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Don't tell me that I just needed to believe in myself more. My belief in my ability to succeed was briefly shattered by my dad's employment situation. He was a
by calt 9y ago
Don't tell me that I just needed to believe in myself more.
My belief in my ability to succeed was briefly shattered by my dad's employment situation. He was a well qualified engineer laid off from manufacturing. That made us struggle.
I was always thinking about money and feeling the need to optimize for $2 meals instead of $4 meals, and wondering if my car would hold in long enough to be able to get me to school in a week. These are things that only your first, most motivated, category of people will overcome.
I didn't overcome these obstacles. I temporarily dropped out. Don't tell me that I just needed to believe in myself more.
My story only has a happy ending because state schools are cheap and engineering internships are paid.
- pwinnski 9y agoI didn't read a "just" in the previous poster. I do believe that belief or trust is a necessary but inadequate precondition to success. Believing in yourself is not enough to help you succeed, but not believing in yourself is enough to help you not succeed. As a society, we do a very poor job giving people that trust or belief.
- rectang 9y ago> As a society, we do a very poor job giving people that trust or belief. So, do you address that with pep talks, proselytizing about "meritocracy", and "tough love"; or by actually addressing economic insecurity through safety nets that allow people to make a mistake or two without crashing and burning?
- pwinnski 9y agoI think it's rational for people to not have trust or belief given our society as it is. So I think we should address the root causes of economic insecurity structurally rather than cheerleading people who have no reason to feel secure. Empty cheerleading gives us no-doc jumbo loans at sub-prime rates... until the music stops and bad debts are revealed as the bad debts they are.