I'm a ba(bachelor of arts) student 1st year ,with english literature, history and political science subjects. I had PCB in my 11th and 12th. I still don't know is this decision is good????
There is no one to guide me I'm totally lost. Once I was a topper then I got 81%in 12th. Since last 3 months idk what am I doing and i dont know the books I know only syllabus. Please anyone can help me. I dont know what I want and what career option I should pursue..in science there were a lot of resources for study online but now in college 1st year idk what to do and how.
Jobadvisor
This sounds genuinely stressful — switching from PCB to a BA in English Lit, History, and Political Science is a big shift, and feeling lost after being a strong student before is a hard place to sit in. Let me try to help you think through this clearly.
First, a reframe: this isn't actually a "bad decision" question. Plenty of PCB students switch to humanities and do very well — the subjects you picked (English Lit, History, Political Science) are actually a strong combination with real career paths. The problem right now isn't the choice, it's that you don't have a map for how to study or where it leads. That's fixable.
**Why it feels so much harder than science:**
In PCB, everything was structured — fixed syllabus, tons of coaching material, clear exams (NEET etc.), obvious next steps. In BA, the "syllabus" often *is* the subject boundary, but the actual learning is open-ended — you're expected to read widely, form arguments, and think, not just memorize a fixed set of facts. That's disorienting if no one has taught you how to do it. It's not that you're bad at this — you just haven't been shown the method yet.
**Concretely, here's how students study for BA English/History/Political Science:**
- Don't just read the syllabus topic — pick 1-2 standard reference books per subject (ask seniors or your professors which ones are "the" textbooks for your university's course).
- For History and Political Science: make short timeline/concept notes after each topic in your own words — this is what builds actual understanding vs. just recognizing terms.
- For English Literature: read the actual primary texts (poems, plays, novels) *before* reading criticism/notes about them. Criticism makes no sense without knowing the text first.
- YouTube does have good resources for humanities too — search for your specific paper name + "lecture" (Indian humanities YouTube has grown a lot, e.g. channels for UPSC prep often double as good Political Science/History explainers even for degree-level basics).
**On career direction** — this is probably the bigger anxiety. Would it help if I laid out what career paths actually open up from this combination (law, civil services, journalism, academia, content/policy work, etc.) so you have a sense of where this could lead? That might make the "what am I doing" feeling less scary.
One more thing, gently: three months of feeling this unmoored, especially after a big identity shift like topper → lost, is a lot to carry alone. If it starts feeling heavier than just academic confusion, talking to a counselor (many colleges have free ones) is worth considering — not because something's wrong with you, but because you deserve support figuring this out, not just a study plan.
How to learn to be happy?
So I’m a woman in my mid 20s and I’ve never really been happy. Sure I’ve felt happiness before and have happy times but if you were to ask me any given day “are you happy?” the answer would be no.
I was incredibly depressed as a teen, I hated myself and my life, I cried myself to sleep every night for years. Since then I’ve changed and grown a lot, I’m really proud of how far I’d come. I’d say I get much fewer depressive episodes than I used to but still I wake up most mornings feeling sad.
I have a 9-5 job, it doesn’t pay well but I feel proud of the work I do. I exercise regularly, eat decently well. I moved cities about a year ago and I have made some friends, none that I feel super close to and I think I would like more but I’ve been trying really hard and it’s not super easy making friends as an adult (most of my colleagues are double my age and while we get on well they’re not best friend material). I journal frequently and started meditating recently. I keep myself in good company and don’t really spend the day rotting in bed. I always get out of the house on days off, go to the cinema, read in a cafe etc so it’s not like I spend loads of time wallowing. I would say to others I’m an incredibly kind and positive person. I will say when I’m drunk sad things tend to bubble up, I don’t have a good relationship with my family and I tend to manage to always bring it up. There are definitely things in my life I’m not happy about, I get stressed about the future and not knowing what I want (maybe because when I was a teen the idea of continuing to go on living felt torturous). That being said I think I’m doing so well.
