Why do you need reassurance?

I do think changing the structure of your life is more important, as you say developing better work ethic and study habits. Your lack of ambition is clear by your satisfaction in a peaceful life - whilst perhaps to a degree enviable - is dangerous in the long term and would mean that you are one to never take risks and challenge or push yourself, clear by this post with your neediness of others. This could stay with your forever and one day you'll find yourself sitting on a couch with your elderly mother, a box of KFC chicken and a letter from your now ex-wife telling you that she's left you for Harold.

Life is about taking risks, losing everything, gaining, crying, laughing, shocking people, shocking yourself, as long as it is all within the constraints of morality. Be passionate and courageous otherwise you will never really understand philosophy and, you will never really live either.

A couple of points.

I recognize desires as per the Buddhists as the source of suffering. This is a synthetic a priori truth that all sentient beings ought realize.

Living with mom isn't a bad thing and never was. Society imposed some fictitious rule on people that "man" ought move ought from "mother". I suspect this has to do with capitalism, individualism, and consumerism, along with a plethora of unrestricted wants and desires from the daughter or son spewing out.

I am not needy for anyone. I just appreciate the advice and thoughts of this community.

I do not see myself ever having a wife, although the thoughts do return and bother me on the subject. Still thinking if I can have a wife with my current lifestyle or even if I realize the dreams in the OP.

Life is about getting through it. Schopenhauer can expand on that for you.

Someone make me feel good and tell me that I would be a great philosopher please? — Question

For making this decision, why do you think it would matter if you'd be a "great philosopher"?

First, the only reasons (and least outside of unusual circumstances) to get a philosophy degree are either:

(a) because you just want to learn about philosophy more in depth--you're passionate about that, and you don't care about practical concerns with the degree,

(b) you're interested in jobs that have non-specific degree requirements--jobs where they just want you to have a bachelor's degree, say, but it doesn't have to be in a specific field, and philosophy is your primary interest as a hobby,

(c) you want to go to grad school for a field where a philosophy bachelor's is considered a good stepping stone--for example, law, or

(d) you want to teach philosophy.

For none of those is there a requirement that you be a "great philosopher." Even with (d), tons of people teaching are just doing the minimum amount of publishing required to keep their job, and those papers are unlikely to make them famous, unlikely to be republished in any anthologies, etc. They're simply good enough to get published in some journal--which really doesn't require that they're very good or interesting, so that the person can meet their research/professional work requirements.

So you do not need to be a great philosopher to pursue a philosophy degree or to wind up teaching philosophy, and you certainly do not need to be a great philosopher for any of the other reasons that you might pursue a philosophy degree.

I think you should get a real job so that you can support yourself and not live with your mother. Where's your father who ought to be telling you this? Working at a nursery for minimum wage while supported by mom isn't ideal. It's pathetic. Let me say that again. It's pathetic. I could be nice and tell you you're super fantastic for finding the path of least resistance, that you're a Buddhist superhero and that you're fighting the good fight against capitalism, but you're not. I'm not aware of any system, capitalistic, communistic, or whatever, that thrives by having people do as much nothing as possible.

I don't know that philosophy is the way to financial self-sufficiency, but, to the extent any college degree will suffice, do that and pave your own path and earn your own keep. If you do try to be a philosopher and you fail, at least you'll have tried, as opposed to potting plants and then coming home to mom's meatloaf.

Thanks for the input Terrapin. I really think you hit the nail on the head with how I framed the question.

Working at a nursery for minimum wage while supported by mom isn't ideal. It's pathetic. — Hanover

Actually, its a very rewarding job! And, I don't come home stressed and angry about dealing with assholes and the such. Living with mother isn't bad, I enjoy it. It was hard when I was younger and enamored with doing a whole wide range of things and such as moving to a different country and bla bla bla.

But, you know, living in a retirement home might be what awaits you given that you're so against being dependent on someone or something.

