What have you done to yourselves!

A recent bitchfest in a certain soccer thread got me wondering: What have you done with your life? I’m sure you guys know about each others business, but I don’t.

If you are wondering about me, I am shaping up to be either a basement crawler, or a homeless.

I almost ruined my life because when I went to College I couldn’t stand the pressure and had a nervous breakdown. By the time I recovered I had to work for a living, so I never finished college properly. I ended up working as an assistant welder/construction worker for about 20 years. Then I developed epilepsy and had to give THAT up too. I’m currently a translator, which is a cute way of saying that I make some occasional money by writing stuff in English for other people.

On the other hand, I HAVE self-educated myself (mostly because I’ve always been a voracious reader) and quite honestly I don’t feel the need to finish College, at least not for its own sake. However I am trying to get the credits I need for a better-paying desk-type job that I could safely work at. I’m currently applying for a grant for people with impediments to help me pay for it. Wish me luck. :wink:

I went to a med school interview and the first thing I screamed was “I know SINISTRAL FROM RPGCLASSICS!!!”. They stared at my wild-eyed, spittle-covered, unshaven face and after a moment, they were like “SON. YOU ARE IN.”

I’m a Fine Arts major.

Soon as I graduate, I have the aspiration of one day being able to look at an art director from a high-profile company and say, “…would you like fries or onion rings with that?”

Ask me again when I’m 40. by then, I’ll have lived long enough to hopefully have a (un)satisfactory answer.

Look buddy, (next year)
I’m an engineer. (Of digital communications)

That means I solve problems.
Not problems like “what is beauty?”, because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy.

I solve practical problems.
How am I going to stop some big mean mother hubbard from tearing my editing software and materials a structurally superfluous new behind?

The answer… make a backup copy.

And if that don’t work, use a RAID setup.

Like this heavy-caliber, supercooled little ol’ number designed by me, built by me, and you’d best hope, not sapped by you.


Last year of Mediatechnology engineering, woo. Gonna design/build a new SCRATCH rig, do some colour corrections for an AV production and write my degree work based on it. Just one more math course left too… (and marketing. And 3 creds of a volitional course.)

My internship net me my name on the credits of two shows that are broadcast over here, woo. (5 seconds of FAME! … until the credits clear) and I might continue doing the same editing assistance/editing itself once the graduation part is over.

I have turned myself into a driver for friends.

I studied bio for 2 years, then changed my major because my profs and courses pissed me off and things got extremely frustrating. My grades were mediocre I guess, but I was too pissed off and frustrated with the system to go on.
I am now studying Digital Humanities and English Literature, am currently on “fall break” (we have summer and winter semesters over here) and my 3rd semester starts in october. It’s fun, I am learning a lot of new stuff, the profs are extremely friendly and helpful (very few exceptions), and my grades are shining so far, so I am happy. :3 If things go on like this, I’ll be finished 1 or 2 semesters early.

Aside from that, I work at a hotel and as a voluntary helper at the DH faculty (2 jobs! ah work haaahd for da moneeh!), making enough money to finance my occasional shopping frenzies (books, clothes, video games, random household items, “things that are purple”, presents for others, a ton of booze… you name it) and since my passion still lies with the fine arts and media design, I occasionally make some leaflets, flyers, websites, posters etc. for other people.
So, aside from my social life - which is a complete catastrophe atm :smiley: - “career wise”, life is awesome.

I majored in English, and after graduation went right into student teaching. Unfortunately, I sucked at it, and quit after the first semester. I then drifted into a job at Wal-Mart, which I’m still stuck in. I’ve gone back to school for an Accounting AA, but couldn’t find any other work after that. So…yeah. Another English major fails at life.

Don’t worry about what the rest of us do. Only worry about yourself.

MBA, CISSP, steady job (network security); one more promotion and I’ll be pretty happy.

Galloway: Right now I would TAKE that K-Mart job if I could. But my condition probably disqualifies me anyway. :frowning:

I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration specializing in MIS (Management Information Systems) and after graduation couldn’t find a decent job (I even tried temp agencies with no luck.) So, I went back to school so I could stay on my dad’s healt insurance. I attended a one year program and now I have an Advanced Studies degree in Health Inforatics. I worked as a glorified secretary in an urgent care center for a couple of years then got a more decent paying job at a health insurance company. It’s nowhere near begabucks but I live at home, dont’ drive, and have free health insurance so I guess for now I’m living the good life.

Went to Jacksonville State for six years to get my B.A in Music, where I learned two things from fellow students. 1) Teaching sucks, will not pay as well as other jobs, and will make you hate music. 2) Unless you are straight ballin’, playing for a living isn’t enough on it’s own.

