I once watched a movie called Wild Thyme Mountain starring Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan. The movie is set in rural Ireland and is about the two of them being perfect for each other and Emily Blunt’s character being desperately in love with Jamie Dornan’s character, but Jamie is rather…peculiar and not particularly interested in her or in women (or men). That’s basically 95% of the movie. In the last 5% of the movie, Jamie admits that he is indeed in love with Emily but feels he can’t be with her because he believes >!he is actually a bee.!<

No, I did not mistype that. The man literally believes that >!he is a honeybee. Turns out, Emily doesn’t give a fuck about that, and they end up happily ever after.!<

Why this movie exists, I truly can’t even begin to say. But I watched it ironically at the behest of a friend who needed someone else to experience this absolute travesty of a movie to share in the sheer what-the-fuckery of it. I can’t even imagine how gobsmacked I would have been had I watched it not knowing it would be batshit crazy.

Agree we’ll be discovering the effects of covid for many years to come. And again, I’m not saying that covid’s cognitive loss effects have not played any role in lower test scores. I’m sure that they have. But I don’t think we can rule out remote learning as a factor.

Think of education like building a tower out of bricks. Each year of school is a new layer of bricks. Remote learning lays down some, but not all, of a layer of bricks. But we pushed the kids onward to the next school year anyway and started building a new layer of bricks, despite the previous layer being unfinished.

A freshman in high school during 2020 had an unfinished layer 9 and unfinished layer 10. In their junior year, in-person learning resumed full time and started building layer 11. Their teacher even tried catching them up on the missed material from the previous years, shoving some bricks into layers 9 and 10 wherever they could.

Compare that freshman to a student who is 1 year older. They were a sophomore in 2020. They have a finished layer 9, an unfinished layer 10, and an unfinished layer 11.

Both take the ACT at the end of their junior year. If we measure both towers at that point in time, which do you expect to be taller?

Education is sequential. Missing knowledge in an earlier grade will mean that the student will struggle more to catch up in the future. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect test scores to improve just because in-person learning has resumed. There is only so much catching up that students and teachers can do, especially when the foundational layers of knowledge are spotty at best.

I fully believe that COVID can and does cause brain fog and cognitive loss, but when it comes to test scores, how can learning loss from lockdowns be ruled out as a cause?

Just because in-person learning resumed at some point doesn’t mean that the previous year(s) of remote learning didn’t negatively impact kids. Each school year tends to build on the knowledge taught in the previous school year. If the kids taking the ACT now were freshmen at the start of the pandemic and had to suffer through remote learning for a year or more (I’m not actually sure how long most schools were doing remote), wouldn’t we expect the poorer learning during their early high school years to lead to poorer ACT test scores now?

I suspect that it’s probably a combination of effects from both remote learning and covid brain fog. And I anticipate that we as a society will be feeling the effects of a generally worse off Gen Z for many years to come.

My work keeps putting on social events that involve a boat. Boat to this island or that island or just sail around on a boat for the afternoon. Everyone else seems to think it’s fun, but I really would rather not be stranded for hours of forced bonding with my coworkers because we have to wait for the damn boat to take us back.

I agree with all of this except your example about choosing not to leave an abusive relationship. The most dangerous time for an abuse victim is when they try to leave their abuser. Often, there is a very real threat of death hanging over them. It’s an over-simplification at best and straight up victim-blaming at worst to say that a victim’s inaction is the reason they continue to be abused.

Many people don’t find meaning and fulfillment through their jobs, and that’s okay. No one is saying go out and find a job you hate just to pay the bills, but the advice of finding something you love so much that you’ll feel like you’ve never worked a day in your life is inapplicable to most people. If you happen to be one of the few people in the world who love what you do, great. But the reality is that the vast majority of people do not make a career out of their passion, and that’s just fine.

To OP, find a job you don’t mind, one that gives you the right balance of money, time, and fulfillment in your life. Even if that fulfillment comes from things outside of work like hobbies, friends, family, or something else. And remember that the choices you make now are not set in stone. You can always change your mind later if you find you’re not happy.