"College, or what I chose to do with my life"

prophetsam 2005-04-26 09:00:27 ET I dropped out at 17. This was after, during my 16th yr, my ex-stepdad attacked me at, one of my sisters (I'm the youngest of 8 by 20 years) commited suicide, and i was forced out on my own. I dropped out mostly to take care of - a.k.a: play Father to - my two great-nephews, since my nephew couldn't do it on his own after his mom died. I finally got around to getting my GED at 18. I went back to school like a year later, and took a full course load. Well, that was a bit too much for me since I hadn't been to school in like over two years, and slacked off during highschool, only participating in like discussions that interested me and whatnot, reading my own books or sleeping most of the rest of the time. Hence, it's not surprising that I ended up dropping out less than half-way through. I tried again the next year, but, that time I suffered a MAJOR heartbreak, and my will to do anything but curl up and die left me. I dropped out again. I just finished going back to school (only one class) for my Nursing Assistant certification, passed my State Boards, and plan on continuing for my RN, and then progressing on from there. (Interested in both the Psych field, and Tropical Medicine and Epidemic/Pathogen Control - with a perticular affinity for the Viral Hemmoragic Fevers - and hope to try to work for the WHO and DEFINATLY will voluneteer with Doctors Without Borders). Now, if you'd ask me my major interests, you wouldn't get medicine (well, maybe Psych) as one of my top 10. Anthropology, Comparitive Theology, Philosophy, and Liberal and Utopian Politics are my main passions. I also have a very soft spot for the written word, being a writer myself (Poet, mainly). Try finding work in these fields. I've done ALOT of jobhunting in my life and I have yet to see an Ad looking for an 'Aspiring Theological Scholar' No "Desprately seeking Philosophers or 'Those interested in the culture of Man, dating into pre-history'..." Never seen "Poets Wanted". Sure, you can make a living as those things, usually in a University setting, and it will take you a Ph.D to get started. I don't know about you, but I never had 8 years to spend going to school full time while daddy paid for everything. I had to feed myself. The point to this rambling little side-stream is, One: Most of the time what interests you, and what can pay the bills are two TOTALLY different things. ...Ok... That's pretty logical, nothing too revolutionary there. Two: Working just to pay the bills and ignoring your true "inner-callings" leaves you only Physically exausted and Spiritually and Emotionally empty. Sure, you can forget about all of that by trying to copete with the Jones', but only temporarily. It's always there, nagging at you. One starts to see no real point or meaning in life. Three: The goal of the individual thereby has to be to find a way to reconcile one's interests and desires with one's need for survival in a materialisic society. Find something you can BEAR doing. Somewhere that the thought of going to doesn't want to make you eat the barrel of a gun after 6 months, a year, maybe a couple... Spend as musch effort as possible following your heart and your true interests. As the great Anthropologist and Athority on Mythology - Joseph Campbell<sp?> - said: "Follow your Bliss". Four: Now here's where it all ties in - Pay VERY close attention in your life to Syncronisities, especially those having to do with what you deem your "calling" to be. You will start to see a way open up between survival and fufillment. It will not come all at once, it will not even come as a path hazily coming out of the fog. It's more like looking at an impassible river, and then all of a sudden you notice a stone you can step out on - risky, but closer to your goal. Then from there, and it may take time, you will notice another, then another. It may take you a VERY long time from there, but once you get to that point it becomes almost invigorating,like the rush of watching 'Shooting Stars' for a while and anticipating where they will come from next. The quest becomes the goal. Attainment can be achieved. ALWAYS REMEMBER: You must survive, yes, but "DON'T SELL YOUR SOUL TO FEED YOUR BELLY"!!!! .....or maybe I've just done too much Acid, and will wake up in the hospital with all of this just being a bad trip and all of you being people I just hallucinated..... As comforting as that sounds, to just be hallucinating Republicans, I doubt very much that it's true. ...one can always hope though, right? "I bless you all living things. I bless you in the Infinite Past, I bless you in the Infinite Present, I Bless you in the Infinite Future" -J. Kerouac "You must BE the Change you wish to see in this World!" -Gandhi May the Peace and the Love of the Dharma bless you, keep you, and teach you Truth. -Samuel

JamBandJunkie 2005-04-26 10:01:57 ET The problem I have is an internal one. I don't feel as though I should be dedicating my life to something I do not feel a passion for. High school was a joke for me, I did just as you said... "slacked off during high school, only participating in like discussions that interested me and whatnot, reading my own books or sleeping most of the rest of the time." Yet I still passed with flying colors, because a book of most useless information is not a challenge to me. Now don't take that the wrong way, when I say useless information I mean that I do not feel as though I gained anything from the information which I was taught. I feel as though schooling should not consist of what it does, but rather of how to I've off the land, build a house, and treat other equally. I believe that this world doesn't need mathematicians, it needs people just like you and me searching for a common good. ...but I suppose that's why they call me a hippie.

prophetsam 2005-04-26 10:09:18 ET Yes, I'm qutie the Beatnik, prefering the simple, compassionate life. The trick, though, is to use the system against itself. Educate yourself in ways that allow you to know all of their tricks and either pre-emptivly block them, or work damage control. We do need mathamatitians, and the like, though... Ones who are searching for a common good. We're not killing the planet, we're making it unlivable for ourselves. The Earth can survive us, we can't. So, yeah, we need those 'normal' and especially 'scientific' job people to rebuild when we blow most of us up, like we inevitably will. Leave out the insurance adjusters, the lawyers, and ANYONE in Sales or Marketing, though. LOL! "...You may say that I'm a dreamer....." -S

JamBandJunkie 2005-04-26 10:12:12 ET "...but I'm not the only one..."

