r/findapath

My whole life I was taught to believe that having a degree meant security. I know a lot of degrees aren't the best and I probably chose a bad one. I graduated 6 months ago with a Batchelors in Digital design. It was my dream to become an animator or character artist or just do anything creative. I didn't really know how to make that possible without education. Everyone kept saying get the degree. I graduated with high grades and was offered a position to do my masters but unfortunately I decided not to because of burnout and costs. I'm already 20k in debt and didn't want to add another 11k to that. I feel like I've made a really big mistake. My degree feels and seems useless. I don't even know what jobs I can apply for with the skills that I have. When I started studying there was a lot of demand for animators and artists but now it seems like all the work has disappeared. A lot of my university friends are in the same situation but atleast have part time jobs to support themselves. I've never had a decent job. Only 2 very casual positions.

My parents tried to push me into an education degree but I didn't get accepted into teaching school and in all honesty education is the last thing I want to do.

I stay at home and almost never leave my room now. I'm so stressed that I've started developing autoimmune disorders and ontop of that I found out this year that I have endometriosis. I'm so depressed and it just keeps getting worse.

After enduring shouting from my father today, telling me that I have to keep applying for jobs and call companies to basically sell my soul to them. I've reached a breaking point. Genuinely what can I do? I don't want 4 years to go to waste.

32F. Live at home in a HCOL. My 20s were spent depressed, failing out of college and getting trapped in an abusive relationship. I escaped and moved back home.

I somehow managed to land a compliance gig, but it's a job. Not a career. And I don't have any upward trajectory.

I went back to college at 29. I applied to nursing degree and am now in my last semester of BSN. I'll be done in 2-3 months. The problem? I hate nursing. I only picked it because I was jobless and homeless at the time and didn't want to gamble on a college degree that would not equal immediate job. I have spent contless hours in hospitals etc. and the work would probably legit kill me. I'd take it if my compliance gig crashes, but I'd prefer a career with more upwards mobility.

I was initially interested in economy/finance. Maybe I could apply to masters in finance (possible at my local uni, spoke with advisor and it would be free for me). But who would hire a 35yo fresh finance grad?

Oh, and I just got dumped after my first healthy relationship :( my self esteem is in the toilet, I feel like utter failure. I think I look ugly. I have very thin savings. I'm aging. Hate the path I'm on. And with how it's going, I may not ever be able to have kids.

What do I do?

A few years ago I lost my job as a principal. I was leading an organization of over 400 people and had a mental health crisis that ended my career there. It was one of the most humiliating and disorienting experiences of my life.

Then I spent months of applying to over 130 jobs. Most of them never responded. Some got to the interview stage then went nowhere. I was networking with everyone I knew, beefing up my LinkedIn page, etc. I had been responsible for hundreds of people, but I couldn't get a callback, and it had me questioning a lot of things about myself. I wondered if I was unemployable or unwanted or not as skilled as I thought I was.

The hardest part wasn't just the rejections, it was continuing to put forth the effort after all the rejections when I just wanted to give up and watch movies. Every no can feel like it takes something out of you, and when your mental health is already fragile, the silence from employers hits harder than it would otherwise.

Thankfully, I eventually landed a decent job through a friend of mine who was willing to give me a shot, and I worked my way up from there, and now things are much more stable.

It was really hard and I feel lucky I eventually found something, so I'm not sharing this to toot my own horn or anything, but I see a lot of posts here from people dealing with mental health setbacks who feel like their situation is uniquely hopeless.

I just want to say from someone who has been there that the gap is not as permanent as it feels when you're in it. The rejections are not a verdict on who you are. And the fact that you're here asking questions and trying to figure out next steps is a good step. Please keep going even if it feels pointless for a while.

Hi, I'm 18. I just finished secondary school(Ireland) last year, and I don't have a clue what I want to do with my life career wise.

I'm supposed to be going to college next year but I don't know what to do. I love doing hands-on/creative stuff, and I love to learn new skills similar. I do a lot of art but I don't want to pursue a career in art as that isn't the most stable. I want a stable career that I at least enjoy, not to be stuck in a dead end job I hate.

please help. any suggestions?

ps. i really don't get why we have to decide our whole lives at 17/18 </3

Im 27, studied 3D design for a couple of years and realized its not for me.

