Just wondering, I applied to IUOE Stationary Engineers Local 39 and they give you a practice test and it's pretty short. I'm trying to score 100%
I've heard of people using stuff like ASVAB practice tests or whatever. IDK I'm just not trying to waste money on random practice tests
i am crashing out everyday I can't do this shit anymore I wanna live somewhere overcast with less traffic or where I can walk or skateboard to work I cannae do this shit no more
I CANT FUCKING DO IT ANYMORE DOWNVOTE ME I DONT CARE
i like night time because it's the only respite I get from 365 of searing hot sunlight but at the same time nothing good happens after midnight usually, it's demon time...I used to stay up until 5AM for no fucking reason for years. I think I used to even deadlift in my garage at like 3AM sometimes, unhinged behavior. It was not healthy. It's 1AM now and even then this feels too late, I feel like I am letting demonic energies enter my body, like a body (the father the son and host - tagaBobobo-bo Bo-bobo), mismo tamaño
idk go to bed earlier (non derogatory) itza important for mental health functioning
Just wondering how it is. I have a computer science degree and am trying to get out of retail so I can have a better schedule (sick of working nights) but two things:
From what I gather even getting a help desk role is as difficult as finding a software engineering job
I am technically not even qualified for help desk
but generally what is the work like in comparison for those who have done both? I have ten years of customer service experience and it seems like there is some crossover in that aspect.
Apologies if this is a dumb question, I don't really know what to do anymore and am trying to get out of a bad situation.
Graduated May 2025 with a Computer Science degree, and I genuinely feel like this has given me zero options in life. I'm not seemingly qualified to apply to anything and the "jobs the just require a bachelors degree" genuinely don't seem to exist in the slightest. Everything that requires a degree is specialized and asks for specific skills. Entry level software engineering positions basically no longer exist or are so competitive there is basically zero chance of getting them as an average person.
I just don't understand where the data that "bachelors degree holders earn more over lifetime blahblahblah" even comes from because like, I am in retail full time. There is no room for advancement. No one cares that I have a degree. No job relevant to my field does either, and they all ask for years of professional level experience with tools/frameworks that you could only realistically teach yourself to an acceptable standard through an actual JOB.
I've more or less accepted that I am doomed but I still can't really understand how or why anyone even seems to bother to go to college anymore. Everyone else I know with a bachelors degree is in a similar position.
I don't know people keep telling me to stop doing these but I don't know what else to do anymore honestly
slow day at my shitty retail job and the empty aisles and skeleton crew really got me fucked up thinking about how this feels like its kinda just it
maybe I just suck as a person and a lot of why my life is garbage is my own self defeating attitude and innate inadequacies combining to make an endless sinkhole of misery but then I help all these customers who are b2bsaas people and I think about how much it probably still sucks to be on that side of life, with a house and a Tesla and mortgage payments and having to get up at like 5AM to beat traffic and knowing you could lose your status in like 2 seconds at the whim of some c-suite
but then life feels so seemingly flat right now, at least in the sense that if you don't have much going for you it seems that there is little you can do. I've always felt like life is tolerable if you have some positives in your life, but at least from my own experience if those are absent in your life it is a tremendously uphill battle to try to establish them.
Everyone is in their guard pose, hunched down in their pillbox with a 50 cal pointed out at the hellscape visible from their concrete bunker slit, and the guys huddled down behind a two inch tall dirt mound while the artillery falls are dudes like me. I don't have a pillbox.
And yeah people will say "take a fucking walk". Went on a 7 mile trail run on Sunday and got a traffic ticket the moment I got out of the trailhead. Do you see what I mean? Do you SEE what I mean?
Everything is closed off. I would like to get out of retail hell, and loneliness, and posting on the internet, but it seems that everywhere I go there are impassable walls being put up by outside forces. I remember my whole last year of college becoming more and more depressed realizing how absurdly competitive the entry level CS grad market is, and then the economy started going to mondoshit and here I am now. Everywhere you go everyone just tells you, "tough luck nerd, should have been born strong like me".
What are you supposed to do with anything of this? All I can think is, maybe this is just what life is going to be for the foreseeable future. And that bums me out, thinking of all the people who wasted their lives in similar periods of history, periods where all the footholds and handholds and pillboxes ran out, and they were just huddle behind what little cover they could find, trying to make sense of it all...
Just wondering, trying to make the decision to just finally go do something else, since I'm one year post grad (I'm also thirty). Is it only people from T10 schools getting hired? Is it AI? I don't know. Everyone out here has money.
I don't.
I fucked my life up really hard by dropping out of highschool when I was 17 and then spent years just depressed not doing anything, went and got a bachelors degree in Computer Science, wasn't raised right, etc.
I've never had a job outside of retail and the service industry. I had the misfortune of being born and raised in the Bay Area as a poor person, so I've been looking for an out my entire life. I knew I didn't want to slave away like my dad working two shitty service industry jobs just to scrape by but I wasn't very good at school or much of anything.
