I think we're back! Hey boardies, your favourite Australian has returned (thanks NYCgaf for the notification).

Whatever personal news: I still hate my parents and myself, I'm 20 years old now, I'm up to the second year of a uni degree, and basically everyone 'accepts' me as female now. I'd love to talk with all y'all again though, so please say hi! <3

Guess who's back, back again. Claire is back, tell a friend ...


Welcome back. :)

I’m As Mad As Hell and I’m Not Gonna Take This Anymore!

waddup choc o claire. Glad to hear things are progressing.

Hey

Hey! How's my bro going? :D

Life is alright lol

Overworked, feeling a little under the weather but hope I'm better before Easter here

You?

I'm unemployed unfortunately, have been having a pretty tough time of it lately with uni and emotional stuff. Keeping my head up!

You're young still. You get more calloused to the bullshit as you age. It never gets easier, but you grow tougher. Stick to your studies, but don't throw yourself into financial debt over them. There is no true path. Don't be afraid of change and growth.

Keep at it, and keep it simple. It helps.

Word. That's one of the positive features of growing older.

Keep up the good fight. The world will show you when you are on the right path through synchronicities.

@claire

i disagree with eugene's "no debt" admonition. there's good debt and there's bad debt. good debt is an investment that fuels growth and speeds you up, like wings; bad debt is a chain around the neck in deep water, and it drowns you.

so, of course don't get into bad debts for a useless degree (my useless degree was thankfully debt-free, though it took up years of my life, so it was an economic loss regardless. then again, i'm weird and do not mind).

but if you're getting a useful degree that will increase your income, then it makes sense to borrow sensibly. that is if you agree with the life cycle theory/hypothesis.

it basically states if you borrow when you're young and poor, save when your earning power is high in midlife, and spend your savings in old age, your consumption evens out throughout your lifetime for maximum marginal utility.

e.g. see: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l...hypothesis.asp
https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-t...thesis-5209285

well, the hypothesis is descriptive not prescriptive, but you can use as a prescription/theory if so inclined (some financial advisors do).

the other thing to add is that i'm shocked at the fact that you can find no employment because the world needs (desperately) people like you who are competent with logic and reason and numbers.

you don't have to be a math genius--just competent--to find work. (also aussie unemployment is superlow and your central bank is raising interests to stem inflation.) can you tutor, or work with computers, or in something dealing with statistics, etc? e.g., here in the usa there is a huge demand for IT workers, accountants, actuaries, etc. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice...-job/stem-jobs

best of all is that skilled jobs pay more and you have to work fewer hours than doing unskilled labor to get the same money. so why not be nerd and proud, produce what you're good at producing? https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c...eadvantage.asp

anyway i hope you take some economics classes to help you make sense of these things. because... why suffer?

last, i hope you can find some support system/therapy, because you're a smart person and my guess is that it's emotional issues getting in your way. university campuses (at least in the usa) offer a large panoply of support groups and services. how is it over there?

Fortunately I don't have very much debt to worry about, my payments for now are small enough that I could in theory pay it off with savings even after a year of being unemployed (but that caused a huge breakdown when I tried, so I didn't). It shouldn't be too bad honestly, I'm just worried financially in the meantime.


Well...this is my fault, I haven't really been looking. I live in a regional area so not much of the work is white collar, and it would be difficult to get anything that I can do around uni and transport...especially since my goal is to move closer into the city, something hard to do without losing a job.


I'm not doing any economics in my course (except for, currently, a work placement class I'm flunking), and even if I was I'd probably try and skip it because I think that the sort of people who study economics at uni...


Most of my emotional issues are just feeling like a loser, not having much in the way of social interaction (see above) and doubting fixing that (also see above). Plus way too much time spent pining for those across oceans... :o

there's quite a bit to unpack there so i'll just tackle it by bits. ok? this one for now:


that's rough. it sounds to me like you're depressed, and the rest of your problems (lack of motivation, flunking courses) stem straight from there. please take care of it? :(

depression is a bit of a chicken and egg problem, hard to pin down if depression causes negative mind chatter or if negative mind chatter causes depression, if depression causes lack of exercise or lack of exercise causes depression, if sleep deprivation causes depression or depression causes sleep deprivation, if depression invites disaster or disaster brings depression, if depression causes isolation or isolation causes depression, but... the cycle needs to be broken.

fuck, this is hard because all i can do here is say things, which feels kinda useless. but i'm trying to say anyway that this is not isolated or separated from other areas of your life, but actually central to all the rest of it, and it's important, an emergency even, so... please please please find help for it? and... keep trying until something works? because there are things that work.

also, depression is very common in university settings, so that's something for one to feel like one belongs lol. just please don't stay stuck there (in depression i mean).

continuing,...


ah yeah, "business types" maybe?

yeah i wasn't recommending it for the social scene lol, but as a basic form of literacy which... i think everyone should have. it's a fundamental reality too many people ignore. it's like... imagine if a majority of people were flat-earthers. we're that bad when it comes to our understanding economics.

economics is, at its best, a subspecies of philosophy, a kind of highly abstracted anthrophology and psychology, showing us how people behave under conditions of scarcity. it's really amazing shit.

and we are all under conditions of scarcity, because resources are always limited (right?) while desires are unlimited (of course). and to figure out how we go about solving that tension as a species... is really cool.

then again a university course might not be the best place to learn those things, not in that way anyway. instead of an intuitive grasp of ideas they might just give you formulas and boring equations to memorize, but that would depend on the teacher i guess.

i'd recommend some books for personal consumption but i imagine you're swamped right now.

and also

yah i was hoping you could flee to a big city, but anyway, in the meantime, do they have student jobs at your universities? college campuses in the usa are all staffed with students. and sure there are crap cafeteria jobs but there are more interesting things in labs and libraries and academic departments. and sure library grunt work doesnt pay a lot but it gives you access to the motherlode... and labs and departments are door openers to so much. particularly labs which is where the money gets generated...

and student jobs arent marriages. they arent for life... you can try a new one each semester. well at least i did lol. not sure im an example of anything, maybe more of a cautionary tale lol, but i had fun haha.

Will get around to all of that as time goes by. For now, it's election day here.

Just worked ten hours counting votes, didn't get home until ten minutes ago (1.40am). A few quick notes:
*the right-wing Liberal Party have fallen to pieces, losing about twenty seats to go from narrow majority to clear opposition
*the supposedly-left-wing-but-actually-centrist Labor Party are all but certain to form government, but may not reach the 76 seats needed for outright control because
*there is a massive crossbench, both out of a strong vote for the Greens and a big movement of "teal independents" who are generally conservative but advertising themselves as different to the LNP - as well as being pro-climate action
*things will be very interesting

well, congrats on your environmental shift. and fingers crossed.