Your lack of ambition is clear by your satisfaction in a peaceful life — TimeLine

Be careful - seeming lack of ambition can be the mask for the greatest of ambitions. The thing with great ambitions (unlike puny ambitions) is that they cannot be fulfilled very easily (and it's stupid to try when failure is guaranteed), so people having them, often seem to be doing nothing from the outside - not even attempting to do something. In Chinese culture there has always been a word for such a person - they are called sleeping dragons... silently waiting, unknown to anyone, for the opportune moment. It's not known when the opportune moment will arrive... life doesn't change gradually, life changes in bursts. One day you're a no one, tomorrow you're a God. Look at Trump - in just a second he became from clown into President, while others have been laboring their entire lives trying to do that and failing. Hitler suddenly arose out of nothing and became the supreme leader of Nazi Germany. Steve Jobs was a druggy in India, before he was CEO of Apple. Ghandi was just a simple lawyer in South Africa before he became the Father of India. Nobody heard of Jesus when he was 25! Success comes fast when it comes. And one only loses it when they rush after it.

is dangerous in the long term and would mean that you are one to never take risks and challenge or push yourself, clear by this post with your neediness of others. — TimeLine

I never did anything by taking risks. I can probably say that I've never taken a single risk in my life. People from the outside may think I took risks, but in truth, I never did. Even my driving exam, people around me were pushing me to go and take it after I finished my driving school, but I couldn't... what was the point of going and failing? I waited for one year in fact, just when my driving school was about to expire, until I finally took it. Everyone was laughing at me and calling me coward - even my mother at that time - because I wasn't like others to go and fail time and time again. But I'm the one who passed it from the first time - unlike some other people who took it even over 10 times till they passed. Only losers risk - winners never risk, that's why they never lose ;) :P

This could stay with your forever and one day you'll find yourself sitting on a couch with your elderly mother, a box of KFC chicken and a letter from your now ex-wife telling you that she's left you for Harold. — TimeLine

Yeah not to worry - in 30 years time, when I become President, I'll also write a letter to her, telling her how she left the man who was about to become the leading man of the nation. Then we'll see who the real loser is. :P

Life is about taking risks, losing everything, gaining, crying, laughing, shocking people, shocking yourself, as long as it is all within the constraints of morality. — TimeLine

I have a motto in life - it says "Forget winning, make sure you never lose" - on top of that, I have another - "Don't listen to the masses" - recovering from loss is more difficult than winning itself. Avoiding loss is always a priority over winning.

Be passionate and courageous otherwise you will never really understand philosophy and, you will never really live either. — TimeLine

Who cares? Really, who cares? Once you realise that no one cares, not even you, you can renounce whatsoever is troubling you. Really, if you never leave the walls of your house, until you die, has your life been wasted? Absolutely not - when you die, you die, that's the end, doesn't matter that you were President or you were the beggar on the corner of the street. Relax! The real secret is that only the man or woman who has completely renounced winning the world, only that man or woman can actually turn around and win it - everyone else has already lost before they've even tried. Their ambition has killed them. Only those who have conquered their ambitions can fulfil them - it's a paradox, but it is true.

Actually, its a very rewarding job! And, I don't come home stressed and angry about dealing with assholes and the such. Living with mother isn't bad, I enjoy it. It was hard when I was younger and enamored with doing a whole wide range of things and such as moving to a different country and bla bla bla. — Question

You're not stressed because you have no real responsibility or accountability. Worst you can do is damage a plant.

But, you know, living in a retirement home might be what awaits you given that you're so against being dependent on someone or something.

Sure, lash out when I tell you to get to work.

I think you should get a real job so that you can support yourself and not live with your mother. Where's your father who ought to be telling you this? — Hanover

Oh yeah, this unscrupulous prick is back :-} And what are you Hanover, pray tell me? You're supporting yourself, but what use is that? There's nothing great about that - even the taxi driver does that. You have settled for a mediocre life - you'll probably never be Prime Minister, President, a great writer, a famous artist, or anything great. Just another taxi driver supporting himself ;)

It's pathetic. Let me say that again. It's pathetic — Hanover

Let me say that again, you're no different than a taxi driver. People with big ambitions aren't satisfied with petty things. What you call great - supporting yourself - is just another petty thing. I think you should be ashamed of yourself.

I'm at a crossroads. — Question

Whether you are in a crossroads, a crosswalk, or crosshairs is hard to say, but you definitely need to get moving. PhD? You don't have a BA in underwater basket weaving (that's an old cliché) yet, so it's premature for you to be worrying about years spent in graduate school getting a doctorate in philosophy.

