6/21    So I'm in my late 20s and I've noticed that many of the nerdy,
        awkward, and unpopular kids in HS have turned quite successful.
        Many of them are doctors and lawyers. On the other hand, many
        of the popular kids are now doing menial jobs. For example one is
        still doing retail and the other one doing import/export crap.
        Is this odd, or do you guys think there's a logical explanation?
        \_ I think this depends very strongly on where you went to highschool.
           All the really popular kids in my highschool went to college, most
           to top colleges, and an irritatingly large fraction are now lawyers.
           I had quite a few friends in highschool, but I think if any one of
           the people I knew who were happy and successful at my highschool
           had gone to a typical middle America football-first type school
           we'd be hated because of being different.  In highschool, normal=
           popular, and in America at large ignorant=normal.
           \_ Lots of lawyers because those people drank their way through
              college while pursuing a degree in anthropology or something.
              While working at KFC as a manager for $12/hour they decide
              to do something with their lives and end up going to law
              school (true story). Engineers often don't bother with grad
              school, because they get good jobs right out of school. I know
              so many nitwits who are now lawyers that I fear for myself if
              I ever need serious legal advice. (There are smart lawyers
              to be sure, but you have to sift through a lot of flotsam
              to find them.)
              \_ Is it that easy to get into law school?  I thought it's as
                 hard as getting into med school, where you need to have
                 maintained a good GPA in undergrad.  Not something you can fix
                 after graduation.
                 \_ I'm in LS now and I'm surprised at how many "characters"
                    there are. I have no idea how these people managed to
                    get decent scores on the LSAT or decent UG GPAS, my only
                    guess is that a humanities major somehow prepares you to
                    get by w/ very little work and LOTS of bs/guessing.
                    The only upshot of there being so many bad students is
                    that if you study like you studied in engineering you can
                    get mostly A's/B's (unlike in engineering where you could
                    still easily end up with a C).
                 \_ It is *way* easy to get into law school. Plenty of
                    jerkoffs went somewhere like San Jose State and majored
                    in Sociology or English with a 3.2 GPA and got into
                    law schools a *bit* less prestigious than Harvard Law.
                    I got A's in all my classics classes *AT CAL* (let
                    alone CSU) while spending all my time studying for
                    engineering, chemistry, physics and math classes. Same
                    with all the anthropology classes I took. My roommate
                    at Cal majored in Spanish and went to law school. He
                    was Hispanic and already spoke it fluently before
                    entering Cal. I am not sure he ever had any homework
                    other than reading and a few papers.
           \_ Where did you go to High School?
              \_ A public school in West Hartford, CT.
           \_ I wonder how many of your ignorant "normal" Americans can write
              a post that doesn't generate massive parsing errors.
        \_ Uh, the unpopular nerdy kids were the smart ones?
        \_ Import/export has a potential to make one quite rich. I know
           many people who made small fortunes doing that. What I found
           is that the mediocre students were more likely to have graduate
           degrees. It seems odd, but the reason is (I presume) that they felt
           they *had* to go to school. So many of my mediocre classmates
           are lawyers (especially), psychologists, doctors, MBAs, and such.
           None even touched science or engineering and yet they did quite
           well financially. I think that overall scientists/engineers are
           smarter and work harder with fewer financial rewards. By the
           way, the girls that were kinda cute are now extremely hot and
           the hot girls look mostly run-down. If only we could go back to make
           decisions then based on what we know now...
           \_ What's the difference between hot and cute? And yes all the hot
              people became losers. This one hot girl got pregnant and she
              never even went to college. On the other hand I got my BS/MS...
              made good money in the Valley and have a nice house and a nice
              car. ha ha, SUCKERS! That's for dissing us nerdy people.
              \_ So, do you have a hot wife? If not, I would say that all
                 that other crap is just your way of dealing with the fact
                 that hot chicks don't like you and never did. I submit
                 you not knowing the difference between hot and cute as
                 evidence.
           \_ There is no save/restore feature in the Life game.  Maybe it'll
              be available in an upcoming patch you can download.
           \_ In my high school, very few of the popular kids even *went* to
              college, are you kidding?
           \_ ^Import/export^Real estate
              \_ Almost anything has the potential to make one quite rich.
              \_ Agreed. And the popular kids/jocks have nice cars and are
                 pretty successful, at least financially speaking. But unlike
                 many motd'ers, I didn't think that they were all assholes.
                 They went to either Cal States or UC's. --LA HS Guy
        \_ I went to school in San Jose and I've seen this phenomenon too.
           Most of the popular kids (ie the ones that played sports, drank,
           had gf's) didn't end up in high paying jobs or going to good
           schools. The nerdy kids (debate, AP classes, Community College)
           ended up going to top schools and mostly went on to grad degrees.
           The moral of the story is that if you optimize for short term
           "fun" you often do so at the expense of long term security, but
           if you choose to optimize for long term security, you may have
           to pay a short term price (not being "fun").
           To some extent these aren't "choices" per se: your parents don't
           really care about education and prefer to see you have fun, so
           you start haning w/ the "fun" crowd OR your parents can't afford
           for you to participate in all those "fun" activities so you stop
           going to them and start studying in the library instead OR you
           just can't handle the math need to survive the "nerdy" classes
           so you stop being interested in studying and start pursuing "fun"
           instead.
           Personally, I think the kids that turned out the best weren't
           necessarily either the popular kids or the nerdy one (some of
           these people have the biggest damn ego's you've ever seen) but
           the ones who were able to put some balance into their lives.