I did get into working cars when I got my license at 23. I picked up a shitbox and just taught myself how to work on cars and realized I really like working with my hands, and actually seem to be somewhat mechanically inclined. I like working on my feet (I'm one of the rare psychos who actually likes the "walking 8 hours a day" part of retail) but I also sort of realized late that I wanted to work with my hands so I don't really know what to do. Everyone says do NOT become a mechanic which is what I would like to do so then what else is there? Electricians unions in the Bay Area are absurdly competitive and saturated, not sure I would like carpentry, plumbing is also kind of saturated, the other unions I've looked into also seem very competitive and exclusive.
I just preregistered for Local 39 Stationary Engineers but I'm not sure I stand much of a chance of getting in.
I don't know. I'm just sick of working retail and not having any sort of real skills but everything seems so unattainable. One of my coworkers is a former union carpenter and I always hear him talk about what he does (he still does side jobs) and occasionally even see him working on stuff and it all just seems so cool to me but I honestly don't even know where to start. He just tells me "go join the union!", To me, it seems like no one is going to give chances to some 30 year old loser but I just want to do...something I guess.
Sorry if this post is fucked up or aimless, I'm just tired and frustrated. I don't really have much of a future and am grasping at anything. Doubt I will get much engagement.
Sorta stealth advice post because I am sick of making no money but I have recently become sorta frustrated how it's like not acceptable socially to just work some shitty job, at least not where I live.
A lot of it is that I literally don't make enough money to survive on my own and to most people in the USA being poor is a sin but I've never been a particularly smart or intelligent dude so it's like, what if organizing overstock and helping customers and being a weird little guy setting merchandise and working on my feet 8 hours a day actually is my jam?
I've seen how people deflate when I tell them I do for a living (even worse is when they literally fucking short circuit when they realize it's possible for someone who isn't a white collar worker to be into shit like running or literally doing anything at all that isn't just the stereotypes of the type of shit poor people get up to) and I've just never understood this mentality.
Despite this, I'm still pretty fucking embarrassed to be doing what I'm doing still. But to me it's also like, what else am I supposed to fucking do lol?
I think it's funny how as a teenager I was super put off by school and just wanted to sit around listening to Can and Jesus And The Mary Chain all day and I literally did do that enough to the point where I got expelled for not doing any school work. But to me it's like, I knew I wasn't going to be talented enough to do anything but the shittiest most mindless labor but shouldn't that in itself be valued to some degree?
And I just hate this sort of eugenic trend within capitalist society where you have to be a mega big brain genius to be allowed to live a dignified life. It feels like there is this cultural assumption that average people want to live lavish lifestyles while doing fuck all but some of us just want to like, survive lol. If I could just stock shelves the rest of my life and trail run I would be good. Some guy at work once got really weird with me, he was telling me about how he was an electrical engineer for a long ass time and how he was super smart and shit and was pressing me like, what are you gonna do in the future? And I told him I honestly didn't know.
But shouldn't it be fine to just keep fucking doing what I'm doing?
okay (vale) I am touching grass...I was trying to be Nnormal but the Kjerag requires advanced trail skills (whatever that means). I can't post any of the actual beautiful sights I see when I trail run because I would dox myself, so all you get is this dirt path. Haha!!!
I haven't trail run in a little while because I felt super drained after my last race (ngl was having an anxiety attack for basically 14 miles, average man is like "oh hell yeah I'm gonna crush this shit I am a cold unfeeling machine" in my head I'm just like "holy shit I am a bitchmade loser and I'm going to break my ankle again and some white person is probably going to push me off a cliff when I'm not looking and I will just get to the aid station and be like "sorry I have to drop out" and I'm ugly and have no cardio and I am a huge poser") but holy moly, my life sucks so much ass that spending a little time in nature immediately drops the Very Bad Feelings to a manageable level. I sort of hate the outdoors in California (in another month, this same terrain is going to be extremely brown, short, ugly, dusty and riddled with 9 billion yellowjackets and extremely warm and sunny beyond belief) and wish I lived in the PNW but you have to admit this shit has its charms.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. My posting has fallen off, and all I get is downvotes. I like to run downhills, even though I am bad at it. I didn't play sports growing up, and have zero hand eye coordination, so running downhill is basically an exercise in not trying to break all my arms and legs and or fall off a cliff.
I just tell myself, enjoy this while it lasts, and before it all gets auctioned off to Current Admin cronies along with all the other public land in the Bay Area and paved over with a strip mall that is supposed to be better or something.
I saw a bumblebee while walking up this path to practice my downhill bombing, and I am terrified of flying insects to the point where recently running on trails has become an exercise in managing my anxiety and not having a full blown panic attack anytime a fly dive bombs me, but this time, I just figured that maybe that bumblebee cares about all of this about as much as I do. Make of that what you will.