You're not going to make any money

April 23, 2025

that's what they tell you if you major in philosophy or sociology and/or want to go into academia and the fear is becoming an adjunct "making 5 cents an hour" or if you don't go into finance or consulting or software engineering and instead pursue music performance because then you become a starving artist. in san francisco there is a person of my same name but they are ostensibly more "goated" because they work at a multibillion dollar corporation as a software engineer and have a greater artistic presence than i do.

and then there's the friend who gets pissed off when others tell him that money doesn't matter as much as he says it does and he is right and they are also right but these masculine voices shouldn't have to hit me so deeply, but they do because i am an experiment. i am both the control variable and the controlled individual; i am independent but dependent and "oh wow, good luck convincing others that humanities is harder than stem" because what can i say? the experiment supports the hypothesis if i fail; the experiment remains the same if i succeed, because then i am an outlier, an exception; i wish i could stop hearing those voices but the voices are from some of my closest friends, many of whom happen to be Asian American like me, and that's why i feel a need to become more westernized in order to protect myself and my identity. the only way for me to define myself is within a vacuum of my own making.

perhaps it's even worse, in a way, that my parents aren't even the ones who tell me that, because i'd be more tempted to discredit such statements. it's the people around me: some classmates, friends, peers, in the more Americanized milieu i reside in that has an unnecessarily harsh grip on me. it's the cautionary tales and struggling individuals that dissuade sensitive people like me from pursuing passions because, let's face it, passions can be uncertain and expensive, and now i find myself thinking about money like an entity threatening to be lost. it's the "70k starting salary is too low" and the "I could make more working at a McDonald's" that drives. me. nuts.

and because i am an experiment until i get a job, every rejection i receive is just a "see? i told you so" from all the obsolete shadows of my high school years. i know it's all wrong but it's nearly impossible for me to defend myself and my stance when i'm struggling to find a position.

while i type this, we're studying Shostakovich's string quartet no. 8 and meditating upon the responsibilities of artists: should they hold their values first and foremost, or should they survive and pander? it's too easy to reply with the former, but it's far easier to choose the latter.

and the fact of the matter is i completely know and understand that money is necessary for survival. but hearing "you're cooked; you're not going to make any money" incessantly is so damn discouraging, especially as someone who knowingly abandoned a future in STEM to pursue the arts and humanities.