Neko2631 2005-06-30 09:50:47 ET ...You know when you read something and it really strikes a chord inside and you think, "my god, this person is a genius...I didn't think anyone else out there actually GOT IT, let alone had it all sorted out so well," and you want to say something to the person who wrote it to convey some mixture of awe and gratitude and total appreciation and bliss at having met someone who, for even a moment, feels in total synchronicity with you about something really important? Well yeah...I just had a moment like that.

prophetsam 2005-06-30 12:41:27 ET With? Concerning? Please, share!

Neko2631 2005-07-01 08:32:45 ET With and concerning your view on what you want to do versus the reality of what you have to do. Occupation, job, living...whatever. You're the first person I've ever seen talk about it who addresses the reality of the way it is without getting depressing. You wrote frankly, but there was hope in what you said. REALITY in what you said. You addressed the sense of a deeper calling that everyone has but that so many people learn to ignore, so that they can just plug through their lives, do 'what has to be done,' and earn money. Seeing this particular reality looming in my future has caused me no end of depression, worry, and...stubbornly digging my heals in to avoid what I felt was unavoidable. I've been plagued by the "I have to" versus "I want to." There are times when I think that I'm the only one with whom this sort of thing, this sort of thinking, even registers as a proverbial blip on the radar. You seem to get it, AND, unlike me, you seem to have your head on straight, and you seem to have been able to maintain the perspective of the observer, despite being pit-deep in it like most everyone else. That's the best way I know how to say it, but you really, really get it. So...wow - for putting things in perspective, and for giving me a better way to approach all of this 'real life' stuff. A humble, awed, grateful wow.

prophetsam 2005-07-01 10:41:20 ET I am more flattered than you can believe. Just remember one thing, though. Just because I have the gift of a decent perspective, don't think that I am free from the tendancy to be overwhelmed by emotion, or bogged down in the Myre. Perhaps `tis soley my gift of being able to speperate my Logic from my Emotions, my Mood from my state of Being. Sort of like severing the Corpus Collosum, allowing the two hemispheres of the brain to act independantly. Perhaps it comes from the 'Crowleyian' excersise of switching between personalitiy traits, and taking them to the limit, that has allowed me this freedom. Perhaps I've just spent too long with my nose in Metaphysics, Ontology and Philosophy, and my head in Altered States of Consciousness. Who knows..... All I have to say is: "That decision would be HIGHLY Illogical, Captian" -Spock

Neko2631 2005-07-04 10:00:14 ET I will keep all of that in mind. ^^ ...I didn't know there was a name for experiencing different personality traits to the extreme. That's my life's modality! I live one extreme, and when I can't take that anymore, I switch to the other and then eventually, I find some sort of equilibrium. Either way, your perspective is awesome. ^_^ I'm sure that my appreciation is pumped up by the fact that I pretty much read this at exactly the right time (god-blessed synchronicity, I say). I've been out of a job since March because I've been holding out for work that I thought I could actually look foreword to going to in the morning. Because of what you said, I think I'm a little more grounded now, and willing to get by and make the best of what I have...and I can do that because the sense of being trapped forever in whatever job I decide on is gone. There's hope for the future now where, surprisingly, it would seem that there was little to none before; you put things, or you helped me put things, in perspective. A much-needed perspective. All of the stuff connected to my current situation in life (the more seemingly predominant of which is directly tied to my lack of income) has made it feel a bit like hell for a little while, and I actually see light at the end of that tunnel now, and it feels GOOD to be moving foreword, instead of...not moving foreword. So...you really, really helped me at the time when I think I really, really needed it most. I will remember that you fall victim to the muck now and again just like everybody else (or in your own unique way), but you still said exactly the right thing to...well, save me from a really bad place. So THANK YOU!! Again. ^^

prophetsam 2005-07-08 15:55:55 ET I am more pleased, that I could help, than you could imagine!! -S

Neko2631 2005-07-10 10:00:41 ET Haaa, warm squishies all around!! I love that unanimous feel-good feelin'. ^___^ And it makes me happy that your freeing me up from a long-standing problem makes you happy. ^_^

prophetsam 2005-07-15 17:49:27 ET Again, thank you...

Neko2631 2005-07-17 14:05:10 ET ...I don't know what else to say, but...^^

prophetsam 2005-07-17 14:10:35 ET =)

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