Tried to go a different path that relied too much on other people and it isnt working either.

Doing doordashing in the meantime to get some light money but have no idea what to do with my life and how to "find a career i like" i have no motivation and no passion to any type of career.

I’m 26. I’ve bounced between retail, basic office stuff, and a short bootcamp phase. Every time I ask family/friends for career advice it turns into “engineering/CS or you’ll be broke forever.”

The problem: i don’t hate learning, but i DO hate the engineering lifestyle people are selling me. Long stretches of solo screen time + constant skill-chasing + being evaluated on puzzle-brain stuff makes me shut down. I’ve tried forcing it and i get anxious and avoidant.

I’m trying to pick based on what i can actually do every day without going nuts.

My “tolerable pains” (for lack of a better term):

• i can handle repetitive tasks if the day ends clean
• i can handle customers in short bursts, not nonstop emotional labor
• i can handle deadlines if the expectations are clear
• i cant do open-ended “teach yourself advanced math forever” energy

Stuff i’ve tried so far:

• community college classes (did fine when the class had structure)
• customer service (burned out)
• data entry/admin (boring but i was weirdly calm)
• warehouse (body hated it)

I also started writing notes on what drains me vs what i can do on autopilot based on my coached career assessment findings.

If you were me, what jobs/career lanes would you look at that aren’t “be an engineer or die”? I’m open to training/certs if it’s not a 4-year gamble.

Also: what questions should i be asking to avoid picking another dead-end job that just pays the bills and eats my brain?

I would like to find a new path after the incredibly hard loss of my mom. I have been her caretaker through pancreatic cancer and after her passing the idea of going back to work feels meaningless.

For context I currently work in Organizational Development on an HR team. I work in the defense industry and I want out. It has been sucking the life out of me but it was flexible through my mom’s illness so I stayed. I have a bachelors degree in psychology and I’m working on an MBA but I honestly want to drop out. My experience before this was mostly admin or case manager type work.

I have a passion for helping others and making a positive impact in their lives. I do best when I have flexibility and freedom. I don’t love the corporate grind but I would do it for the right job.

I thought about nursing but I don’t think I want to taking on the schooling right now. Through my moms entires illness so many people helped us along the way and I would like to pay society back in some way. I am not driven by money but I would like a job with health insurance as I’m in the US.

I'm 25 and looking to find a decent paying career that suits me. I have schizophrenia, major depression, and generalized anxiety disorder. I am doing ok now on meds, and work part time in retail at the moment while I figure out my next steps.

My previous career was IT support, but it was too social, office work, and required a lot of critical thinking. I had a bad psychotic episode and resigned.

On medication my challenges are sometimes hallucinations, paranoia, and the biggest challenges are things like avolition and anhedonia and socially fitting in with people.

I have a BS in computer science, but the tech job market is really bad for everyone. I'm not sure if I want to go back to tech.

I'm willing to do some additional schooling if it leads to an okay paying, stable career that pays at least $70k a year. I don't even need 6 figures, just enough to live on my own.

I was considering nursing, maybe doing peer support as a psychiatric nurse, maybe accounting or logistics too. I'm not really sure what would suit me.

The older I get, the more I notice how many people are basically trapped in lives they never consciously chose. You study something because you’re told it’s practical. You take the stable job because rent exists. You stay because changing paths feels risky. Then suddenly years pass and your entire life starts revolving around surviving the week, recovering on weekends, and trying to distract yourself enough to not think too hard about it.

What really messes with my head is how normalized this has become. You meet people in their 30s and 40s who openly admit they feel mentally checked out, exhausted, disconnected from themselves, but everybody keeps acting like this is just adulthood. Almost like the goal is no longer to build a meaningful life, but simply to become functional enough to tolerate an unfulfilling one.

And the scary part is that many of these people did everything “correctly.” Degree. Stable job. Promotions. Responsibilities. Yet internally they feel completely dead. I think a lot of us grew up believing clarity comes first. Like one day you magically discover your purpose and everything aligns. But maybe most people only discover who they are after years of doing things that slowly show them who they are not. I honestly don’t even know if I’m asking for advice or just trying to understand if other people feel this too.

Did anyone here actually manage to build a life that feels genuinely theirs instead of just socially acceptable?

