Jeff

I'm graduating from university on Saturday. My degree is in economics and I've got what amounts to a minor in math.

Overall I'm not real happy about it.

I applied to several Ph.D programs and none of them panned out. Either I was rejected or I declined at every school. My GRE quantitative was a 780 which is passable for top tier economics programs, but I'm applying from an obscure state university and my GPA is only just over 3.6. Plus I've got virtually nothing else going for me so apparently I don't measure up to the standards of top-tier schools.

I wasn't delighted at the prospect of getting a Ph.D in the first place, but it was basically the only route that seemed to make sense as jobs are scarce and I've got no source of income. Anyway after being rejected at or declining every university, my only option in academics is to stay at the same state university for another year while I pursue a 1-year post-graduate and reapply to Ph.D programs. This is a pretty shitty option as I've lived here my entire life, and I'm bored of it. Moreover the education I get here is generally poor, and in spite of - or perhaps because of the easy courses, I tend to lack motivation and thus both learn less and perform (relatively) poorly.

As I said, I live in Alabama and I always have. It sucks here for all the reasons you'd imagine, and education here is as poor as advertised and possibly worse. Lately I've been trying (despite often lacking real enthusiasm) to make up for lost time and do some self-education plus take the most difficult classes available in math and econ. Unfortunately there are no difficult econ courses here, so that didn't work. Also I've been forced to fill in some curriculum requirements as this is my last semester, and those filler classes were truly horrible wastes of time and energy. One of the math courses, on the other hand, was difficult. It was a topography / analysis course that ended up requiring my full effort, and even then I ended up a little short. I like to think that it was because I had several bullshit classes that wasted my time and sapped my will to study, coupled with my terrible math background, but even so I've never really had any trouble with an academic subject before. So it was a humbling and somewhat draining experience.

Several other aspects of my life sort of suck as I've gradually severed ties with a lot of friends and now only have a sort of core group that I've known all my life. Unfortunately even among my closest friends none of us are really similar enough to have a super solid friendship. It's a strange thing to think and I feel uncomfortable with it, but at times it seems to me that even among my closest friends we're only friends because we've known each other for so long. It seems like we’re dissimilar in every way. Among some of us there are ghosts of serious tension from the past and there’s almost never an atmosphere of relaxed goodwill. Among others there are just no mutual interests or anything like the spontaneity that characterizes healthy relationships. Probably worth acknowledging that I haven’t had a steady girlfriend in over two years, and more recently I’ve become so disgusted with the culture here and the kind of people that it attracts that in the past half a year or so I haven’t made the slightest effort in social situations.

Poker is also going poorly. Don’t really feel like there’s much to be said about it other than that I’ve been able to excel in most other aspects of life and it’s frustrating and humbling to be pretty unsuccessful at poker. I can console myself with the idea that I haven’t put in the time to really be good, but it feels like a hollow reason. Until I succeed at something I usually take lack of success pretty badly and possibly irrationally so, but whatever. It’s still frustrating and with everything else looking dim it’s just one more thing that’s bad rather than good.

Anyway this is really depressing piece of writing and I feel like it’s not even entirely appropriate to post publicly. I guess the relative anonymity of LP makes it pretty inconsequential so I’ll probably post it anyway. My main motivation for writing this was the hope that at some point I’d either see that I was being ridiculous or if I wasn’t being completely ridiculous, I was hoping to spark some idea of what I could do it improve things. Unfortunately no solution has really hit me.

I guess to conclude with a poker analogy, I feel like if life were an NLHE hand then I’ve misplayed it pretty severely thus far. Unfortunately open-folding / check-folding life doesn’t get the next two cards dealt unless you’re a Hindu. So ruling out the fold button really just brings me back to step one. Hopefully I’ll catch a lucky turn or something. But it makes me wonder how many people are in a similar spot and opt to fish. Gotta think that in poker if you’re drawing you mostly miss.

He's delusional. He can't communicate his ideas. He behaves like a spastic fish at every opportunity.

His non-interventionist policy is so 18th century. We are no longer on the fucking Mayflower and it does not take a month to cross Atlantic. Hello, Mach 5. I can now fuck with you from half the world away.

His Constitution-obsession is retarded. Hello, 3/5ths clause. The Constitution is not divine writ. It is completely fallible.

His political career, according to Wikipedia, got its start when the US finally cut its remaining ties with the gold standard... "After that day, all money would be political money rather than money of real value. I was astounded."

I guess his heart is in the right place and in some sense that puts him ahead of approximately 534 other Congressmen, but he's still retarded. The unadulterated adulation in the UIEGA thread is so misguided, but if he and his cohorts deliver the fish I guess I'll probably forgive him because I'm results oriented like that

Deposited $100 on PS to toy around w/ while drinking heavily and occasionally studying for exams. Obviously doing the run good and rescuing my Sharkscope from life tilt that occurred a few years back:



I'm also making the transition from NL50 to NL100. Did a bit of the run good at NL100 so that's happy, but I'll probably continue to NL50 it up as I think I'm pretty weak in 6-max cash. Otherwise running and playing pretty well in sundry other games. Mainly beasting / running good at NL50 HU and in assorted 6-max / HU SNGs. BR is staying afloat and increasing. Don't care much about the money and don't really expect to ever win enough money at poker for it be more than a diversion with some cash flying around. Nonetheless I'm pretty obsessed and constantly watching CR videos and running numbers so hopefully I'll achieve a low degree of mastery.

Rest of life sucks and is running pretty much way below or exactly at expectation. Can't really decide which. I really hate studying and can never bring myself to do it for more than an hour or two so expected happiness is going way down over the next couple weeks as I deal with finals