Do not fully know the entire context, but based on what’s given, it seems you enjoy math or majoring in mathematics. I think this isn’t an overreaction on your end, this is asshole behavior.

To clarify, You have the option to learn math, you chose to learn math. I don’t think that’s greed or entitlement, you had the opportunity to learn math and you took that opportunity. Working comes into play when you are in a dire need to make money, and it seems you’re not in that current situation.

I was once questioning my self-worth, since I wasn’t working at community college. I remembered in 2023 I was doing arithmetic, and in 2025, exactly 2 years from when I started, I was doing multivariable calculus. Within 2 years I’ve surpassed every low expectation set upon me: people thought I was going to do a trade, I graduated with an associates in mathematics, and I’m now doing a bachelors in electrical engineering because I fucking can.

This random non has no idea of your back story, don’t let him get into your head and make you doubt your self-worth. If you plan on doing engineering or physics the math that you are learning right the fuck now will be applied. By the time you start working there will be so much fucking money that you won’t have a care going into debt. For fuck sake, I’m a sophomore, I could quit now and make $100,000 a year as an FPGA developer, technically speaking.

Try not to let anyone control your emotions, especially a stranger on the internet. Misery loves company. Hope you have a great day.

Having read through your other post that person was being weird, got heavily downvoted and it’s perfectly reasonable that you got offended. It’s not even clear what his point was, because your post wasn’t about money. So, they were presumably jumping to a lot of conclusions and then responding to an imagined different post.

There will be tons of people on the internet that feels like you deserve to be hurt emotionally or even physically for whatever you do.

I don’t have much context to go on but it sounds like their comment contains no valid criticism.

I saw the post that this was on, and yeah, that comment was uncalled for. So I get that it may have been confusing or even made you angry.

That being said, you can’t let some bitter person or some troll get to you on the internet like that, they’ll just spew their bullshit and move on. You won’t do yourself any good dwelling on it.

I’ll add to that that seeing as you’re studying for a maths PhD, chances are you are going to meet your fair share of insecure/competitive/self-important assholes who’ll like nothing more than to belittle you just so they can feel good about themselves/eliminate the competition. This won’t stop at academia either. So a good thing you can pick up during your PhD is to learn to not care when it’s not worth it, and to bite back properly when it is.

Source: been there, done that. I am now out of the academic cesspool but still (very) occasionally run into an insecure twat with a PhD who feels threatened by the fact I also have one and tries to start the dick measuring contest. You’ll make your life impossible if you give these people anymore attention than they deserve: none.

Before I can say. I am going to need a lot more context on the first statement and more context on the conversation as a whole.

Also are you greedy and entitled?

Without a lot more contact it would be impossible to say.