Have you considered speaking to a counsellor? There seems to be issues you are grappling with beyond this age/ bachelors degree thing that may be helpful to thresh out with someone.
Because, like a lot of people, I have an ego. Anyways, why are my experiences contradicting the statistics? If you’re not getting my point, let me give you an analogy. Composing music is a very special talent that not of people have. Some people, like Mozart, started composing at five, which made it all the more impressive. However, others, like Brahms, didn’t really have a reputation as a great composer until adulthood. However, those composers are still world renowned. Why? Because most people can never compose, at any age.
The issue is that it’s so hard to find people who aren’t better than me.
This whole concept of measuring yourself against others on some kind of better/worse scale is definitely a good topic to discuss with a counsellor.
This kind of thinking will not make you happy at all. If you like being unhappy, continue doing it.
Yay! Someone finally thinks I’m the best! Since graduated high school and started college at 17, I must be amazing!
In all seriousness, have you taken any statistics classes? I was a psych major eons ago and mine was stats and methods for psychology, but I imagine any stats classes would give you some of the answers. there are so many flaws in your little study.
First, your definition of what makes someone better or special or a standout. It’s fairly subjective but I’ll tell you IMO age, degree obtained, finances, and prestige of College attended (I know you didn’t mention all these, just that others do) don’t make anyone more special or better. Maybe they are a tool a special or better person can use, but what’s important IMO is the positive impact they make in the world, big and small. I’m 41 years old and it means absolutely nothing to me or anyone who cares about me (or me them) what age I was when I graduated high school or college. No one cares.
Second, your subject pool is incredibly biased. People with similar goals and priorities tend to group together. Or course most of your high school friends are planning the same level of education. You tended to come together because you understood each other. Same for your college friends high school people. And similarly, those in your community and school in general have many similarities.
If you want to be special and a stand out, think of positive changes you can make in the world around you. That will be much more fulfilling than the issues you are worrying about right now.
It’s not making me happy because I’m at the bottom of the list.
You have that backwards. First you decide to be happy, then you find that you are able to accomplish your goals.
You have SO many options. Here are a few:
- Start hanging out with losers who will never amount to anything, perhaps singling out heroin addicts and people with felony convictions, so that you will feel superior to your friends.
- Continue comparing yourself to others in a negative way, focusing mainly on something that occurred in your early childhood and in which you had no control.
- Do what the rest of us did in college. Learn about yourself - your skills and shortcomings - then make the effort to improve in both categories, and in the process, develop the self confidence, and experience the reality check, that comes from realizing that most people really are better than you, except in particular areas where you are better than them.
I’m not better than them at anything, except maybe at math.
Well, there you go @creamcake.
Hey hun i just want say that oh my goodness there are so so many people in the world that can be classified as “less than you”. It seems to bother you you that you feel like you aren’t better than anyone at this point in your life, so you don’t feel special or accomplished. Well I know that sometimes it takes people a while to feel good about where they are in their lives. Problems come in different forms but everyone has them. You have accomplished more than you know just by having the drive to want to get ahead and better yourself. Just please don’t measure your worth based on comparing others accomplishments and yours at a point in life. No one in the world is required do anything by a certain age, but many people believe it is due to tradition. Be thankful for eveything you have and all the opportunities that have been given to you because there are many in the world who don’t have them. Hope you start focusing more on your goals and less on other people’s. I find volunteering and community service help xx
Well, that’s my major, so it would be sad if I weren’t better than any non-math major at math. And I’m not focusing on something that occurred in my early childhood. I’m focusing on the fact that it’s still affecting me 16 years later.
Working under the assumption that this isn’t a troll, i’ll just say that I was the youngest in my high school graduating class (by a pretty good chunk—I couldn’t get my drivers license until during my senior year), and you know what? Closing in on thirty years later, it all blurs out. Yeah, I was the youngest and did pretty well for myself, but some of my fellow graduates who were at the older end did well for themselves, too. I, and many who were older than me, ended up with graduate degrees, but we’ve also got people who don’t have college degrees at all who do everything from being professional portrait painters (more lucrative than you’d expect, I’ve learned from him!) to owning a trucking company to fronting a nationally-known band to raising some pretty spectacular families (which some of us degreed types have done, too).
There are a lot of different paths lives can go. As you grow up—and I mean that both chronologically and emotionally, 'cause it sounds like both are needed here—you’ll realize that, and also that what looks like success to you isn’t necessarily somebody else’s success.