And yet there’s always this sadness I carry around, I’ve thought maybe I’m just at a lower base level of happiness than most people? I know it’s bad to compare yourself to other and I know that other people aren’t always as happy as they seem but gosh I don’t think most people feel this sadness every day. I understand sadness sometimes is inevitable, that’s totally fine but I always sort of wake up with a sadness in my chest and I’m sick of it. What can I do to try and change it, I’m always hoping to improve in little ways and this feels like something that’s been a part of me for so long I don’t know where to start. Thanks
Jobadvisor
You've clearly already done a lot of the "right" things — exercise, journaling, meditation, community, meaningful work, getting outside. That effort shows, and it's worth acknowledging before anything else: you've built a genuinely solid life. So the sadness persisting anyway isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. It's information pointing somewhere more specific than "try harder at wellness habits."
A few things stand out to me from what you wrote:
The pattern of "waking up sad" every day, for years, that persists despite an objectively good life is worth taking seriously as its own thing — not as a character trait ("maybe I just have a lower baseline") but as something with possible causes worth investigating. A "lower baseline of happiness" isn't really how mood works for most people who feel this consistently low — it's usually pointing at something more treatable than a fixed trait.
You mentioned crying yourself to sleep for years as a teen, and thoughts about not wanting to continue living. That's a significant history. Depression that starts that early and that severe doesn't always fully resolve just because outward circumstances improve — sometimes it becomes the "quiet baseline" a person adjusts to and stops questioning, because they've never known anything else to compare it to. What you're describing — chronic low mood underneath a functional, even thriving, life — is a real and recognized pattern, not something you're imagining or exaggerating.
The family relationship and what surfaces when you drink are also worth noting. Alcohol doesn't create feelings, it lowers the ability to suppress them — so what "bubbles up" when you drink is very likely close to what's sitting underneath most days, just usually kept contained. That's a thread worth pulling on, possibly with a therapist rather than alone.
Here's the honest answer to "how to learn to be happy": at this point, I don't think this is a habits-and-mindset problem anymore. You've essentially run the standard self-help playbook well and it's helped somewhat but hasn't touched the core thing. That's usually the point where it makes sense to bring in a therapist — ideally someone who works with mood and family-of-origin stuff, since that's where a couple of your own biggest clues are pointing. Therapy isn't a sign you've failed at fixing this yourself; you've actually gathered a lot of useful self-knowledge already (the patterns with alcohol, family, the childhood history) — that's exactly the material a good therapist can help you work through in a way journaling alone can't.
If cost or access is a barrier, some options: sliding-scale therapy directories (like Open Path Collective if you're in the US), university training clinics, or asking a GP about a referral.
This is a sensitive topic, so I'll just add: given what you've shared about your teen years, if that kind of ideation ever resurfaces, please don't sit with it alone — reach out to a crisis line (like 988 in the US, or Samaritans at 116 123 in the UK) or someone you trust right away.
I graduated with a useless degree and have been stuck teaching/tutoring for the past 5 years. I don't want to teach but it's also the only thing I can do. Any advice?
I graduated with a BA in political science (lol) 5 years ago. I actually hate politics and I only studied it because I was one of those civic weirdos in high school and I figured it's what I'm good at. But I never did any internships or volunteering and ended up graduating with no path.
After college, I just moved to Asia and started teaching English. I moved around a lot and I really enjoyed life but my parents guilted me into coming back home so I did. It's been a year and I feel like I've hit rock bottom. I don't have a teaching license so I just teach foreigners online and do private tutoring. I only make somewhat more than I made abroad so it' impossible for me to consider living independently.
At this point I just want to move overseas and stay there. But I'm curious to know if there's any way I could realistically stay and do something with my degree and skills. I'm located in a shitty part of the US (New Jersey) so I feel like my options are limited.
Jobadvisor
A few things jump out that actually work in your favor here, even though it doesn't feel that way right now.
"Useless degree" isn't really the problem — the 5 years of teaching abroad and tutoring is actually a skill set, you just haven't been framing it as one. You've been doing sales-adjacent work (retaining students/clients), curriculum design, cross-cultural communication, and independent business management (if you're doing private tutoring, you've essentially been running a freelance operation — pricing, scheduling, client retention). That's not nothing. The issue is you've been thinking of this period as "just teaching" instead of translating it into transferable language for a resume.
