Do you ever feel frustrated?

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I just listened to the Life Scientific... it's usually interesting, if a bit boring when they end up talking about their lives which usually have nothing to do with the actual subject. Today, it happened to be a neuroscientist, which is my foremost interest... now, besides the fact she talked more about her life than the subject, she never actually said exactly how her experiments were conducted, only the results...

But, what frustrated me specifically was due to the bountiful advantages her father, which... oh la la, what a surprise, is actually also a neuroscientist, conferred on his daughter, which she freely admitted to at the end. My father, on the other hand, kindly beat me nearly to death every week or so... why not?! And instead I'm supposed to commute to some university hours away with no support whatsoever in life? Ha...

Now, I probably do get more frustrated than is reasonable, but everyone has their sensitive issues in life... the point is, though, at the present... society is dysfunctional, and it's still very much who people know and not what they know. I mean, for Pete's sake this person didn't even know as a teenager that her brain is constantly changing... as if that couldn't be inferred after some thinking, but nevermind. Point being, if society ever even tried to force me to do dishwashing or something... I'd truly go insane. I swear I'd rather go on a serial killing spree than do mind-destroying things.

Do I ever feel frustrated? Only during the hours in which I'm awake.

Yes I realize when scientists are being interviewed they often veer off topic and start talking about their personal lives and their idyllic youths. They do this mainly to inspire me to feelings of envy. They talk about their lives to illustrate by way of contrast that I don't have a life. Even if they had a challenging youth, this serves only to increase their bragging rights. Remember I can improve my life but I can't improve my youth. That lies in the past now.

You don't want to work? You don't want to study? But they're forcing you to commute to university hours away? This is unfortunate. In my case I didn't have to work or study. I had a pension guaranteed for life. I gave this up because everyone else and their career made me feel inadequate. Was I mad to give it up? Probably. Now I work by day and study by night. I don't even need a degree to do the job I already have but everyone else has a degree so I must get one too. Ego is a fickle beast that must be fed.

And those scientists has a privileged upbringing? Yes. In theory it's possible for someone to pull themselves out of poverty by their bootstraps. In theory it's possible for someone to work their way through college without any support, financial or otherwise (no I'm not working my way through college, my studies are secondary to my work). Just a few worked their way through college by going to class by day, washing dishes through the evening, studying through the night, living with little sleep, no free time at all, little food, most of their meager wages spent on tuition. To find wealth from poverty they first had to drive themselves into even greater poverty.

Because it's theoretically possible for someone to have any success from impoverished upbringings, that means society expects us to ignore the fact that most successful people had good upbringings (not just financially, I believe supportive parents are even more important than middle class standard of living).

So we're expected to not to complain about our impoverished beginnings or dysfunctional families just because 1% of successful people worked their way through college in theory we could have too. Can't complain. We're not allowed to complain. We must be silent like all the other bricks in the wall. Even if we can't they say we can.