I'm married and can move anywhere in the US with my wife, we're not tied down to anything. I have a bachelors in economics and some insurance work experience (a few months at Liberty mutual selling insurance). It was pretty much just a soul sucking call center job but I do have my P&C licenses in pretty much every state.

What would you do in my situation? I would like to make around $70k/yr with room for growth. I really have no passion in life outside of hanging out with my wife and playing video games. Just want some career that is pretty much guaranteed to hire (don't care about moving, I will move to where the jobs are, but highly prefer somewhere liberal).

Really my highest priorities are:

1. Pretty much guaranteed job without going through thousands of applications

2. Pays $70k+ or close to it with room for growth

3. Doesn't have me talking to southerners all day (I'm a poc with a white-passing name and the shit I heard on the phones talking to customers all day in the south made me want to kick the chair).

What would you do if you were me?

I'm 24, currently working retail and I have no idea what I want to do next. I feel totally overwhelmed by options. I know what I don't want, but I have a really hard time knowing what I do want. There's nothing I'm super passionate about. I am somewhat drawn to more creative roles but I think that's because I like the idea of them more than anything.

Common advice is to go out and try stuff but I don't really know how? Maybe it's just where I live, but I don't really see many opportunities around me.

My only real requirements are I want something with good pay (I know not many starting roles have a high wage and it's something you work up to) and I want to be able to travel sometimes.

Over the past couple of years I have been working kind of loosely within the design field. I started in industrial design (making products for manufacture) then moved more into digital/graphic design). The past two years I have been working as a designer at an e-learning company, creating unique online training courses for a range of industries like sport, health care, support work etc. I was very happy with my job and I felt like I could be creative, and we were making courses that genuinely helped people.

Enter Claude. It is now being used for EVERYTHING; writing, designing, QA etc. I feel like my brain is shutting down and I am not able to use any of my creativity, the courses I am working on are 100% pure AI slop. Not only does it feel deeply morally wrong using AI to write courses about things like how to safely care for people with disabilities and administer medication, it also feels so un-human - like my job has turned into full-time corralling of AI rather than actually using my skills to design anything.

I can feel myself turning into a miserable and cynical person because of this. I know it is inevitable that AI is taking over my job and it probably will continue to get worse over time. I want to do something that has some sort of purpose. Something that is innately human. I love the world and being outdoors and creating things but at the moment I feel gross sitting here all day producing slop that people will be forced to sit through.

I guess I am wondering for some guidance on where to go now. If anyone else feels like this as well.

Useless CS degree. I know I'm worthless. I've been on light drugs for about a year now. I don't know what I should do with the remainder of my days.

I know. It's insanely embarrassing, the fact I spent a decade after graduating high school doing nothing. Family is and always have been all addicts here (except me) and I want to crawl out of this environment and make a living for myself. I did a ton of research on financial advice as well as good banks to start up with etc.,

My plan's to just shell out whatever they want here for rent after I find employment and to live extremely frugally for myself while I save save save. With no experience I understand my options are limited but i'm not going to dwell on the past. Most of the family relies on assistance from the state to afford food. I want to break that cycle and make a living for myself after having fought severe depression for a decade i've come to the realization that the only person that can help me is me.

Anyway.. How viable would a warehouse job be? I hear they can be relatively dead end in terms of growth potential. And at this point I need something, anything. Any advice? Thanks for reading this.

The world seems like it’s going to hell, nothing feels stable and I am just waiting for everything to end.

Ever since I was a kid I was always the “gifted one” and now I have a mediocre tech job that might be replaced with AI.

Now I find myself wondering what to do. And the fact of the matter is that I don’t find anything fulfilling.

Maintenance type jobs feel endlessly dull.

Anything involving helping people feels like I am putting energy that will never be given back. That I will be poorly paid to help people that will forget about me.

There is nothing I want to make ir create.

Tech at least felt like solving problems and be paid for it. And now they want to take that away from me.

What do I do?

Hi, I’m 21M and I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Software Development almost a year ago, with no internship experience. I focused too much on finishing fast and didn’t pay attention to internships, and now I regret it. To add context, I did a competency-based online degree at my own pace and finished it in under a year. I also relied heavily on AI during it, so I don’t feel like I truly grasped the fundamentals and core knowledge.