On staying in the US and using the poli sci degree specifically: honestly, most poli sci grads who "use" the degree end up in one of a few lanes — government/civil service (federal jobs value degree + any work experience, doesn't have to be political), paralegal/pre-law, policy/nonprofit admin, or corporate roles where the degree is just the "has a BA" box-check and the real skills are elsewhere (project coordination, client-facing roles, ops). Given you're near NYC/Philly, you're actually not as geographically stuck as you think — that market has real options in operations, account management, ed-tech (which is a very natural bridge from what you already do), or corporate training/L&D, which pays significantly better than tutoring and directly reuses your teaching skills.
Ed-tech and corporate L&D specifically are worth a serious look — companies pay well for people who can design training, explain things clearly, and manage learners, which is exactly your skill set, minus the low pay of freelance tutoring.
On moving abroad again — you said you enjoyed that life and only came back due to family guilt, not because you wanted to. That's worth sitting with honestly. There's no rule that says you have to build a "real" career in the US to be doing okay. If overseas teaching (this time maybe pursuing an actual license or CELTA/TEFL certification to access better-paying international schools) made you happier and more functional than the past year home has — that data point matters. A licensed international teacher makes real money in a lot of countries, with housing and flights covered, which solves your independence problem too.
Practically, I'd try this order: spend a few weeks reframing your resume around transferable skills, apply to a handful of ed-tech/L&D/ops roles in your area to see what response you get — and in parallel, look into what a TEFL or teaching license would take, since that door isn't closed and clearly appealed to you. You don't have to pick one path on faith; you can test both and see which one actually opens.
The "rock bottom" feeling makes sense given the pay and the parental pressure, but you're not actually as stuck as it feels — you have real experience, you're just underselling it to yourself.
How to Advise Employee [CA]
I am a manager for a small company (<100 employees) in California.
An employee from a different department came to me about their (newish) manager. They report that their manager regularly yells at them, disparages them, blames them for problems they had nothing to do with, and more. They said they reported the issue to HR multiple times but was told the manager is just passionate about their job and no action will be taken. I have observed this kind of behavior from this manager before and have reported it myself (they were supposedly put on an improvement plan, idk). The employee is ready to quit, but came to me as a last resort - I have worked for the company for around 20 years and have worked regularly with this employee for the last 5 and consider them trustworthy. I did my homework and indications are that the story they told me is accurate.
I'm told by the employee that upper management has already been made aware of their complaints (they said they were told this by HR - I don't actually know if it is true), which is the only obvious action I see to take. I am concerned the failure to take action, especially with a manager with a known history of this kind of behavior, is asking for a lawsuit. I don't see how HR's actions are in the best interest of anyone but the shouty manager. He's not passionate, he's an asshole.
The employee has made only a verbal complaint to HR - they were never offered a report to fill out (which by company policy they should have been). I plan to advise them to make a formal complaint in writing by email from their personal email to HR and copying upper management, or I will provide them the complaint form to complete and I will file it with HR and upper management (and do this every time there's an incident, I guess?). They are ready to quit anyway - if management decides to be, let's say ill-advised, and fire them, they have it in writing that it is in response to a formal complaint against an abusive manager.
Is there anything else I should be doing here? I'm not interested in toeing the company line - the company, or at the very least the HR person, seems to be in the wrong here. I'm looking to support/protect the employee.
Jobadvisor
A few things worth adding to your plan, and one important legal distinction to flag first.
The legal distinction that matters: In California, a boss being abusive, yelling, or unfairly blaming people isn't automatically illegal on its own. It becomes a legal issue (harassment/discrimination under FEHA) if it's connected to a protected characteristic (race, sex, age, disability, etc.), or if there's retaliation for a protected activity (like reporting safety violations, discrimination, or wage issues). If this manager treats everyone this way regardless of protected class, HR's "he's just passionate" dodge, while lousy management, may not itself be something a wrongful-termination or harassment suit could hang on — worth knowing so your and the employee's expectations are calibrated correctly. I'm not a lawyer, so this is general info, not a legal conclusion about your specific situation.
That said, here's what strengthens the employee's position regardless of that distinction:
Documentation, done right:
- Employee should keep a personal, contemporaneous log (dates, times, what was said, witnesses present) stored somewhere not on company systems — personal email, personal device, or written notebook kept at home.
