I feel so scared and indecisive about the future. I started off once I finished school worked in retail for about a year. After that I tried an apprenticeship for 6 months then quit it because I realised the trades were not for me I couldnt handle the physicality of the trades and I didnt see any ROI in it.
I am currently working in a warehouse alongside doing an online course for digital marketing. I really do enjoy it and after that I am planning to apply to college next year as a mature student in marketing but I hear loads of people say that marketing degrees are useless and I am also concerned about AI taking over the industry.
I kept getting shiny object syndrome and indecisiveness about which sector Id enjoy the most I was worried about AI completely taking over whatever I was gonna pick and I didnt wanna end up wasting 4 years of my life just to get replaced by AI and have all my savings wasted on college fees.
I emailed colleges about when applications are open and I am going to apply in November for next year but I also feel like I am going to miss out on a lot of money being in college. Right now I have a €25k stock portfolio putting in around 1.5k a month back into stocks. For me I do enjoy learning about digital marketing but I've just been struggling with all this doubt in my mind such as whether all of this is even worth it or sometimes I feel like it's too late seeing people from my old school graduate and I'm basically starting from scratch again.
I'm also really scared about being stuck living paycheck to paycheck my whole life aswell since that's the current reality for people living in Dublin with the current housing prices and overall cost of living. Ideally I'd want to be able to work for myself and become a freelancer and realistically if I don't get clients the skill set can still be used in the corporate scene but I absolutely hate the corporate scene. I hate micromanagers and I just hate being told what to do in general it just drains me.
The main thing killing me all the time is the self doubt on whether I'm going to make it and sometimes I feel like it's too late since I'm going to be starting university at 24 because I'm turning 23 this year and applications aren't open until next year or do I realistically need university or I'm debating if I can just build a portfolio on LinkedIn learning the skills through cheaper online courses which are less time consuming and I can go straight into work and gain hands on experience because I wouldn't be able to gain practical experience of the job whilst being in university and I feel like I'm going to lose out on a lot of money over those 4 years but then also earn more money once those are over but I also want to travel aswell and make the most of my 20s.
A lot of people when they're older say they regret not travelling as much as they should've when they were young and I feel like if I'm in university I wouldn't have time to travel and it scares me because you're only thing young once in your life and you wanna make the most of it. It's also going to feel so weird for me being 24 in university and I'm just in a class with 18-19 year olds.
I'm happy to hear all of your opinions because all this self doubt is killing me.