In this conversation Manjushri asks the Buddha how the Dharma may be taught in the future when “Bodhisattvas are rare, and life is full of evil and unhappiness and there are so many ignorant living beings.” The Buddha responds to Manjushri by declaring that they will be able to practice and spread the Dharma by “Dwelling in the Four Ways.” He outlined these as states of being, or conditions of existence and practice.
They are as follows:
Aside from Manjushri, the Buddha mentions or interacts with several other well-known bodhisattva in the Lotus Sutra. Some of these include Dharanimdhara, Avalokiteshvara, Samantabhadra, and Kshitigarbha. Bodhisattva Dharanimdhara, also known as “Protector of the Earth” or “Earth Holder,” took a vow to connect humankind with nature, or to reconnect those that are distant, or mediate for those who do not agree or understand one another.
For anyone studying or practicing as an environmental engineer or working in environmental protection, conservation, or restoration, they will find a kindred spirit in Bodhisattva Dharanimdhara who suspended his own chance at nirvana for the betterment of all, swearing a vow to serve all living beings on planet Earth until none need his aid.
Bodhisattva Kshitigarbha, also known as “the one who seeks great suffering,” made a vow to seek out places of terror and torture, places of pain and punishment, sadness and grief so that he could offer aid and support. Instead of seeking his own nirvana, he sought to aid those in most need. For this he is depicted as the bodhisattva of trauma. Those who work or volunteer in his name are known as the “Hands of Kshitigarbha” or sometimes translated as the “Arms of Kshitigarbha.”
He is also frequently affiliated with people who are known in Buddhism as “hungry ghosts.” People who have wandered down the wrong path and have broken the Five Core Precepts, or people who are experiencing some form of suffering. When we are overly hard on ourselves or get angry with people when they don’t live up to our expectations, this too can cause us to become hungry ghosts. When we find ourselves or others in this state of being, we should remember Bodhisattva Kshitigarbha and his strength of compassion and try to follow in his footsteps.
The Lotus Sutra focuses heavily on being compassionate to ourselves and to others, it reminds us of how we can continue to practice the Dharma no matter the circumstances in our lives or in the world, and it reinforces the importance of taking a bodhisattva vow.
I don’t intend to cover any additional Buddhist scripture, but I would certainly encourage others to explore them if they have not. Like most ancient religious texts, they are filled with wild stories of supernatural beings and events, but they are also filled with profound lessons on the human experience and serve as gentle reminders of who and what we should strive to become.
Social Media, Psychopathy, and Time Management
Posted on August 16, 2021 by Kēphen
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In May 2009 I joined Twitter, two months later I deleted my account, and now twelve years after that I have rejoined the quagmire of Twitter for one single reason: it’s the only place where I can follow the vast majority of authors, scientists, philosophers, psychologists, etc., who discuss the intellectual and fascinating topics I enjoy, as very few are on Facebook or Instagram.
People like Sam Harris, David Frum, Andrew Hubberman, David Grinspoon, Yuval Noah Harari, Carolyn Porco, David Deutsch, Paul Bloom, Adam Grant, Max Tegmark, Brian Cox, Ethan Kross, Matt Haig, and the list goes on and on.
Though I’ve had an account on Facebook since 2006, I infrequently log in, thus people’s posts from a week ago show up at the top of my newsfeed when I do log in. So, for most of my friends and family, I never hit the like button on their selfies, kid or dog photos, food photos, yard sale posts, or conspiracy posts. They probably think I’m ignoring them, but it’s really that I just never see the posts.
I once considered Instagram to be easier to interact with, and all the photos and videos were more interesting and engaging, but now days I find it to be so uncompelling that I don’t know why I still log in. I just heart photos without even reading the captions anymore, most of the time just quickly scrolling while brain-dead and thumb-tapping.
I suspect my new experience with Twitter will not be anymore refreshing, but I will at least not be tweeting anything related to the humdrum that is my day-to-day life and unless a person tweets content related to science, history, physics, psychology, philosophy, economics/politics, or environmentalism, I honestly won’t be following them.
Beyond the scope of my social media ventures, these last 7 months of unemployment have been interesting. I have come to a few self-realizations, as I have been reflecting and ruminating on many things. Of particular note, I’ve come to realize that I’m far more apathetic and narcissistic than I had previously accepted myself to be.
I mean, I’ve never been particularly interested in the ongoings of other people’s monotonous daily lives and I’ve had an ever-growing ego since I was a teenager, but these past few years I have now seen that I have really pushed the limits of what is socially acceptable. To a point where I have begun to evaluate whether or not I might have some degree of psychopathy.
Not to the point where I’m worried I may engage in criminal behavior, but just to the point that I don’t find myself interested in the stereotypical things that other people desire to spend their time doing or discussing, up-to-and-including seeing or hearing them discuss the on-goings of their own personal lives.
There have been moments, particularly this year, where people have come up or messaged me and started telling me about basic human experiences occurring in their lives, like relationship issues or recent purchases or something that happened at work, and within seconds my mind was flooded with thoughts of, “Sweet baby Buddha, I hope this woman stops talking soon,” or “This is painfully boring,” or “How can I end this conversation?”