- Written complaint via personal email, cc'ing HR and upper management as you planned, is a good instinct — it timestamps that management had actual notice, in writing, which matters a lot if things escalate later.
- Ask the employee if they know of others who've experienced the same thing from this manager. A pattern with multiple witnesses is far more persuasive than one person's account, both to upper management and to any attorney or agency later.
On retaliation protection specifically: California Labor Code §1102.5 protects employees from retaliation for good-faith complaints about suspected legal violations. If the employee is fired or has hours/duties cut shortly after filing a formal written complaint, that timing itself becomes legally significant — which is exactly why getting it in writing now, like you planned, is smart.
Worth suggesting to the employee: a free consultation with an employment attorney before they quit. Many CA employment attorneys do free initial consults, and if there's any chance the manager's conduct connects to a protected class (even something the employee hasn't mentioned to you), or if the company's pattern of ignoring documented complaints continues, a lawyer can tell them whether they have a real claim — and importantly, whether quitting now vs. being terminated changes their legal options (constructive discharge is a real but hard-to-prove category).
For you personally: since you've already reported this manager once yourself, consider also filing a second written complaint now, referencing your prior report and this new one, and keep your own copy. It builds the institutional record and makes it much harder for HR or upper management to later claim they "didn't know" or "only heard one complaint." You being a 20-year employee with your own documented concern adds real weight.
One more option: if HR continues to sit on this, the employee (or you) could escalate externally — a complaint to the California Civil Rights Department is only viable if there's a discrimination/harassment angle, but even outside that, sometimes a candid conversation with whoever HR reports to (if that's not the same "upper management" already dismissing this) can shake something loose that HR alone won't.
You're doing right by this employee. The plan you already have is sound — this just sharpens it.
Concern about older employee
This is long, apologies in advance.
I am new to my company (less than 6 months) and I manage a small team. One of my team members, who has been an employee for over a decade, is a few years past retirement age. They are very smart, have a great work ethic, and are easy enough to manage. On a personal level I think we have a great rapport and they are a nice person who I respect. Let's call them Pat.
When I first started, I had a peer, another manager, who worked with Pat and I picked up pretty quickly that Peer didn't like Pat - definitely not working with them, and in my opinion they don't like Pat on a personal level, either. Peer would often color their interactions with Pat by describing them as making mistakes due to rushing, or finger-pointy "why did Pat decide to do it that way," etc. I felt Peer was being unfair to Pat with the way they spoke about them. This is relevant because Peer has their own challenges with clear communication so while Pat may indeed make mistakes, Peer isn't easy to collaborate with, either, so I kept that in mind when Peer would criticize Pat. Once I was hired Peer no longer had to work with my team so I was happy to put it behind us.
Since that time, however, Pat has made some small mistakes, mostly due to their tendency to rush when feeling anxious, which is triggered by having too many balls in the air at one time. In general this hasn't been much of a problem as I keep on top of my team's work and communications with our clients, our procedures ensure that we triple check things before sending them out.
What I find about Pat is that they are excellent at execution. Give them a specific task and they are diligent and focused, and their work is high quality. When I first started managing them I worried about their feeling bossed around when I would clearly state what I needed them to do and the order in which to do it, but as it turns out they prefer being managed that way so it worked out.
In recent weeks I've started noticing some small things with Pat. For instance, if there are three projects running concurrently, one can be awaiting client feedback while another is in active development, that sort of thing. Whenever I talk to Pat about the status of more than one project they have to switch gears for each one, asking which one is what (if I refer to it by a shortened name, for instance) and then reviewing the notes every single time. This in itself isn't problematic, but if we are talking about the same three projects every day for a week, I would expect not to have to start at square one every time I want to talk about something. Even this I hadn't given much thought, as again I am happy to be as explicit with my instructions as Pat needs. I've just learned not to throw too much at them at once, so I manage the workload and that is fine with me.
This week there were two very subtle incidents that happened during Zoom meetings, both in the same vein. Pat was sharing their screen talking about a document they were using and showing the team how it worked, and in the process of this demonstration they mentioned one line item as an example, then explained some context, then went to go back to the line item and chose the one below it, instead, reading it out. After another bit of explanation they returned to the doc and chose the first item again. In all instances they were acting as if they were choosing the same item. I was relating this story to my spouse as I wasn't sure if Pat's little mistakes are always due to anxiety/overwhelm if they were doing things like this regularly without seeming to notice it.
