Won’t get too detailed so I don’t accidentally dox myself or something, but I’ve been considering my life up to this point, and I can’t help but feel I definitely might’ve wound up on the wrong side of history if divine intervention and my own intuition hadn’t gotten in the way.
I know people who work at Neuralink, Facebook, Google, IBM, etc. My college was pretty successful for job placement at big name companies
I’ve been in some of the “financial centers and think tanks” of the world as a student. I was presented with opportunities to engage with their work, especially toward the end of my undergraduate career. Most of these people made me uneasy; at the time, I couldn’t place my finger on why. But I always felt the urge to keep those places at arms distance.
As a gifted kid, I feel incredibly blessed to have gotten out of public school relatively unscathed. I feel incredibly lucky I didn’t join the status quo in college despite the pressure to conform.
This refusal to conform is definitely giving me some roadblocks now that I’m trying to get started in my career, but it does feel like I’ve dodged many bullets on the journey. And I’m glad I’m not part of the hive mind like most of my peers.
Anyone else have the same experience?
Edit to say: thanks to everyone who has commented! Really appreciate knowing others have similar journeys.
Bro I was literally bred to be FBI, I have a deformity in my ankle and so from a young age the doctors told me "never, ever get a job working on your feet. Desk job. DESK JOB. You going to college for sure, boy."
Which made sense. I'm in MENSA. My IQ is high enough that when people bring up IQ I do not want to share for risk of being called a liar etc.
One family member in FBI appropriately groomed me to be his protégé, and I was extremely grateful for it. I went to college. When anyone in the CS department found out my last name they asked if I was related to so-and-so and proceeded to treat me like Harry fucking Potter.
During the course of my internship I discovered the FBI is the monsters and the very hackers we were chasing were in fact the good guys. Well.... mostly good guys. Some of them shredded and intentionally destroyed websites they took over, even in one instance a site for a school for deaf/blind children. Other hackers left kiddie shit in their wake to warp the minds of the investigators, a horrific tactic about as effective as fucking Punji sticks.
Fun fact, virtually every young coder was praising LuLzSec the entire time that was going on.
But yeah I GTFO'd that place and I could probably sue somebody for many various reasons but my fams are financially tied to it so like, whatever. I keep the misjustice I experienced at the hands of the system in my back pocket as my Get Out Of Jail Free Card.
They seem to know I have it. I've been pulled over, pulled out of the car, put in handcuffs, and released multiple times with like, highly jail-able shit going on in my car. I remember once I hit a double whippet while driving and just kinda swerved and slowly came to a stop in the road, just having finished a blunt, bong in the car, gun in seat with one in the chamber, various pills, a scale. They kept me in the cop car for two hours trying to get me to pin everything on my friend but I kept saying everything was mine and he didn't know about it. Frustrated they released me and even let me keep my gun, told us to go straight home, we went to Steak and Shake and joked about the bruises around our wrists, "Ayyye we got our G-bands on!!!!" I rode that gravy train of you-can't-arrest-me for quite awhile before I got bored of it.
This is so incredibly fucked up. Truly enlightening on the difference between the two Americas. Glad you got out.