Please tell me how to live more strategically.

papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) is just an extra—nothing more. It’s not something you should prioritize over more important things. I enjoy papa-katsu because I have a job and a boyfriend, and those parts of my life are stable. I can’t imagine making something like this the center of my life or my main source of income. Marika

While living my energetic corporate-slave life today, I came across nothing but harsh opinions toward me, so this is a little difficult to write. I’m Potassium, a female member. This is assuming you’ve already received several job offers, even if they’re just backups, right? Seriously, having no offer at this point is pretty bad. Personally, I chose my job with feelings pretty similar to yours. Given my educational background, it was a company I normally wouldn’t have been able to get into, so I was happy that I’d managed to get in through a genuinely strategic approach. And since it’s a white-collar company with good working conditions, I can coast along safely and securely. But once you choose the lukewarm water, you should still aim to become someone who can handle boiling water within it. Personally, you could also say that precisely because it’s lukewarm, I chose a path where I can heat things up to around 45°C myself, haha. Anyway, enough about Potassium. If you’ve already received an offer you’re happy with and can honestly tell your future self that you’re satisfied, then I think it’s fine to stop job hunting. And if your boyfriend is important to you right now, and you want to cherish this time—if your future self will be able to look back and think, “I was happy then. I had a lot of fun”—then I think it’s fine to stop papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) for now. You’ll have free time after that, right? (Though you still need to properly work on your graduation thesis.) With that free time, you should prepare now to earn money on your own, in case the company you received an offer from turns out not to be a good fit. In this day and age, a salaried worker who can’t use a computer properly is just dead weight. Rather than constantly looking toward a future where you can’t decide anything for yourself, I think you should first focus on what you can do and take a good look at where you currently stand. If you haven’t received an offer yet, stop waffling and get job hunting already. The period after graduation when companies can see value in you even if you can’t do anything yet is much, much shorter than the period during which you can do papa-katsu. And, just so you know, there’s no future in papa-katsu to begin with, so don’t get your priorities mixed up, haha. That’s just my personal opinion. When my papa said this to me, I thought he might be right. You’re a third-year student!? No, seriously, in that case, forget papa-katsu for now. You need to use internships to reassess yourself—including self-analysis, research companies, figure out what kind of work you could continue doing or actually want to do, and study for the SPI (or is it different now?). Otherwise, you’re not going to find a decent job, haha. Your papa will die before you do, and there’s also a very real risk that he could cut off the relationship!

Since you don’t have a job you want to do or a vision of the person you want to become, I feel like you’re simply trying to escape into various comfort zones. But you should understand that it’s difficult to earn more than other people that way. First, focus on winning a position at at least one company, wherever it may be. Akari

You don’t have to do papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) if you’ve never gotten involved with it. It’s like a legal drug—or rather, since I’ve never been interested in drugs, something even more addictive. Once you’re in, it’s incredibly difficult to get out. So, in life, it may be romance, but right now, job hunting comes first. Papa-katsu is at the very bottom of my priorities. Still, I’m not sure I can actually quit…

Job hunting should be your only priority. Even if you date and eventually get married, unlike in our generation, being a stay-at-home wife is nothing more than a dream. You can’t even count on a man’s income anymore. As you can see, stable papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) will last ten years at most. Think in terms of the next 50 years and find a job you can hold on to. Looking around, it’s astonishing how many people take work easy and depend on their company.

① Plan your job-hunting schedule first. ② Then make plans with your boyfriend. ③ Finally, do papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) during whatever time is left. Honestly, I don’t think the person asking is really worried—they probably just hate job hunting. Stop making excuses and get on with the job hunt like everyone else.

The fact that you’re agonizing over it means, in a way, that you have the luxury of choice, so it’s fine to prioritize whatever you want. I think you should just decide based on how you feel. What matters isn’t someone else’s suggestion—it’s making the decision yourself. If you choose for yourself, you’re less likely to regret it. As for your relationship with your boyfriend, you don’t even know whether he’s truly sincere and the type of person who wouldn’t date two people at once. Even if he’s sincere now, he might become a papa-katsu guy someday. When that happens, you could simply see continuing your papa-katsu as practice in broadening your capacity to forgive your partner. It isn’t cheating if he doesn’t find out, and if you don’t confess, he might continue to trust you. It’s just an extension of the lies you’ve been telling the papas by saying, “You’re the only one.” True sincerity isn’t about that—it’s about how long you can keep a lie going, and whether you can forgive the other person’s lies. I’m sure some people will disagree, but after living for 60 years, that’s how I see it. I sometimes wonder what that intense moral purity I had when I was young was all about. Maybe I was simply immature. Mistakes in your 20s can become the driving force behind success in your 30s and 40s—like an Othello piece suddenly flipping over—so you don’t need to be afraid of failure. But failure in your 60s is merely humiliating, so you absolutely can’t afford to fail then. Also, there was a question before about being surprised by how much female college students change. Basically, it’s this: after just six months, they can look like completely different people. I find it fascinating, like watching a tadpole grow into a frog. I’m a little curious about what kind of frog the questioner will become, but most people end up as ordinary, unremarkable frogs, and the rest of their lives become settled, or rather, stable. You’re in your metamorphosis phase right now. Not that kind of “metamorphosis,” lol. P.S. The other day, while organizing my LINE contacts, I noticed that the profile picture of a girl I used to have threesomes with about four years ago had changed to a sweet-looking photo of her with a young child. I guess that’s how everyone eventually graduates from these kinds of relationships. P.S. 2 Lying itself isn’t what’s bad—making the other person unhappy is. Sometimes a lie can make someone happier than the truth. Keep that in mind, and learn to use lies skillfully as one of life’s tools. Many women live that way. P.S. 3 One vote for Furame, lol.

All of it. Every aspect matters. If you take it one step at a time, I’m sure you can do it. Just focus on what you can handle and try to keep a balance without letting it affect your mental health. My daughter is 21 too, so hang in there.

To live shrewdly, I think you need to think things through for yourself and act with strong determination, rather than asking complete strangers for advice or letting their opinions sway you. Incidentally, I don’t think there’s really such a thing as a “female college student brand.” The phrase “next stage” brings to mind corporate titles like assistant manager or deputy section chief. It sounds like you’re nearing graduation from university, so why not consider graduating from a life of worrying about other people’s reactions and letting yourself be led around by them?