- Current employer: "Your salary is already good for someone without a bachelor's degree"
- Current employer: "We're sorry but this promotion requires a bachelor's degree"
- Future employer: "We're sorry but we hired someone with a bachelor's degree for this job"
- Date: "You don't have a bachelor's degree?"
- Friends: "You're the only one without a bachelor's degree"
- Meetup: "What did you study in college?"
- Country: "We can't grant you a work visa without a bachelor's degree"
- Family: "You will have more opportunities with a bachelor's degree. We'll even pay for it." (offer expired)
- School: "Here's a scholarship" (offer expired)
- 80,000 hours: "You basically don't exist"
- Brain: "Maybe I'm not a superstar coder and job security is important"
Perhaps some of these are hypothetical, but they feel the same as if they had been concretized.