So within my final year I sought out to attend another university in the south near the Gulf where I would get ANOTHER Bachelors, this time in Music Business, within two years and have a high-enough chance of landing a job in my field; a job with MONEY. And lots of it. During the course, I would’ve also taken under a fantastic piano faculty, a very eccentric composer, and could’ve had the chance to land a spot in their jazz band that goes to Montreaux every year.

Then my car died five times over, putting me out of transportation from both the school AND the job I had planned out (all I had to do was to come in, shake the guy’s hand, say “I moved and I’m ready to work” and it would’ve been settled). Then the loan application got complicated, couldn’t do FASFA because I already had one degree, and only a few days later I learn my grandfather had Super Bone Cancer Part 2 Electric Boogaloo and mom was having near fatal panic attacks.

So I moved back to the hometown to form a new plan, and still on that one year later. The waiting list on the Navy Band is so long that I decided to put it off in order to take care of financial shenanigans until I get more time and energy to work up the audition. The grandfather is beating cancer’s ass and the mother figure is doing much better, so it was good to be close to home to feel more at ease. Currently, I make music with bleeps and bloops and whatnot and wish I lived nearby more music minded people where the local favorite genres of music aren’t “both kinds of music: Death Metal AND Skynarrd.”

So yeah. Building a Plan B. That’s what the fuck I’ve done so far. The best thing I can say right now is that at least I got out of the food industry and I don’t call anyone “sir.”

Dropped out of college with a few classes left and am trying to get a job giving music lessons. I hope also to join the local symphonies or operas. We’ll see how that goes.

I do stand-up comedy for a living. There isn’t a time when someone’s not laughing at me.

I’m a super secret spy

Because we all know there are spy rings in Lincoln, Nebraska. How else do you explain names like Ndamukong Suh?

On the summer break between third and fourth year of an Actuarial degree. Screwed up second year but all I missed out on was two exemptions. Kicked third year’s ass. Hoping to do the same to fourth year.

Did four years undergraduate at Drew University and went out with a BA - majors in History and Classical Studies.

Moved to Florida for two years and got a Master’s in Latin at UF.

Moved back to NJ in the middle of a recession so stayed with the parents…and there I am. I found miscellaneous work for a few months after moving back up, got certified as an EMT and joined the local volunteer ambulance corps for kicks, then started at a very small risk management company where the yearly turnover is about 200%. It’s been horrifying. I’ve been wanting to get fired but the sons of bitches won’t do it. Probably still scared because I confronted them with evidence of some illegal conduct. Had’em by the balls.

People don’t believe what this place is like when I tell them. Office hours are 8:30 to 5:30, but performance is based on “billable” hours - hours we can show we did work on clients that the clients will pay for. Naturally they harp on this all the time and load us up on non-billable work. Weeks are typically 50-60 hours with the expectation that you’ll answer calls anytime - there have been conference calls at 7am on Sundays. We get email and tasks to do in the middle of the night with the expectation the stuff will be done by office hours the next morning. Back in February I did three straight weeks of 7:30am to 7 or 8 at night, and went in on Saturdays and Sundays. Was horribly sick at the same time, too. That’s part of the best aspect of this job - if you take a sick day, you’re expected to make up the billable hours as if you hadn’t. Same for vacation and personal days. Get fewer of each than is standard, too.

I once worked a 14 hour day in October. 7am to 10:45pm on a Friday. Scrambling to do work the VP directed me to do. Owner didn’t like how much time got billed to a certain client, directed VP to take it out of the system. I caught wind of it due to excellent hearing, printed out the billing records before they got deleted. Printed out the records after, too. Threw them in a folder until after the 3-week nightmare in February resulted in nothing more than me getting yelled out for about 15 minutes, then interrupted a company meeting by walking in, throwing the proof down on the table in front of everyone, and accusing the VP of fraud. That was damn fun. All this would be fine, but they pay beans and there’s no hope for promotion. Couldn’t rock the boat until I A) had worked long enough to qualify for unemployment if I get fired and B) put in a full year (looks better on a resume).

Months later…leaving soon. Sent resumes out this morning. Looking to go into a larger company, probably not insurance. I have a non-compete blocking me there. However, given the 200% turnover, I now have a healthy number of business contacts I’ve met over the past year and prospects look good for internal IT auditing at a large financial company in the crown jewel of NJ cities, Newark. People die there a lot. We shall see. Job’s made me miserable for a disproportionate amount of time. Time to change.

Meanwhile, I continue as a volunteer EMT. I’m not exactly an adrenaline junkie, but it’s best I do something good while I’m young. I also have a little dog, a rescue case about 2 years old. She is very cute. Anyone who argues can meet me out by the flagpole at 3.

RPGC should have some sort of meet-up now that many of us are actual people instead of (only) O/C teens typing up videogame guides.

And one of the reasons I don’t post more often, as I was just reminded, is that the site logs me out in the time I take typing something up. Thank goodness I remembered to copy this one first.