Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

CS / CE are awesome for getting decent-paying jobs, but you'd better love programming to death to not go insane.
I pursued CS because it was the only thing I didn't suck at :P

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

I have barely programmed anything. The last time I did was in 11th grade and that was over 3 years ago. I just like the fact I could make 60,000$ a year easily with some experience and could go on to six digits if I so pleased with lots of experience and being in certain fields. It's also indoors, not manual intensive and does require thinking instead of lifting heavy shit all day.

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

IMO it's hard to become a programmer that earns a lot of money if you hate math/problemsolving

same applies to lots of fields though. don't go into medicine unless you love it. don't go into finance unless you love it. and so on

otherwise you'll be like me -- making a decent salary, but not liking what you do. I'm a coder at heart but my education is all finance-heavy, so I'm pretty much pigeonholed. couldn't get past the HR at google

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

I don't hate math at all though. I just don't understand why I was so terrible. It was less being taught and more him just answering the questions in the book.

I absolutely LOVE everything car related, but there's no way I want to fix cars for a living. I'd love to tune and mod cars for a living, but I'd prefer to have my own projects/builds in my garage. Having a job that pays a nice salary means I could afford these fun projects. So I will have a job I maybe don't LOVE, but because of that job I could do that I love.

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

that's pretty much the same logic i am using right now in my life, to be honest: work a job that pays the bills and allows you to afford whatever fun you want on the side. i mean, it works... but at the same time, you spend so much of your life at work, and so there's something to be said for loving what you do. it's a balancing act.

ideally you should find something that you enjoy that *also* lets you afford the kind of lifestyle you want. sometimes you have to put up with the grind, though, until you earn enough of a nest egg to buffer yourself against unforeseen consequences/setbacks/etc so that you have more wiggle room to pursue what you love. it can be risky, and risk is best mitigated by having sufficient capital to back it up (as we learned from the financial crisis...).

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

But that's the problem. I cannot think of anything that I am interested in doing for a career. I think about this every night and I can never come up with an answer. So I'm basically looking for something I won't hate more than something I will love.

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

I admit I am ignorant about the car industry in terms of various positions and what they pay, but I was under the assumption that there were plenty of car jobs that pay decently well (esp if you work at, say, Ford)? Automotive engineering, etc.

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

There is I think one manufacturing plant in Canada. There is only one school that offers Automotive Engineering and they never even reply to my emails. After doing a bunch of research on becoming a mechanic I have come to the conclusion to stay far away from the field. Every forum I went on was just a bunch of 10-20 year experience mechanics telling people to find something else because they pay is bad, until you start getting experience you will be worthless in a shop because the more experienced mechanics will get all the jobs and you end up being the bitch. Mechanics basically cap around 50k after years and years of experience unless you work for a new car dealership. You're always on your back or bending over, reaching over etc, you're always dirty and most of them have bad backs early on. You also end up with thousands of dollars worth of tools, some people say they have 20k-50k worth of tools alone. To become a mechanic you have to complete the 1 or two year program in college then complete a 4 year apprenticeship making absolutely nothing (under 15 an hour). So you're basically working for 6 years to be a "certified mechanic". I could get a bachelors in 4...

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

If all else fails, do what I did and move if you find that your interests are best served elsewhere. XD

I meant moreso the engineering side of things (electrical + mechanical handling/design, as opposed to fixing things with tools and whatnot), which typically pays more and employs more math/problemsolving ability. Would that be interesting?

DISCLAIMER: I'm dumb ignorant about this stuff so ignore if necessary -- just spitballing questions

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

There's 10 plants in Ontario dude...

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

I thought there was one GM plant? LOL Boy was I wrong.

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.

The issue is that I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to do well considering I failed college math on my first go even though it was the easiest shit I've done since elementary but then somehow I failed. I'm sure the only place I could work as an automotive engineer to design cars or do R&D etc would be in the states. If I were to move somewhere it would be somewhere warmer than here, most likely New Zealand or somewhere cool like that.

Re: Having a difficult time deciding what to do with my life.


Yeah, I just found that website after reading your post earlier. Aha.

/double post