Get a life! Whether you are working in a plant nursery or a infant nursery doesn't make much difference: Neither plants nor infants will disturb your low self-esteem. People build up self-esteem on the basis of actual, mostly small, accomplishments. Here's a 5 year plan: get a second job and/or a better job, pay off your debts, and move the hell out of your mother's house. Your mother may be a saint, but do your mother a favor. One of the small accomplishments you can achieve is figuring out how to support yourself on your own. You might find that being closer to debt-free and living on your own would do wonders for your self esteem.

you give every appearance of being quite intelligent. Put that brain to work on solving your life-challenges. Job, debt, independent living, self-esteem, a career path.

About which: go back to college. If you have absolutely no idea what you want to do with your life, it's about time you started to figure that out. People without specific plans should major in liberal arts fields which are considered "generally useful". Literature, philosophy, history, mathematics, etc. Stay away from exotica like Sanskrit and Gender Studies.

If you decide that you don't want to go to college, then you had better get good at making money the old fashioned way (by working for it). You need to earn enough to support yourself now and in the future -- so you have to make a decent yearly income.

Be glad that you have a decent brain between your ears. It's time to put it to more use. You strike me as an intelligent fellow who has not "engaged with life" yet. This is a common enough problem--you are not alone here--but YOU need to "get engaged with life". You need to get your ass on the bicycle and start peddling toward something specific.

Finally - now that we've cleared the way, time to address your actual points instead of laugh at you and mock you as some prefer to do. They should know that feeling greater out of mocking you only shows their own shallowness, and not their own greatness. A truly great man does not belittle others and call them pathetic for no reason at all except trying to discuss something. Hanover Banover is probably the type of guy who also brags about his sexual exploits - only such a heartless moron can behave in this manner. Alas - seeing this greatly angers me. Hanover should be ashamed of himself. I would say a few more things again to him, but he's already run like a crybaby to the mods before, so perhaps I should stop now.

I'm still young enough to go back to college and get a degree in philosophy. — Question

Good - time is one's biggest asset! One should only start taking big risks when their time is running out, that's when it can start paying off. Until then, slow down with the risks - you have more to lose and less to gain.

However, I have low self-esteem — Question

Okay so that's what you have to address. Look for ways to increase your self esteem. Learn something - it can be anything - choose a skill. Learn it, and become the best in it from everyone you know. Initially you'll feel like no way you can learn it. But you can - remember your most important asset - time. You have a lot of time. You don't have to learn it today. But if you practice it every day for 2 years, you're going to be an expert, like it or not. I called myself an expert on web-development and database management before I'd even designed my own website/database! >:O Most experts out there are fakes to begin with. People put on their CVs that they speak German because they did one semester in school - they can barely speak 5 words in it. It's actually pathetic - they're all damned liars. I have a friend who is a qualified lawyer, but he's actually completely incapable on legal matters (I know because I've tried to use him, even paid him, and he's still failed me - I had to learn the law myself!). And yet he practices law >:O ! I've seen senior engineers who know fuck all about how a building works - I worked under them in fact >:O The truth is most people don't even have a clue what they're doing. It's all a show of appearances - it's not hard to start winning if you stop being tricked by the appearances. The appearances are just there to prevent you from getting involved in the activity - to make you think it's too hard. Ignore the appearances, I know it's hard.

I was thinking about getting a second job, paying off my debts and possibly returning to college once I build up a better work ethic and study habits. — Question

That's not a bad idea - however - an even better idea is learning a few skills which pay more. Anything in IT pays a lot, and you can do it from a computer :P If you don't like that, think about practical skills that you could build on that you already have. Go to evening courses - there's evening courses for how to operate gas boilers to how to sell real estate to God knows what. Focus on educating and building your skills.

I have no way of telling whether I would like it enough to go the whole nine yards with BA->Masters->PhD. By the end of it I would be naturally in deep debt, but, I suppose a very happy and proud person? — Question

I'd say get enough money, pay your debts off, and only then do it.