And if you figure that out, you’ll also figure out that trying to compare your success to other people’s isn’t just pointless, it’s also a sad, sad way to go through life.
(And if you can’t figure it out? I’ll second the recommendation upthread from @scholarme to seek out counseling.)
So would be sad if everyone else, in every other major, weren’t better than you in those subjects? Yet that’s what you’re complaining about - that most people are better than you. Yes THEY ARE! In most things, other people will be better than you ( or whomever) but in some things (math?) you will be better.
Say what?
^The poster started school “late.”
What’s with your weird obsession with being what you perceive to be “better” than everyone else? You’re never going to be happy if you constantly feel the need to one-up other people you know. Fix your self-esteem problems before worrying about what other people are doing…
I don’t understand what you’re saying.
Creamcake, you are already better than you can ever imagine. You’re a miracle on this earth. These things we are talking about–grades, or colleges, or whatever, they are not you and they can not measure your worth. They are arbitrary value judgments of things that in the really big scheme of things, are not very important. What is important is that you find your own voice, your own sense of worth and appreciation for who you are.
All of us have had feelings like you are having at one point or another. You are not alone. We really don’t know how others are feeling-- you know that saying, “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” It really is true. I remember this story, from a relative. Her baby had a birth defect of the digestive system. And she was pushing him in the stroller, at the mall, and feeling very down, and she saw another lady about her age, with a baby in a carriage And she felt very jealous, like, “Why does my baby have to have this problem, and her baby is perfect?” But then she got closer, and as they passed, she looked into the other woman’s carriage, and she was stunned to see that the other woman’s baby had a cleft lip. She realized that here she was, feeling all bad about her life, and her baby, and there was this other woman also walking through the mall, who looked perfect from a distance, and who probably was thinking that she-- my relative-- was the one with the perfect life, the perfect family, the perfect everything. Because her baby’s defects (my relative’s) were covered by a blanket, this other woman never got the true picture. The irony.
The older you get the more you realize just how much is about marketing and about show. Really, both of these mothers have perfect lives. They have a day to do something with and that is all we can expect. They have someone to care for, and that is the greatest gift.
When I was feeling this way, less valuable than others, I stumbled upon a few things that snapped me out of it. 1. Yoga. 2. Alan Watts youtube videos. 3. This book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Untethered-Soul-Journey-Yourself/dp/1572245379
Those three things helped me break negative thinking patterns and my life became so much better just by that one change. Other people rely on counselors, or religion, or the arts, or relationships.
Whether counseling or Alan Watts can help you, try to get out there and find something–anything-- that tells you you are a valuable, precious part of this world, and believe it, because you are.
Thank you, but I’ve had counseling before, and it hasn’t helped.
Hi @creamcake here are a couple of other things to think about.
Age - my sister (who is not 40) started school at 4. Her birthday was in Nov and at that time in CA you could enroll in K as long as you turned 5 by Dec. Not only did she enroll young but she didn’t finish high school and instead went to college at age 15 and did very well. Now she has a son who is very small for his age and she opted to wait until he was 6 for kinder. He is in K this year and is about to turn 7. Why? Because she said that starting young was terrible for her. She was small and socially behind and hated it. In fact she had trouble throughout her entire pre college years. College was a totally different place for her and age didn’t matter once she got there but during her school years it did, very much.
College - it sounds like you attended HS in a district with a high college going population. Some cities have higher college attendance and some have lower. This usually has to do with family income. Wealthier cities have more educated parents, and the children of those families all go to college. The district that I live in has a lower college going population. Many come from lower income or are first generation students and have no idea that they even can go to college. Some don’t even consider it, and others assume that everyone just goes to community college. Our district makes a really big deal on getting kids to college and starts in 4th grade with local college tours. They encourage college t-shirts on Fridays at the middle schools, and at the high schools take weekend tours of colleges starting in 10th grade. Around here going to an elite college is really unheard of and the few kids who go are a big deal. Of those who go most aim for the local state school.
In my city you would be a big fish in a big pond full of little fish. A lot of kids but most swimming in circles. In your area you sounds like a fish in a big pond full of other, well, fish who all look the same. It is very hard to stand out when everyone around you looks like you and does the same things that you do.
I have a suggestion. Perhaps this summer you can do some kind of volunteer work in a different community and actually meet people who are different from you and those who you grew up with. It think it is important to realize that there are all kids of people in the world and it sounds like you don’t get out much, away from the sameness. Just a thought.