When I was playing in a band a long time ago, I got similar advice from a bandmate. He tried to discourage me from approaching and dating a well-endowed girl I met at a gig. He didn’t mention long-term concerns, just made vague, idiotic statements like “big breasts don’t make a woman attractive”. Although I couldn’t rule out jealousy on his part, I think he was mainly putting on a show for his wife, who usually came along on gigs. “See how faithful I am honey? I even try to prevent other guys from scoring”.
Unsolicited advice is suspect. Not to be paranoid, but you at least have to wonder about the motivation. It usually becomes clear if you keep asking, as in: “That’s an odd piece of advice. Why are you telling me this?” The more inappropriate the advice, the more you insist.
When I was looking to break into the world of technical writing, I had an interview with a woman who was considered the best person to start with. Well, she tried to tell me that I had better be ready for controversy and people not liking my work and demanding that I revise it, etc. She went on and on about the horrors of the job. She told me to think about it because if I couldn’t stand the controversy, criticism, and demand for rewrites, this was not the career for me.
I walked away thinking “Bullshit lady, I am so not working with you,” and went on to become a technical writer, then instructional designer. Was what she said true? Sort of. Of course there are rewrites, of course there is controversy. It’s all part of making a better product and we do it as a team, not to be nasty just because we can. I enjoy what I do. I’m not sure why she was trying to frighten me off of the career, but I’m glad it didn’t work.
I still wonder about the advice I was given about the parents of a prospective spouse. Sometimes the little trees are just like the bigger ones and sometimes they ain’t.
This exact thread title just occurred to me and with a little thinking I wondered if I had been down this road before. Still a good topic, maybe someone has something new to say.
Sometimes the advice someone gives you seems generally useful to them, but is actually deeply colored by their personal experience. That was my impression of Carnut’s tale, two posts and 17 months ago. This lady has had a miserable time in her career and assumes it’s because her career is miserable, but actually it’s the folks she’s working with and the way she chooses to respond that’s the problem. Same with earlier advice given here like “Watch out for romantic partners with {some specific attribute}” which might seem like good general advice but is really just their response to a bad experience with a person like that.
Here’s one Mrs. Cad got. This was from BigBossMan who was longtime buddies with X who was a manager just under BBM
“I’m advising you to claim X’s sexual harassment of you was consensual so that you don’t get fired.”
You read that right, X was not going to be fired, she was.
When I was in high school, my mother told me repeatedly that I had to go to college and become an engineer. This despite her never enforcing or encouraging study habits and my graduating as a solid ‘C’ student. It wasn’t that I wasn’t smart, I was just bored. I also had little aptitude in the sciences: fine in math, but physics? Forget it. So I went to college and majored in civil engineering, against the good advice of my college guidance counselor. And I failed miserably. By the time I discovered that I was a good writer and that I could ace any psych course they threw at me, I was headed for military service.
I agree, but I’d say advice is nearly always based on experience.
Is the second sentence the advice you were given? If so, I’d say it’s mathematically sound. 
If you’re asking about that advice in relation to something happening now in your life, I’d say that it’s in your interest to observe as much of the family as you can.
The experience behind that advice is that it took me a couple of years to see the similarities between a girlfriend and her siblings, mother and children. At that point, I said on a couple of occasions, “She’s just like (irresponsible sibling), isn’t she?”, and the rest of the family would look the other way. It would have been better for everyone if I’d noticed earlier.
Yeah, true, advice is nearly always based on experience. When I say “deeply colored” by personal experience, I mean for instance someone having a bad experience with a dog as a child so their advice is “Dogs are terrible pets, never own a dog.” It sounds like good advice to them because they’ve never unpacked their trauma. Perhaps if they did, they could give more reasonable advice like “Don’t trust a strange dog.”
I am so familiar with that. I was way ahead of the others and would stop paying attention and then fall behind.
Yeah, I get it. I rarely opened a textbook; just did the minimum to get by, other than in English.
Yup. Good example, there, about dogs.
This is me, too. It gave me completely horrible study habits. I didn’t know how to study. I still did really well in school, but I wish I’d learned earlier how to be more methodical about learning. But I was “doing fine,” so nobody paid attention to what I was doing or how I was doing (or not doing) it.
I think my parents were just exhausted from work and couldn’t be bothered. “Don’t you have homework?” “No.” “Okay.”
I was another one skating through school. Acing the tests was easy, I didn’t do any homework unless it was something I could just before class started. It was high school, didn’t really matter in the end. Still doesn’t. Grades are a terrible way to evaluate education.
My dad spent his entire adult life working in offices, wearing a suit and tie.
When I worked for a Christian multi-media studio after college, he’d say “Well, that’s ok for a while, til you can find a real job.”
Even when I went from there to a secular media company, and ended up a creative director* for an ad agency, he’d say “Well, write home when you get a real job.”
Whenever I’d say “It IS a real job”, he’d ask “Do you have to wear a suit and tie?”
.
*Great job for an ADD smartass.
That’s the way my dad sounded all the time. Perfect video on this pattern:
Sadly, although that’s how Dad spoke to me I found out mostly after he passed how he had told many people how proud he was of my success. Would have meant the world to me to hear him say it to me.
And me. I took horrible notes a lectures. To the point that the notes didn’t help, and I missed the lecture because I was taking notes. Dammed if I do, dammed if I don’t. I’m much better at just cracking a book.
I’m a programmer. Books and the internet got me here. I dropped the only programming class I took in college (I’m talking punch cards here).
As far as condescending advice… I was told once that my glasses made me look smart. Gee, thanks.
I majored in Elementary Education. One of my professors told us to inform any older teachers we taught with whenever they did something wrong. “Wrong” meant any method other than what she was teaching us. Note that she wasn’t that much older than we were, and had never taught in a classroom hereself. No, I did not take her advice.