<p>As always guys, thanks for your suggestions and words of advice.</p>
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<p>Which was precisely my reasoning process until I realized that without social skills I’ll probably fail at life. I have a friend (what passes for a “friend”, anyway) who is a lot like me, and when he graduated from college, he graduated with a good GPA, but because his social skills made him look and sound borderline ■■■■■■■■, he is making a lot less money than another “friend” of mine with social skills within the normal range who went to the local community college and now works in graphics design. Both guys have been out of college/community college the same amount of time, but the guy who went to the CC reports to be making over $60,000 a year, whereas the guy with the ■■■■■■-level social skills makes barely more than half that amount of money, even though he is by far more intelligent and capable than the first guy.</p>
<p>LogicWarrior, I hate to be such a downer, but I don’t think my IQ is enough for me to get a PhD. And even if I made a supernatural effort and somehow managed to obtain a PhD, just consider how competitive research/teaching positions are.</p>
<p>pmvd, why are you such a pesimist? Why do you make flawed arguments to support your pesimism?</p>
<p>You have two friends, one isn’t as intelligent but makes more money. The one who makes more money is more social, therefore being social gets you more money.</p>
<p>You are throwing away tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in education based on the outcome of two people? How could you possibly make such a life changing decision based on so little experience?</p>
<p>So many people have tried to convince you not to drop, a 3.5 is a great gpa. If you drop out, and make an obviously horrible decision, then you really are unintelligent.</p>
<p>Since you like to make huge life decisions based on what happens to two random people. Consider this example. Micheal Jordan, the best basketball player to ever play the game, was cut from his basketball team in high school the first time he tried out (as a sophomore). Most pros probably make their high school teams as freshman. It is easy to give examples of failure, but what makes you so certain you can’t be the success story that no one expects?</p>
<p>The thing that’s bothering me the most about this is that you don’t want to CHANGE anything. What’s the point of asking for advice if you don’t want to do much about anything? Do you actually like feeling this way?
There are no excuses for you. You’re smarter than me and I started off in a far worse position. Basically, if you don’t make any effort, you just want it to be stay this way.</p>
<p>Euler, why are you such an optimist? Why do you make flawed arguments to support your optimism?</p>
<p>It’s like saying: “the one who makes more money has longer hair, therefore having longer hair gets you more money”; or “the one who makes more money likes to play video games, therefore playing video games gets you more money.” See? I think it’s called the correlation/causation fallacy or something like that.</p>
<p>What I believe and am almost certain of is the fact that if a person lacks social skills, he will make less money. That’s a true statement most of the time. But can we really conclude without committing a logical fallacy that if a person has social skills, he makes more money? I don’t think so. Then again, logic is not my thing.</p>
<p>if you’re for real please do call a hotline or something, b/c this thread is not gonna help you. To those like EECool, if you’re really that annoyed and p.oed by pmvd’s posts DONT READ THEM! Nobody’s forcing you, and you’re not helping people w/ ur mean comments…</p>
<p>pmvd, why are you so worried about others considering you “intelligent”, anyway? It really is about how you perceive yourself.</p>
<p>There are people who have been called child prodigies, geniuses, and brainboxes, yet they too have bad days when they’re having a spot of trouble with their work, and they don’t usually consider themselves anything special. Besides, it often backfires when others have really high expectations of you. Anything less than an A is a calamity. Trust me, your self-confidence really has to come from inside.</p>
<p>If you think that asking for advice on the internet is a token of unintelligence, I disagree with you. Asking for help does not make the asker unintelligent, sometimes it’s just good to hear different opinions and see things from somebody else’s perspective.</p>
<p>If you think that my lack of social skills means I am unintelligent, that’s true only as far as social intelligence is concerned, but in my experience, people who lack social intelligence are not always necessarily all around unintelligent. </p>
<p>If you think that my wanting to drop out of college makes me unintelligent, you would be right only if obtaining a college degree guaranteed me a better career and a better income than if I didn’t. Given my lack of social skills and anecdotes I have heard from trustworthy individuals, there is little doubt in my mind that a college degree and a so-so GPA won’t necessarily redeem me in the eyes of an interviewer or hiring manager.</p>
<p>I grant you that I am not the most intelligent person in town, but you have yet to explain why you also feel that’s the case.</p>
<p>pmvd there are plenty of jobs where you don’t have to socialize and talk to people. My dad got me a job at the Chicago Board of Trade, I sat in an office and spent hours on face book, and barely talked to anyone, mostly because they were really old and I had nothing in common with them. Get a degree, get an office job, make lots of money, be happy unless you don’t want the money, you can drop out and make min. wage.</p>
<p>Buy yourself a dog if your environment permits it or do voluntary work with pets. It will help you. When you finish college, start your own business and hire an employee with social skills to deal with your customers.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I even want to dive into this thread. Pmvd it seems like you don’t necessarily want to change. Do you, or do you not? </p>
<p>I’m just going to say that anyone can change. I used to be a social ■■■■■■ in school too; couldn’t hold a conversation with anyone, didn’t know what acts were considered taboo, couldn’t even tell the difference between girl clothes and guy clothes. I was pretty much bottom of the line as far as I’m concerned. That’s really changed. All you have to do is get out there and start doing things (I know, easier said than done).</p>
<p>It all starts with your mentality, by the way. You try and accomplish a task while your mind is thinking otherwise, you likely aren’t going to get it done. Don’t blame your social awkwardness on some event, disease, disorder, etc. Your a normal human being, your capable of the same things everyone else is capable of. There is always room for improvement, it’s never “well, I suck at this so I might as well quit.”</p>
<p>By the way, it seems your not completely antisocial. At least you can type out these messages. You really can speak on subjects you’re passionate about. You mentioned somewhere that you can never hold a conversation unless it’s about your life problems; perhaps you just need to find a passion or a hobby (other than your life problems)? Easy one for introverted people would be video gaming. It’s not the holy grail of all things social, but at least it’s something lol. </p>
<p>Thinking too hard is a problem for people like us… who simply think way too much and magnify problems 10x what they really are. I think putting your mind on other things, such as a hobby/passion, will help you. Along the way, you’ll develop social skills. I think social skills is kind of like driving: you think too hard, and you’ll mess up (at least that was the case with me, lol). You relax and just trust yourself in control, and you’ll get it naturally.</p>