I do not see myself ever having a wife, although the thoughts do return and bother me on the subject. Still thinking if I can have a wife with my current lifestyle or even if I realize the dreams in the OP. — Question

"If you can have a wife" is obviously answered by yes - I've seen some pretty darn strange things that would be a lot more stranger than a man like you having a wife. I think - to be entirely fucking honest with you - that you stand to have a better wife than most men out there, because in your aloneness you have developed the quality of spirit that could attract such a soul.

Am I just being a pussyfoot or should I stick to my very rewarding minimum wage job at a nursery (which I find ideal) and live happily with my mother? It's not a bad life, sleep wake work eat sleep, repeat. — Question

'Pussyfoot' is a meaningless concept based on the mistaken notion that people are under some obligation to achieve big things with impacts that reverberate around the world. I blame this notion on the Parable of the Talents, which I find one of the meanest, most vindictive parables in the new testament (it's as if it were written by a Trump speechwriter or a Rand acolyte, although I doubt Trump has ever read it).

Also, there is nothing wrong with living with your mother. Leaving one's parents at an early age is a modern development. Until recently, people didn't leave until they became partnered and started their own family. In fact, earlier still, people lived in tribes based on extended families, so they didn't really leave even then. In non-AngloSaxon cultures (Chinese and Greek come immediately to mind) young people still tend to live with family until they start their own. So forget the faddish 'must leave as soon as I finish uni or I'm bad' nonsense.

Having dispensed with all that puerile 'must be manly and independent' nonsense, you can now turn to the only question that matters: what will make you, and others happy? The usual reason to reach for something more difficult and risky despite the fact that it is more uncomfortable in the short term is the realisation that staying with the current comfort will make you unhappy in the long term - that you will become bored with your job or that you will start to chafe under the financial constraints of low pay. Whether that is the case depends on your psychological makeup, which only you and those that know you well can judge. So reflect, talk to others that know and care about you. Maybe even see a counsellor who, although they will know you less well, can bring professional expertise and experience to the task.

Society needs people with high ambition and people with low ambition and all the ones in between. Remove any segment and it will collapse. The trick is to work out where you can most happily fit. As soon as anybody 'advising' you starts to make personal criticisms, stop listening.

Finally some good sense has befallen on this thread! Thank you Sir! :D

Maybe you have some sense of yourself as a no-nonsense straight-shooter, with an ironic wit, and an endearing faux-narcissism (which im sure you would never come out & say you think is endearing, because that would ruin the joke or pose, but you do think that.) Maybe you think your tough love is just what the doctor ordered.

But you're just an asshole. Not in a cool way.

I lived with my mom for a year and a half, at 22/23, and had v bad self-esteem, and some dude who thinks its HILARIOUS to talk about how great they are telling me I was pathetic wouldn't have helped a bit.

You're a third-rate wit (with no ear for meter btw, yr limericks suck. But oh so edgy!) who posts on a philosophy forum in a tone that conveys they're too clever or woke or worldly for the stuff ppl talk about on philosophy forums. How is that any less pathetic? Sad!

a few points of information would be helpful:

Your age?
What metropolitan area do you live in or near to?
How much is your debt?

Age makes a difference. If you are 20, that's one thing; if you are 28, that's something else.
Where you live matters. If you live in a very expensive city but with lots of opportunity, that is one thing. If you live in a low cost dead zone, that is something else.
The size of debt matters. If you owe $3,000, that is one thing; If you owe $30,000, that is something else.

I have had low self esteem and either hopelessly vague or totally impractical plans, as one often does. So I am sympathetic with your situation.

I'm suggesting you make some changes; I'm not suggesting you become someone else. I finished graduate school and spent 40+ years in the work force, much of which totally sucked. I had some good jobs and some bad jobs. Sometimes low pay, simple work, and low stress was worth it.

One don't have to make a huge amount of money, but one does have to be thrifty if one's pay isn't high. I never made more the $35,000 a year, but I lived cheaply most of the time. I was able to save something for retirement -- not enough, but it could have been worse. I didn't live in an expensive area, and I paid the mortgage off as fast as possible. Pair up with somebody -- 2 incomes help a lot, even if neither of them is very high.

Had I to do it over, I would have pursued a purely liberal arts English major, rather than a teaching degree. Total waste of time in my case. I would take the first job more seriously, and would quit the second good job at its peak rather than hang around coasting. I didn't strike while the iron was hot.

But do consider trying my 5 year plan.