At least before, I could still pretend to be interested or fake sympathy or empathy, but recently I can’t even do that and I can tell people notice as my facial expressions and other bodily nonverbal cues give me away by expressing what I’m thinking and feeling during conversation. It feels exhausting to pretend like I care.
It’s a rather jolting conclusion to have drawn about myself, that I somehow have this growing apathy towards other people and their lives. One would think that the past 7 months that I’ve spent hidden away from the world, avoiding socialization, would do the exact opposite – grow a yearning for socialization. But no, I’m more antisocial now than I’ve ever been.
The narcissistic behavior that I’ve noticed is one that I’ve been more aware of over the years. I’ve had an issue with my ego for many years as it spawned from my adolescent insecurities. A meager way of defending myself in the midst of an underdeveloped self-confidence. It also didn’t help that I have bipolar disorder which often gives rise to irrational self-importance, feeding the ego exactly what it craves.
Being unemployed has been humbling and through the process of humility, the layers of deceit that my ego has been hiding behind have been slowly peeling away. Making the dastardly creature far easier to spot as it constantly maneuvers to renounce any suggestion that I’m not a valuable and skilled employment candidate worthy of any employer. Every rejection letter exposes the truth it refuses to believe, that I am, in fact, rather ordinary and deserve no special attention.
Sometimes my apathy and narcissism are at odds because my apathy pushes people away in fear I will have to interact with them but my ego demands their attention, creating a bizarre dance of delusion. This very writing is one of those dances – my apathy refuses to engage and communicate with other people about my thoughts, but my ego presumes to believe that people will want to read about my thoughts if I post them publicly.
I’ve attempted to make my time away from the world as productive as I can, even in the midst of a pandemic. I have been getting more reading done than I have in years, books that had been sitting around collecting dust. I’ve been writing a little too, giving this blog the attention it’s been lacking. I’ve even been sewing (no joke). But what I’ve been doing the most is consuming video-based media, truly an insane amount of streaming on Netflix and HBO Max, and even some films. I’ve also been drowning myself in YouTube videos on topics ranging from science and history to comic books and film.
I had a conversation yesterday with a friend about time spent on media like TV and video games and whether or not that time is a waste. When I was a teen and in my early-to-mid twenties, I easily played video games for 9 to 12 hours in a sitting. One could easily suggest that playing video games for that many hours was a waste of my time and brain power.
It was just such a perspective that was ultimately what pulled me away from the activity in my late twenties, I couldn’t see beyond the fact that I wasn’t accomplishing anything meaningful while sitting there, hands glued to my controller and eyes glaring at my television screen.
When I gave up that addictive behavior several years ago, I replaced it with watching vast amounts of TV, thanks to streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchy Roll. Arguably it was worse than video games because with TV your brain is doing less work than when you’re interacting in games, and if you’re gaming with others in-person or online – you’re also socializing. TV only required me to assume a vegetative state on the couch.
One could reasonably argue I took a questionable waste of time and swapped it for an even greater waste of time. There are three arguments I could consider for continuing to watch TV: it provides an escape, it activates the analytical part of my brain, and that it mirrors elements of human behavior and society.
To elaborate a bit, the first potential positive is that it allows me to unplug from the world around me as a coping mechanism, a way to either channel or avoid the stress or anxiety caused by things happening in my life that I might not have the power or ability to change or address. The apparent negative to this would be if I’m using it to avoid responsibilities that I am capable of accomplishing.
The second positive is that it stimulates my brain in a different manner than a book because I visually and audibly learn about characters, their history, motives, the setting, anticipate future actions, and so on. While books require you to imagine the elements that are often described in the necessary detail, television and film require you to fill in the gaps created by the reduced textual elements.
In other words, books explain in detail what’s happening so that you can use your imagination to visualize how it’s happening, where as videos show you what’s happening in the absence of details so that you can analyze and decipher why it’s happening.
The third consideration is that our society molds itself from the stories we tell each other, including those stories told through the medium of television and film. Perhaps TV shows and movies help make our society better by suggesting altered human behavior, normalizing things that might otherwise seem alien or taboo. A lot of social movements rely on the power of this medium to help people see and understand various topics. Of course the negative to this is if the theme of the content is criminal in nature, certainly not something that should be normalized.
It’s hard to stop binging on streaming services because it’s addictive, just like video games. In the past year or two I’ve also taken up the habit of regularly watching the video uploads of my favorite YouTube channels. I could argue that the YouTube videos I watch are on history and science and are interesting and educational, therefore valuable, and one could argue that’s better than spending time watching fictional TV shows and movies. But in all honesty I also watch a lot of YouTube videos about comic books and movies.
I found out today that my favorite intellectual, Sam Harris, watched Game of Thrones and it surprised me because he’s so accomplished, hard working, and productive. I couldn’t believe he had spent any amount of time on a medium like television, especially since he has stated he spends very little time listening to music because he considers it less valuable than listening to audiobooks and podcasts. He went on to mention that he wasn’t the best at time management, which also shocked me.
Ultimately, if I question the time I spend doing things, I try to ask myself what I get out of it rather than what I’m losing or sacrificing because of it. The value gained should be more than the value lost. If it’s not, then I decide to agonize no longer and walk away knowing I’ve made a good decision.