Strongly agree with this! To add my own experience to this -- one of my close friends work in a gold mine. Her official job is a certain amount of tasks that she does competently, but isn't the best at.
What she also ended up doing is to smooth over tense situations between very competent people who are working in a high-stake environment where the urge to lash out/to fight for your vision above others' is getting increasingly strong as fatigue sets in.
That value isn't written down in her performance review. Yet, she's diffused a number of conflicts, allowing easier/quicker resolution of issues in a business where a mistake can (will) cost thousands of dollars. Because she's more approachable than her cross-shift, her subordinates are also more susceptible to ask her if they don't know something, instead of doing a potentially costly mistake or letting suboptimal situations carry on.
Personal skill-wise, she's not a magical 10% -- she's decently skilled, still learning her trade. However, she does help multiply everyone's performance.
Rich text formatting definitely is a plus for me in a social media app! I think it's better to specify such things, especially for users coming from Facebook/Twitter/etc with Facebook/Twitter-like expectations.
A bit late -- terribly sorry -- but yes, KolenCh, you've expressed my intent pretty well, and often far better than I would have. I know I'm shaped by my regrets or failure, and I've grown a lot from them. Does that mean I celebrate them as happy? Of course not. I don't think they happened for a reason, either. But I do think that I've learned and grown from them. They've made me a vastly different person, better and stronger. Hindsight is always 20/20. Either you beat yourself up about not being a clairvoyant, or you trek on just a bit wiser.
Nobody is telling OP to continue on a path they hate. They're young; they have a lot of options. Given their achievement, they seem bright, hard working, and they have gained a lot of experience in many fields. When I was in college, I thought every choice I made back then would have life-lasting consequences in every other field of my life; it was liberating to find out I was very wrong.
I can't speak about the technical side of the equation, but I'm someone who also worked very hard in a field before switching career and I get feeling like your previous efforts were for naught, so I wanted to weigh in. I can only tell you that the work you put in wasn't for nothing, even if it feels like it for now.
You're learned things about yourself (what works for you, what doesn't, and why). You've learned how to apply to job posting and the best ways to do so. You've acquired work experience and human experience which will serve you. Your university and faculty allowed you to learn how to handle high levels of work. You acquired a work ethics and a discipline which will be precious to you. You didn't put all that effort in for nothing: you grew, and you have a life experience which will be precious in your future job interviews (and in your future work!)
My previous experiences couldn't be more different from what I do now, but I still feel how important they've been to me: they shaped my mind, my way of thinking/analysing problems, and my ability to learn. I wish you the best of luck!
> I'm not even sure communication itself is that closely tied to complex thought.
I think it does in some respect; our language's grammar and vocabulary litteraly govern the way we see the world, after all[1]. As a personal anecdote, I'm ESL and write as a hobby, both in my native language and English, and I do feel the differences (and limitations) in the way my mind works depending on language.
I know that my inadequacies in English mean that my style is different. Descriptions and reasonings are simpler. In my native language, I can easily use word plays, ambiguities, be bolder and "more clever" (or less stupid :p). In English, I unconsciously keep things less complex. I'm a different author, and so the worlds I describe in my texts are simpler, too.
English is also far more "pragmatic" than my birth language. I can't word things the same way. Thus, my thinking as an "English writer" is far more rational and cause-to-effect-ish.
It's like any tool: you can absolutely use a programming language through tutorial and google searches, but you have to truly master it to really understand its concepts, to really use it to do something cleverly and intelligently -- and you won't plan a complex task the very same way in two different programming languages.
Because "this game is fun" is too vague. To find good answers, you need good questions that are well-worded.
Think of it as setting achievable goals for yourself. "I want to improve my life!" is a useless objective; while "my appartment is dirty and I want it to be clean" is a useful one.
"Improving one's life" is so vague it's useless (are we talking about love? Health? Work? Family? Housing? Would you even know what to suggest to someone asking you for advice about this?) while "my apartment is dirty" is a clear objective with clearer solutions: "I'll clean it more often/hire a housekeeper".
"The game isn't fun" is just as vague, especially when you have to make choices regarding resources/money, and especially when "fun" is so different depending on people. If we're talking the Sims, for instance, some people will find more fun in creating sims; some, in creating houses; some, in actually playing with their sims. In this context, trying to make the game "more fun" would be meaningless. "These three sides of the game should feel equally developed" is already a bit better, though still very subjective.
To be fair, though we do remember the burning intrigues and the Eloise & Abelard tragedies more clearly, people at the time were actually wildly promiscuous. Most high-ranked churchmen had lovers, many priests slept around, many (I hesitate to type "most") married couples were unfaithful; I might be feeding into country clichés here, but I can only remember one or two French kings not having a respectable amount of lovers (the single ones being sometimes married off so that upcoming illegitimate children could have an official fathers... but that didn't mean the end of the happy couple). Love/sex life at the court was active enough that Louis XV loved keeping up with his nobles' hijinks, and used his spy network to keep up with the numerous trysts (including keeping track of sheets to know if a woman might be pregnant...).
The 19th was incredibly puritan and tightened the screws somewhat, but it's also the century of the grandes horizontales, high-class courtesans, and it was still "normal", if not almost mandatory, for bourgeoisie men to visit brothels at least once (not to speak of the, ahem, freer customs in the countryside). If you married young, it might just be because a kid was actually on the way; personal experience here, but that's why my grandparents got married on both sides of the family).
What has changed is mostly ease of contact (when you sleep with someone in a random place, you have a good chance to see them again if you want to/you don't have to wait days for an answer with a long-distance relationship), the risks associated with a relationship (whether kids or societal scorn, though the risk was mostly for women) and public discourse around it all: before, state-approved discourse and media, from books to songs, extolled the virtue of pure, sincere love while now, discourse around love and sex is far more "agnostic", for lack of a better word.
Human beings are not designed to operate at 120% for 6-12 week long periods; they're designed to survive it. The difference is important.
Working at such a rhythm helped me learn much. It also durably damaged my body (both because it chipped away at my health and because it made me forego health check-up), my mental health, and made me lose personal connections. To this day, I'm still picking up the pieces.
Human beings are also "designed" to survive long period of hunger if need be, but no one would argue that going without for a week is a fine and healthy way to lose weight.
What she also ended up doing is to smooth over tense situations between very competent people who are working in a high-stake environment where the urge to lash out/to fight for your vision above others' is getting increasingly strong as fatigue sets in.
That value isn't written down in her performance review. Yet, she's diffused a number of conflicts, allowing easier/quicker resolution of issues in a business where a mistake can (will) cost thousands of dollars. Because she's more approachable than her cross-shift, her subordinates are also more susceptible to ask her if they don't know something, instead of doing a potentially costly mistake or letting suboptimal situations carry on.
Personal skill-wise, she's not a magical 10% -- she's decently skilled, still learning her trade. However, she does help multiply everyone's performance.
As parent said, a gear needs many parts to turn.