Also, there is nothing wrong with living with your mother. — andrewk

Unless your mother would like to get on with her own life without adult children living at home. Maybe she would like to have a torrid romance with the guy next door, for instance. Having an adult son in the next room cramps one's style.

I lived with my mom for a year and a half, at 22/23, and had v bad self-esteem, and some dude who thinks its HILARIOUS to talk about how great they are telling me I was pathetic wouldn't have helped a bit. — csalisbury

Perhaps we should remind ourselves what I said to Hanover in a thread sometime ago - he frequently thinks he's at the pub talking BS with folks who can barely string two words together... And I said a few more harsh things to him back then, and even got put on notice by the mods >:O - and Hanover put me on ignore ever since, saying that I'm free to think it's because of my greatness if that makes me feel better! >:O What a loser...

had v bad self-esteem — csalisbury

I don't know about the past, but it seems like life as we know it just isn't good for one's self-esteem.

Your question is the sort of question no one can answer but you. I don't mean that in some kind of "people should find themselves" way, or something. I mean, even if you accept someone else's answer, unless you actually agree with it then the answer will be unsatisfactory -- and if you agree with the answer, then you've already answered the question for yourself.

That being said, it's not the sort of question that's easy to answer. But once you have the answer, the rest is just paperwork, to try coining a phrase. But I don't think you'll find the answer in the future as much. You can have hopes and dreams and goals you work towards, of course -- but having those is the very answer to your question. So you can't look at which future is better, because you haven't chosen which one is better yet.

I have low self-esteem — Question

Society imposed some fictitious rule on people that "man" ought move ought from "mother". I suspect this has to do with capitalism, individualism, and consumerism, along with a plethora of unrestricted wants and desires from the daughter or son spewing out. — Question

Leftists are quite creative at blaming all their insecurities on Capitalism.

Anyway, listen to Hanover or Charles Murray:


edit:

A bit from his book:

"If you haven’t left home already, it’s time to jump out of the nest, and these days you can’t count on parents to do the right thing and push you out. So jump even if they say you don’t have to. You’ll figure out how to fly before you hit the ground—not well, maybe, but you’ll be flying.
Don’t argue that you can’t find a job that pays enough to support yourself. You can. You just can’t find a job that will support you in the style to which you have been accustomed. So accustom yourself to a new style. Learn to get by on little—prove to yourself how resourceful you can be. Move out. No matter what.
And don’t let your parents support you. It’s okay if Mom or Dad gives you a loan so that you can make the required deposit when you rent an apartment. It’s okay for them to give you birthday and Christmas checks that you and they both realize are not for buying yourself a present but to help keep you afloat. These are advantages that your contemporaries from less affluent families don’t have, and they will retard your transition to full independence to some degree. But, at the least, you need to be paying your own rent, buying your own food, taking care of your own laundry—in a hundred ways, assuming responsibility for yourself. Many of you have parents who, for the most loving reasons, are willing to prolong your adolescence if you let them. Don’t let them."

(...)

"A common and depressing assumption on the part of many college students is that they must stay on the academic rails until they are professionally established—go directly to grad school from college and directly from grad school to a job, as if there were some big rush and even a few years lost would put them catastrophically behind everyone else.
Nonsense. Suppose you intend to retire at sixty-five. If you don’t start your career until you’re thirty, that still gives you thirty-five years to make it professionally. If you can’t make it in thirty-five years, you weren’t going to make it in forty or forty-five.
You probably won’t really have to wait until you’re thirty to begin your vocation. With any luck, you will have identified something you really want to do before then. But in general, think of your twenties as a time for doing the things that you won’t be able to do when you have a spouse and children. There is only the stipulation from the previous tip: You have to support yourself. An essential part of the experience is being on your own.
If you are as ambitious as I was, the real barrier to treating your twenties that way is that you want to be as successful as possible as young as possible. Let me try to persuade you to rethink that."

Anyway, listen to Hanover or Charles Murray — Emptyheady

No, don't.

Listen to somebody who (a) cares about you and (b) knows what they're talking about.

