>>103997>Saying that, I spend all my spare time studying various things and I'm pretty smart so I guess part of it feels a bit like a waste too. Sometimes I feel like it can be a "waste", but at the same time I couldn't imagine myself being restricted to a single field of study. There's freedom that comes with not having to stick to a single path, and I feel as though few people nowadays have as wide a reading list as mine. Hopefully by the time I'm 40 I'll have a deep connective understanding of many fields that will provide me with unending richness in how I view the world (I already have an inkling of that feeling now). I also like the freedom that comes with not having to be good at it. In school I always felt like I had to get As or HD's; now I can read material and there's little pressure on actually being good - if I get it I get it and if not I can move on.
>imaging what they are thinking based on what I feel about myself deep down.Most people project their own feelings onto you. For example, my manager (who is a lovely woman) recently lost her husband. He was very old and, from what I can tell, he was a huge burden on her. She never described him as such, but she had to do a lot extra to pick up the slack. I projected my own feelings onto her; I couldn't help but assume she was secretly happy that he was finally gone and no longer causing her stress. I wouldn't dare express this publicly because I know she loved him, but it's a secret suspicion I carry because it's how I would respond to the situation. If it were actually true that I was right, rather than thinking less of her, I would probably think more highly of her for being more like me.
I will extrapolate this and conjecture that if people think less of you because of their projections, then they're really self-loathing. People think there's something wrong with me because I chose something I enjoy over money. In a way I think it's self-loathing, or perhaps envy, that I have what I want.
>They want people who can think critically.>Most people get their jobs through connections too.In her case these are both true. I don't even know if she finished her degree. I know many others from high school who dropped out of their degree half-way through and got lucrative positions because of connections.
Anyway nona, thanks for letting me spill my guts out, and thanks for spilling yours. You seem like a cool person and I don't think you should worry about what others think of you. Most of them barely even think of themselves truthfully.