Most jobs now require either LeetCode skills or strong communication skills. I honestly struggle with LeetCode and algorithms. I’m not really a math person, and I feel like I may have made a big mistake choosing this career. English is not my first language either, so communication and interviews are also difficult for me.

I also tried starting a Shopify dropshipping business. I spent over $1,500 out of $3,000 with no real success, and now I’m scared of making more expensive mistakes.

I considered the CompTIA A+ certification, but the idea of IT help desk work discourages me, sounds so draining.

I’ve also thought about other career paths, but I have almost zero motivation to work for someone else. The idea of building someone else’s dream feels empty. I’d rather become a business owner someday, maybe a local shop or an online store, but I don’t know how to start or network in that direction.

Maybe I’m too focused on money instead of passion, but right now I don’t feel like I have a real passion at all.

I want to buy a home for stability and freedom, and to be able to travel while having somewhere to come back to in the US. I also want to eventually afford a relationship, but dating is REALLY expensive.

Lately I feel unmotivated. I like drawing, anime, and Japanese culture, but I don’t see a clear way to turn that into a high stable income. Lost of tools are now generating pictures, drawings and even animation...

My living situation doesn’t help. I don’t have my own bedroom and share the living room with my dad and brother in a small apartment, so I don’t really have space or a desk to focus.

I still work at Walmart and have been there for over two years. I feel exhausted and sometimes ashamed because I feel like I haven’t made real progress since graduating.

Thanks for reading. I just wanted to vent and put my thoughts into words.

So, I was recently let go after pushing carts at Walmart for 5 years (had worked as a cashier part-time four years before that).

I would like to take this opportunity to do something other than carts/retail work for a job. The problem is I have NO idea how to make “Pushed carts for five years” desirable to any company that would hire me.

Can anybody who was in a similar position give some advice?

I (29) have a college degree in something I have no interest in anymore. I graduated during the pandemic, got into food service, and have been there ever since.

I know my position is dead end, but I make enough to only have to work part time, and have also accumulated a good amount of savings. But I hate it so much. It’s so physically and emotionally exhausting, and I know I can’t do it forever.

I was recently diagnosed with a disorder that makes it very difficult for me to be on my feet for long periods of time, which adds extra strain when I’m at my job. One of my friends has hit me up with a few corporate job opportunities, but the idea of working everyday, 7 to 5, with two free days a week makes me sick to my stomach.

I have hobbies that I get really into, but they always fizzle out, usually after I’ve spent a good amount of money on them. Really what I want to do is make short films, but I don’t know how I’d even begin. AND I can’t tell if it’s something that actually interests me, or just a hobby that I’d blow 1000+ dollars on before getting frustrated to the point of quitting.

It really feels like I can’t get a grip. Either I work five days a week at a bullshit nothing job, or I stay home depressed and overwhelmed at my ‘potential opportunities’ until I burn out and the cycle of existential exhaustion repeats.

But I have money, and a job, and family and friends. So what the hell is wrong with me where I can’t be satisfied?

Hi, I'm 20 and I recently just dropped out uni, 3 years into my teaching degree. Now im not sure what I want to do as my career. Any suggestions of what I could do? im so lost

Im 23 and one year out of college and i see no point in anything. I graduated with a shitty degree i figured out far too late i dont really care about. I have no idea what i want to do with my life and i dont have the resources to spend another few years and thousands of dollars for another bad degree ill end up not liking all over again. I had a minimum wage gas station job for a while and finally found what i thought would be something better but it turned out to be absolutely horrible and borderline unsafe so i quit after a month and now im back to being jobless and my hopes are at an all time low. The best i can hopr for is maybe making 15 an hour one day if im lucky which is still nothing.

My family is the only reason im not homeless but i think that will be enevitable in the future though once they pass away or, more likely, get tired of me and see me for the parasite i am. Im such a washout and every one of my friends and people i knew in high school are doing worlds better than me, I FAILED AT LIFE.

I know everyone says the dreaded s word isnt the answer but im barely holding it together now, idk how ill ever have a good life especially when the state of the world will only keep getting worse and worse each year. Things will keep getting more expensive, jobs will get even harder to find. Is it worth it to be alive when youre trapped in perpetual homelessness and constantly fighting to stay alive with no hope of things ever improving?