Let me be very frank. Much as one doesn't simply walk into Mordor, one does not simply "become a professional philosopher." First, you will need a BA in philosophy or a related discipline. To get that, first you will have to pay money to take the SAT or the ACT or both. Then, once accepted, you will have to take a slew of tedious general education courses that have nothing to do with your major. Some of them may be interesting, many of them will not be. You will also likely have to pick a foreign language and take classes in it for upwards of two years, depending. As for your philosophy major, the classes you'll take for it will depend on the faculty. For example, if there's no one who does Wittgenstein in your department, then you won't be taking any classes on him. Some of the philosophy classes may be interesting, some of them will not be. Most philosophy departments also require their majors to take an upper level symbolic logic course. If you're not good at advanced logic, or if the professor is terrible, then expect to find this class highly frustrating and nerve-wracking. In addition to this, some departments require their majors to write a senior thesis.

If you graduate and did not receive a full ride or had no savings or other means to pay for your degree, then you will have accumulated many thousands of dollars in student loan debt. If you're not burned out by the end of the four years, then during the winter of your senior year, while finding the time in between finishing papers, you can apply to MA programs. To do so, you will need to pay an obscene sum of money to take the GRE and make sure you have a good writing sample, a well written personal statement, and letters of recommendation from your professors. When researching MA programs, you will notice that there are fewer of them than philosophy BA programs. They come in two flavors: funded and unfunded. Sometimes the funding is good, sometimes bad. If you apply to funded programs, these can be somewhat difficult to get into, because everyone else wants to be funded to go to school. At the MA level, you need not worry too much about finding a department that exactly matches your own research interests, assuming you have any at this point. A general fit is sufficient. Next, you need to determine how many schools you should apply to. You increase your chances of getting accepted by applying to more and decrease them by applying to less. If you apply to, say, ten programs, this could cost you a figure close to a thousand dollars. You will have to pay to send your transcripts, GRE scores, and whatever else programs want from you.

Getting into an MA program is not impossible, however, so let's say you do get accepted somewhere. First, you'll have to move there. Then, for the first year or year and a half, you will being taking classes. Some of them may be interesting, others may not be. In addition to this, you will likely be a teaching or research assistant. In the former case, you will be a grading robot. In the latter case, you will be helping a professor find stuff for his own research. Some programs let their students teach their own classes. This is usually intro to logic or intro to philosophy. Teaching your own class requires a gargantuan amount of prep time, especially when it's your first time. You may not like or be suited to teaching or you may like teaching. Even if you like it, grading is time consuming and procrastination inducing, and you will begin to wonder how it is the students in your class were ever accepted into a university, and indeed, why they were ever brought into this world. In your final year or semester, you will either take comprehensive exams, write a thesis, or do both. Exams require you to skim read a mountain of books and then regurgitate the ideas in them to your professors in written and oral formats. Writing a thesis requires you to write some fifty odd pages, give or take, on some topic you're interested in and your advisers are interested in, so it's best you nail down this topic early on in the program.

Assuming you graduate, then you can consider PhD programs. When researching them, you will quickly notice that there are even fewer of them than there are MA programs. Some of them may even post ominous statistics about how they receive two hundred applications and only accept five incoming students, causing you to think to yourself, "surely, given these numbers, there are well qualified candidates who are being denied." And you would be right. This thought then drifts into another: "How do these programs determine who makes the cut? At some point, they must resort to completely arbitrary and unfair criteria for cutting down the massive applicant pool." And you would again be right. If you are white, male, Christian, or conservative, then you may also begin to worry that you will be rejected if the admissions committee caught wind of any of these facts. Further along in your research, you will find that departments like engaging in a dick measuring contest, primarily thanks to a ranking system called the Philosophical Gourmet Report, whose man behind the curtain is a certain fat-faced, politically correct little gossip-monger named Brian Leiter.

You then notice that the programs on his list are those that have funding and can guarantee something approaching decent employment upon graduation. It's a riskier bet to apply to those not on it. So you apply to a set of PhD programs, with at least half on that list, though not to as many as you did MA programs, since you now want to be picky about which professors you want to work with on your dissertation, assuming you know what you want to write it on. If you don't know what to write on, never fear, just pretend to be original and creative. Let's say you happen to hit the jackpot and are accepted to a program somewhere. For the first two or three years, you will be taking classes. Some you may find interesting, others you may not. At the end of your third year, you will take yet more comprehensive examinations. Upon completion of them, you are usually awarded a superfluous second MA degree. In the final year or two, you are researching for and writing your dissertation, which is basically a book that no one will read. All the while, you will be a teaching/research assistant or teaching your own class (or classes!) and likely still have language requirements to fulfill. Furthermore, you will be expected to have at least one article, though preferably more, submitted for publication in an academic journal somewhere that, again, no one will read. This is merely to pad your resume and make you look good when applying for tenure track jobs.

