In my late 20's I decided to go back to school for a STEM degree after building my first career in language translation and localization. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through a degree in Civil Engineering, but I'm miserable, burnt out, and hating my life. Please, please tell me it'll be okay if I quit (at least for now), and help me brainstorm what type of job to look for if I decide to leave school. Assume I already have a BA and career experience, and that student loan debt is not an issue.
I'm not really sure where to start, but here goes (apologies for length):
In 2015 I fell in love with someone from NC, then ended up moving to Raleigh from Seattle. I went back to school when I arrived because it felt like a logical step - my partner was finishing his own degree, and I was looking for a change. I've always loved the outdoors, nature, and science, but my family moved around growing up, so I was terrible at math after bouncing between 3 different school districts. When I had the chance to go back to college for another degree I wanted to do a STEM major, partly as a way of conquering my old fears.
I started out as a geology major (which I liked a lot), but by the end of 2017 I had taken all the introductory classes necessary to apply to the engineering college at NC State. My grades were great, and just the fact that I was accepted to an engineering school at a major university was an enormous personal victory. So, I ditched geology, and went for the prestige degree - Civil Engineering.
After I got into Civil Engineering my interest (and grades) started to slip along with my mental health, and Covid/2020 have made all this exponentially worse. I've begun having anxiety attacks at my desk when I try to study, and this major has gone from an achievement I was proud of into something I can barely tolerate. On top of my own struggles about whether this major is right for me, I'm realizing that the education I fought so hard for is being massively short-changed by 2020 & 2021. My professors are doing their best given the situation, but my remote classes feel like a joke. For example, absent Covid I'd be doing a lot of hands-on lab work as part of my courses, but it's all been reduced to the TA's sending us mostly-finished datasets for our teams to mindlessly assemble into reports.
If I can struggle through this semester, I'll have 6 or 7 more classes to take before getting a diploma. That means I'll be here at least through the end of 2021, though likely longer, which makes me despair - I have always found it difficult to live in the south. I have a 3.06 GPA, down from a 3.65 before starting this major, and I feel like i'll end up in the mid-2's soon even though I work all the time. Pretty much every day I have a moment where I break down and cry from the stress, and I think constantly about packing everything up and moving home. I'm starting to realize that I picked a major because it had "engineering" in the title, not because I legitimately liked it or understood what I was doing; and that motivating oneself with stubborn determination, guilt-tripping, and the fear of not knowing what else to do in life can only get me so far.
Over in the rest of my life, I'm about to list my house for sale, and (fingers crossed) the proceeds could allow me to erase almost all my student loans & personal debt. At this point, I'm looking at the house sale as a potential get-out-of-jail-free card, and thinking about it fills me with momentary relief, but the yawning black hole of "What Do I Do NOW" absolutely will not stop haunting me.
My previous degree is a BA in Japanese & Mandarin. I have a ton of experience with Japanese-English translation, game localization, paralegal work (I did bilingual discovery research at a BigLaw firm), teaching, and running a small business (which was my favorite job). I'm good with people, I'm good in front of an audience, and I enjoy getting out from behind a desk and doing hands-on or in-the-field type work. I tend to struggle with cubicle-farm or administrative/accounting jobs because of adult ADHD - I learn fast and bore quickly. My engineering degree (such as it is) has also given me a bunch of experience with AutoCAD, GIS, land surveying, Python programming, and advanced mathematics. As part of school I've also done an internship at the NC DOT's traffic engineering department, which I have a good reference from.
The fear of not having a clear path in front of me, and the fear of being seen as a failure or a quitter, is the main reason I've kept at this for so long. I'm 35 and I mentally beat myself up a lot for struggling like this or not having a One True Passion yet. It seems like life is offering up an easy out with the house sale, but I have absolutely no idea how to start putting my big pile of disparate experiences together into a stable, well-paying job.
I'd love to do something a little more technical & stable than my old career. My favorite classes in this major have been geology, CAD design, surveying, and GIS systems. I am also interested in looking at trade apprenticeships, but nobody in my extremely white-collar, high-achiever family & social network has experience with them, so I don't know where to start there. I've been also looking at GIS tech jobs, but don't know enough about the field or where I'd fit into it.
So Metafilter, please help me figure out a new path for myself! Suggestions for job titles would be amazing, and any advice or stories of similar life experiences would be extremely welcome too. Thank you for reading! |
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