/lit/ - Literature

>>16978554
From what I've gathered, it will be about translating all sorts of documents that a bureaucracy needs - mostly related to the economy and law. Translating literature is a sort of side business for all but the most successful translators, although I do hope that I'll be able to climb up to that rank given enough time.

To be frank, I've wasted years on trying to get a STEM degree that I didn't even really want because I fell really hard for the STEM meme when I was 18 or so. It's a long story, my family situation had a lot to do with it, but the main culprit behind it was probably my own nihilism and immaturity in the sense that I didn't know yet what I even wanted. Higher education is really cheap here, so I'm not financially ruined, but I'll never get those years back - I'm kinda anxious about going back as a freshman at 24 years old. Still, I feel that I'd rather do this and struggle to make ends meet than to force myself to study something I have zero affinity towards and end up blowing my brains out from the frustration and the sense of nihilism such a course of life would bring me. I come from a family of proles so it isn't like I ever had major expectations hanging over my head, but I nevertheless would like to separate from my mother now and become my own person. Maybe a wife and a kids down the line, who knows, I've made peace with the possibility that such a thing might never happen - all the more time and energy I can pour into obtaining and mastering the knowledge I wish to possess, and use it as kindling for my art. If I ever manage to bring about something that could be called a great work of art, it will all be worth it, worldly success or not. If this is the course life has set for me, with either failure or success at the end of it, I'll happily meet it halfway either way. There's no other way that I'd rather take regardless.

What are the most widespread/most severe misconceptions deracinated westerners have about buddhism?