Let's say you make it through five years of this. For the past eleven years, your undergraduate debt has been slowly but surely accumulating interest and may even have doubled. You now need a job to begin to pay it off and so start looking. You will find that the well of tenure track jobs is virtually dry and that you are competing with hundreds of other people just like you for the same tiny number of positions. Your suspicions of nepotism will also be raised when hearing of how other people landed such positions. Let's say lightning strikes twice in your life and you get a tenure track job. Now you must write yet more articles, publish a book, preferably more, and deal with the colossal bureaucracy of the modern university that will attempt to defund your department at every available opportunity, all while teaching upwards of hundreds of brainless vegetables the basics of philosophy. And voila, becoming a "professional philosopher" has been achieved.

My advice (as someone in an MA program in a related field in the humanities who has applied to PhD programs but is seriously thinking about dropping out of academia completely, even if he is accepted somewhere): you don't need a degree to be a philosopher. Find something tolerable to pay the bills, if possible, and pursue philosophy on your own time.

Relevant (and funny and true, although I do think Marxists have, in part, contributed to ruining higher ed):

Sorry, I wish I had more advice. I'm trying to get into academia, but I managed to get into a Ph.D. program with a stipend, so I don't have to worry about funding for now. So I don't know what I would do if it was a big financial risk to take on instead. And certainly not if my goals were spiritual rather than practical.

Here's what I think I do know, though:

1) Philosophy will not give you spiritual awakening or relief, or solve your problems. Philosophy is not that good, or interesting. If you are hoping to become enlightened, what you are hoping for will not happen. You are not even guaranteed, from studying philosophy, to gain any insight into anything, worldly or otherwise.

2) Philosophy will not open any financial avenues if you don't plan on going to law or med school.

3) Philosophy will not give you pride.

----

The bottom line is, philosophy does not have anything substantial to offer, intellectually or in terms of coping with the world. It would be a bad idea to give up a life you enjoy for it.

Most philosophy departments also require their majors to take an upper level symbolic logic course. If you're not good at advanced logic, or if the professor is terrible, then expect to find this class highly frustrating and nerve-wracking. — Thorongil

Man, these poor philosophy majors would never survive in a math department, let's be real...first-order logic is not going to kill you.

Thanks for the kind words. Despite all my failings whatever they may be, I take nothing back from what I've said. We live in a world where fatherhood and paternalism are shunned, as in how dare I tell a young man to dust off and get back in there. I've not suggested living with mom isn't a short term solution, but it's not a lifetime plan. It's no plan. It's easy and lazy. Quitting is shameful. Deal with it.

Man, these poor philosophy majors would never survive in a math department, let's be real...first-order logic is not going to kill you. — The Great Whatever

Speak for yourself. My math education was objectively terrible and symbolic logic is pointless for doing 99% of philosophy.

Alright, but I think even if you're math-phobic having to do a little logic shouldn't be a dealbreaker. Is it pointless? I dunno, I wouldn't want to go anywhere near AP without a lot more than what's required for a BA. *shrug*

What do you mean by "a little logic?" I'm talking about a whole semester's worth of the equivalent of calculus. That wasn't happening for me. Not with a full load.

And I'm not currently in or going into AP, so it's irrelevant to me now.

There were two books that helped me navigate the question of a post-bacceulerette career:

From Student to Scholar

Getting What You Came For

I didn't apply for philosophy, mind. I was looking at the purportedly "better" field of scientific academia. It is better, but only in comparison.

Might give you some grist to chew on at least while you make up your mind.

I do care and I do know what I'm talking about. I have kids around you guys ages. Coddling them would be a recipe for disaster. You guys sound like a bunch of kids calling the grown ups assholes.

What kind of required logic courses were you taking for a philosophy BA that were as hard as calculus?