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Comment by pgrote | Hacker News Reader

"It's never really as bad as it seems."

Very true. Many times when something happens the automatic response is to focus on the worst case scenario instead of the immediate problem at hand.

Also, I couldn't select any text to copy and paste.

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This is great advice even for students because sometimes the things that younger people (anecdotal: me) give a lot of importance to and feel terrible for screwing up end up not mattering at all.

1. Things like validation from peers / popular kids

2. Screwing up on that major test that sometimes "defines" where you end up. A lot of suicides result from academic pressure and failure (plus the environment/parents hinting that you can't succeed in life if you can't do X, Y or Z properly).

3. The academic thing is worse if you are artistically inclined and have science and math thrown down your throat telling you that humanities are for those that can't cut it in science (I know friends that have had a variation of this conversation with their kin/parents, etc) quite true in countries like India / Pakistan, Korea and perhaps even China.

4. Humiliation/shame from something that seems drastic in the moment (Getting rejected by the cute girl in front of all your friends and classmates. Yea that sucks). Getting labeled sucks too, a lot of girls can be mean to their own gender at that age which is absolutely disgusting.

Unfortunately for most people it is something that they only figure out in hindsight.

I had an Economics professor who gave a small lecture to our class after we got our midterm grades back.

"This midterm is one third of your grade. This class is one of four you are taking this semester. This semester is one of eight you will take at $University. And while people will tell you otherwise, your time in college is a small part of your life. It will be okay."

$ A lot of suicides result from academic pressure and failure (plus the environment/parents hinting that you can't succeed in life if you can't do X, Y or Z properly).

Heavy debts are a significant contributor to suicide rates, fear and shame play a large part. The potential collapse of companies would heighten this risk, so here's some statistics on the Great Depression (bottom of the page):

http://www.shmoop.com/great-depression/statistics.html

>A lot of suicides result from academic pressure and failure

I was wondering if this was actually true or not, turns out that there is some evidence suggesting it.

http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/8/6/418.short

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13811110590904016...

Great comment. Off-topic: funny name.

"It's never really as bad as it seems."

A very good point for our personal lives too.

It's never so bad, that it can't get worse ;]

This is not true. It's almost always true in most contexts, but to say that it's a fact is to encourage a false sense of security... sometimes things are that bad, and it's important to be able to realize and accept that, otherwise you never even give yourself the option to try and improve them.

Just the point I came to comment on. There have been many times in my life where things seemed to be completely falling apart. But I have learned that I almost always paint a much bleaker picture than what actually ends up happening. Life goes on.

> Also, I couldn't select any text to copy and paste.

Seems to be a Safari bug. I had the same thing, after loading the website I couldn't even select text on HN anymore. Restarting Safari fixed it.

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