aquinas -- I don't want to be hard on you because your sentiment is appreciated, but this is remarkably trite advice. I don't feel heard because my ideas aren't being responded to directly, and what's being responded to instead is a hypothetical idea of what I am, perhaps driven by your own experiences. I hoped for something more substantial.

Brene Brown (I don't trust her, she has an agenda and is promoting something; I would not take it at all as an unbiased source: I agree with several of the Reddit comments here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalTheory/comments/qml0tt/why_do_i_hate_brene_brown/).

You're seeing yourself from an external standpoint for the first time... presuppositions -- I've had these kinds of thoughts ever since the beginning of college.

1. You are what you do
2. You are loved or valued when you produce
3. You don't exist when you are anything other than the best

I was never taught any of this. My parents never talked about my academics and tried their best to avoid it completely. I was the one who pushed myself.

Welcome to the human condition. Life is difficult... again, stating the obvious and patronizing, assuming that I had actually not thought about this five years ago (I did, everyone hammers it over your head anyway.)

Humble yourself by serving others... again, why the hell am I pronounced guilty of arrogance by default?! And who says I haven't served others? Well, I know I've helped a lot of people online -- I suppose that doesn't count because I wasn't directly interacting with marginalized sections of society.

All in all, the tone comes across as extremely condescending, and you've made a lot of assumptions about me, without bothering to check, which are untrue.

Val's post is useless. It asks me to accept "hard truths" without explaining how, and what kinds of truths we should accept. It could mean anything from asking you to accept you won't become an Olympic runner, to accepting that life is pointless. It proposes "getting a job" as a magical solution to seeing the value of essential skills I've missed, which seems to me a very American pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality. (Plus, I have gotten a job before right out of college, just not at a fast food joint or something, but I suppose that doesn't count.) It insinuates that I'm not working hard enough, somehow ignoring the fact that I've been working harder than most people I know. And I find the "work harder" rhetoric to be very toxic, because you can then always conveniently blame the victim for their situation where they weren't working hard enough. Why won't you work 6 hours a day? 8 hours a day? 12 hours a day? I mean, come on!

And you guys constantly refuse to respond to any explanations I try to give, perhaps as rationalizations unworthy of being contended with seriously (if you think they are, have the courage to say so openly!). Way to go, Sturgeon's law never disappoints.