How do you come to terms with bad life decisions?
Hey everyone, and Dr. K if you're reading this. I've been mulling this over for the past few days/weeks after landing a "good" job and even though in a vacuum it's a great thing, what it cost to get here is unfathomable to me, not in just what money it cost to get here but also what the future could have been.
I am from a third world country in Asia and went to an American university for a bachelor's in STEM, same as my sister. She, being older, went to America before me and met terrible misfortune seemingly at every turn. Long story short, she came back home, with a rare stroke of good luck got a good internship that'd lead to a very good job, but got screwed over again for health reasons. I had misgivings about going after this but eventually gave in to hope and "trusting the process." My idea was to save money with a bachelor's at home, then go abroad for a Master's and then into a PhD because that's what I wanted to do. I allowed my parents, and especially my mother, to convince me and decided to go. Got good experience and skills. Objectively good accomplishments in engineering academia, I'd say better than 95% of my graduating class in terms of experience and skills. Could not find a job or PhD funding. My sister's misfortune combined with my wasting money on a Bachelor's, I no longer had money for a master's, which is what my research advisor wanted in order to fund a PhD because that's how it's done most of the time. My parents were willing to sell everything to pay for my rent post-graduation in mid-2025 till I landed a job, but I had zero desire or will left after getting rejections on all PhD applications, which cost over $500 alone and lead to nothing but disappointment. I had references from NASA, experience to show for it, and it didn't matter one bit. I kep trying half-heartedly to find a job, but we were at the end of the line in terms of money. At the beginning of this year, I decided enough is enough, that this will ruin what little we have left and pulled the plug, cut our losses, and returned home.
Fast forward to the present, I'm about to start at a satellite manufacturing company in like 3 days but the pay is meagre relative to the monetary cost it took to get here, or what I would make in America. I will be paying off the education loans till the day I die if things go normally. But that's only the present situation. If I had stayed true to my instincts, I could have been close to finishing my Master's at this point in time and looking forward to a PhD admission with money left over compared to the cost of the Bachelor's. Maybe it'd have been easier to land a job with a graduate degree too, though with the current job market in America on top of me being international, it's anyone's guess. I express anger at being misguided but it's brushed off. They bring up how much they have sacrificed to pay for it, but don't understand what a waste it was, and what a stupid decision it was to rely on one autistic, anxious, depressed kid to outearn their incompetence with money. My sister thinks it was worth it for her because she got an American boyfriend out of it, while I get to work 6 days a week for the rest of the foreseeable future. There's no point in dwelling on resentment or anger because the damage is already done. I have no option but to keep working and gain experience. It'll probably take 10 years before my salary can even catch up with the monthly loan repayments if I expect a normal career trajectory. My family has given me no concrete plans on how they expect to pay off any of it, not even next month's payments.
My question is how do I make peace with the future? I'm 23 and don't really have any more aces up my sleeve and don't feel particularly keen on trying too hard because it seems meaningless. Any progress I make is akin to using a leaky bucket to empty a sinking boat, like in the old cartoons.