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.
Yes. High IQ with good but not brilliant career progression. Stopped some things because it felt off or made me feel bad. Switched domain/specialty a few times. Only really started waking up 5/6 years ago. I still work in the same company with people who actively promote parts of this narrative (I don’t know for sure who is complicit vs conned). I never got into the grant game - just didn’t get the hang of writing them or got in with other collaborators to get started. I am so glad of that now. But with my career gone sideways & the credentialism / controlled narrative it has been hard to know what to do to push back (plus my mental health took a nosedive when I realised what was happening, all my family got jabbed/boosted). There are a few of us, and more & more push back but things are so controlled in my country. It’s crazy.
I'm sure I could be much further along in my career if I had made the sacrifices that they wanted me to make but since I stuck to what I wanted in life I was passed up for many things since I refused to be a "company man".