LogFAQs > #902228395

It's normal to compare yourself to your family and friends and feel inferior or envy. I myself am in a similar boat as you. Took me about eight years to finish college whereas my college friends finished in five some years. Most got their Professional Engineering license within two years of finishing school whereas I'm eight years out and still don't have it. Some of my friends are making $50k-80k within a few years of working and already bought their first home in the mid 20's whereas me in my mid 30's am making only $47k a year after working for eight years.

The only problem I have with all this isn't that my friends are better off than me. The problem I have is that it doesn't bother me enough. I don't mean in that I want to be better than my friends but rather at my point in my career and age, I should be pushing myself more to make myself more valuable. Every year more graduates are finishing college and that's more competition that I need to deal with. Yet I lack the drive to make myself standout despite knowing I'll never get a better paying position until I do.

When I see how successful my fellow engineers are and the life they're living now, I try and use it more for inspiration than to look down at myself. I've seen my friends posting about the times they were studying for their license exam, going to work 8-5, studying from 7-10, sleep, and then repeat the process.

I see all this as a reminder that my friends got to where they are now because they continue to push themselves whereas I got too comfortable getting my simple engineering position and stopping there. The thing is, even when we're aware of our own flaws, sometime we continue to repeat them. I still kick myself for bombing a city engineer associate interview that was paying $75k a year at zero experience. On the day of the interview I continue to review for the interview but allowed myself to relax too much and wasted a hour playing games. Could that hour spent preparing instead of gaming had made a difference? Maybe or maybe not. The fact that I wasted that time instead of prepping still bugs me to this day.

EDIT: About two weeks ago my supervisor asked if/when I'll get my P.E. license. I told him in the next year or two and what have I done in the past some weeks? Wasting my time playing games instead of looking into what steps I need to take to register and prepare for the exam. I continue to feel inferior because I allow myself to be.
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