I don't know anything about your education in the humanities in school, but mine was typical, and I think very bad.

I'm sorry to hear it, Costanza. Sounds like you've managed to repair some of the damage, anyway.

I will definitely take another look at the stoics. I've read a full book by Epictetus and another by Marcus Aurelius a few times each, and found it a bit Pollyanna-ish...not so much advice for coping with a shitty world as exercises for tricking yourself into believing it isn't shitty. There is a strand of mystical optimism even inside stoicism. Still, I will look again, and see what I can find. There was enough practical wisdom there that I can readily believe that they do have good advice for coping with adulthood.

As far as my general liberal arts education, it's pretty good, but it's contaminated by Marx and Hegel and Maslow and so on...my sense of perspective is keyed to the theme of very bad things often happening to very good people but everything nevertheless working out OK.