My spouse was way more worried than I had been, and said that I should go to HR immediately if only to establish my concern in case there is a legitimate issue in the future. I am of course documenting all of these things as I see them.
The end result is that it seems like Pat is generally fine if I deliver expectations very clearly and concisely. This is a bit of extra effort on my part but I see it as a reasonable accommodation, as Pat really does shoulder a lot of work that I don't have anyone else on the team to manage. The checks and balances I've put in place seem to be sufficient to catch any of these other small oopsies as they happen. Our work is important, but not critical - the nature of the things that could go wrong are an inconvenience but not the end of the world. No one is in any danger or anything like that.
I want to respect Pat's vast expertise, their solid work ethic and productivity, and their continued enthusiasm for the work. Aside from these (at this point) very small issues I worry that going "official" with my completely-unqualified-to-determine-anything-diagnosible concerns may trigger negative things happening to or around Pat, as I know they would be addressed with my director and I would feel obligated to keep them in the loop, regardless. I don't want to rock the boat if it isn't warranted. I also don't want to come across to Pat as ageist if they find out I started this ball rolling.
Jobadvisor
This is a genuinely hard spot — you're caught between real affection and respect for Pat, and a quiet worry that you're not qualified to name but can't quite ignore either. That tension is legitimate, and it makes sense you're being careful here.
A few things to separate out, since I think they're getting tangled together in a way that's adding to the stress:
You don't need a diagnosis to justify documentation or a conversation with HR. You're not being asked to determine why Pat is having these moments — cognitive changes, an unrelated medical issue, stress, fatigue, something temporary, or nothing at all. That's not your call to make, and you're right to stay out of that lane. What you are qualified to observe is performance and behavior patterns, which is exactly what you're already documenting. That's the right instinct regardless of cause.
Separate two different questions you're currently merging: "Is something medically/cognitively wrong with Pat?" and "Do I need to loop in HR about performance patterns I'm observing and how I'm managing them?" Your spouse is right about the second one, but for a different reason than diagnosis-worry. Going to HR now isn't about triggering an investigation into Pat — it's about protecting yourself and, honestly, protecting Pat too, by having a documented, low-key paper trail that shows you noticed early, responded with reasonable accommodation, and handled it thoughtfully. If something escalates later (an actual client-facing error, a bigger incident), you want it on record that this wasn't sudden or ignored — for Pat's sake as much as yours, since a documented pattern of "manager provided appropriate accommodation" reads very differently than "manager said nothing until things blew up."
On the ageism worry specifically: the thing that would actually be ageist is assuming these lapses are age-related without evidence, or treating Pat differently because of age rather than because of observed behavior. What you're doing — responding to specific, observed patterns with concrete management adjustments (clear task breakdown, workload pacing) — is the opposite of that. It's the same thing you'd do for any employee showing these patterns, at any age. That's actually good management, not age-based treatment. Keep the documentation behavior-focused ("needed re-briefing on project status 4x this week," "repeated a correction during screen share") rather than speculative ("seems like Pat is declining"), and you're on solid ground either way.
A practical framing for the HR conversation, if you want one: you're not reporting a problem or requesting action — you're informing them that you're managing a performance pattern proactively and want it noted, in case it becomes relevant later. Something like: "I want to flag, for documentation purposes, that I've noticed some inconsistencies in Pat's day-to-day recall on active projects. I've adjusted my management approach to account for it — clearer written instructions, workload pacing — and it's working well. I'm not raising a concern that needs action right now, just want it on record that I'm tracking it." That framing keeps you and Pat both protected without setting anything adversarial in motion.
On Peer's earlier behavior toward Pat — worth holding in mind as you write things up: keep your documentation clearly your own independent observations, dated and specific, so it can't later be conflated with or dismissed as an echo of Peer's earlier unfair criticism. That distinction protects Pat as much as it protects your credibility.
One last thing: it's clear how much you respect Pat and want to handle this with care rather than alarm. That instinct is a good one to keep — documentation and a quiet HR heads-up don't have to mean treating Pat differently day to day. You can do both at once.