Accounting - You'll always have a well-paying job
Let us know what your best classes were and what kind of job setting you'd like. That way I can suggest more. Also, how long you want to be in college
I can't really tell you what my best classes were in college, they were all either really easy or really hard. I guess maybe it would be easier to tell you the classes I liked best and performed best in high school, which was usually English. I can't really think of any other classes. Historically I have always performed pretty poorly in math, and while I liked history, it isn't really something I thought I would see myself studying in the future. I wasn't good at nor was I interested in the sciences.
As for how long I would like to be in college, I would preferably like to be out of college in the shortest time possible but I have been failing lots of my classes and having to retake them so this is becoming a slimmer and slimmer possibility. It is a big reason for my depressive / suicidal thoughts.
Take a personality test.
Maybe your school counseling office gives them or you could take an online mbti test.
The goal is to find out what kind of work would match your personality and leave you the most satisfied.
My university's career center offered a personality test, or some kind of career aptitude test which would best configure my results for my future. I am not sure as to the accuracy of the results, but here is what it provided me when I took it a month or two ago.
The top careers it provided me were: Games Tester, Game Level Designer, Game Producer, Office Clerk, Computer Programmer, Network Administrator, Cybercrime Investigator, Video Game Creative Director, Systems Administrator, Social Media Manager, Quality Assurance Analyst, IT Security Consultant, Commercial Artist, Full Stack Developer, Front-End Developer
The top degrees it provided me were: Game Design, Cyber Security, Library and Archives Assisting, Literature, Computer Graphics, Web Design, Animation, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Interactive Media, Organizational Behavior, Ethics
As you can see, it provided me a lot of computer science related fields of study and careers which is weird because this is what I specifically wanted to veer away from. In the personality test I reacted very strongly to questions which dealt with working with others, because I prefer doing work alone in school and I thought that maybe it would be best if I could work alone when I transition into a career as well, but it still gave me CS related stuff, which I don't get because a lot of CS seems to be working with other people - at least that's what my CS professor tells me.
Should I take this career aptitude test again? Do you have any tests to recommend besides the MBTI test?
Take a wide range of gen-eds and find what interests you most. You'll be required to take them regardless most likely in your degree program. If you're already struggling with mental health, don't force yourself to go into a degree you find "profitable"... you'll only make yourself more miserable. ofc try and figure out a plan, don't waste your time, but profitiability < not wanting to die because you hate your job
I already took gen eds classes last year, and they didn't really give me a good basis of what to go off of. My experience in my English 102 class, for example, was horrible, and I dealt with a truly terrible professor who didn't cultivate any desire to learn or to improve - I found her really cruel, and the other students in my class seemed to have thought the same. I do agree with what you are getting at though, I would hate to get into a career that makes me miserable just as school is making me miserable too... it's just tough trying to find something that actually speaks with me. Depression is making me interested in fewer and fewer things, and school is also making me take a hit to my self-esteem - not even the school counselors are really of much help in this regard but maybe I just need to talk to them more...
I am not sure if I am the right person to reply, since I am still in uni myself. But if you have access to a university library, flipping through some introductory first-year textbooks in each field might give you an idea of what to expect. This does have its downsides, but it is at least quicker than taking classes.
Thanks, I can try looking into this. It sounds time-consuming however but so is college in general unfortunately :( Is this something that you did, flipping through textbooks before you found something you liked?
Do they have any job search/placement department? I know a tech school by me had tons of info on job & personality, salaries, employment prospects, etc. The university I went to had the hype on History majors (mine) and guess what? Teaching or law school. Wow the choices were abundant! Knowing now what I do I would have gone to tech school. I did well in school but my interests weren't in business, and I tried CS since I was already working in data processing, so I just stuck with History since I liked it. In the end a big waste of money. So if you can get your hands on, or talk to someone, a means of finding what you would enjoy doing and how those things pay out that will be best IMO. My daughter graduated and her Criminal Justice degree isn't really too valuable unless you'll be a cop, which she doesn't want to do. So we're talking about going to tech school for something she'd like more. Yep a bunch of $$ she'll be paying back now and money she got from us gone, but if she can course correct now it can stave off 30+ years of working a job she hates.
There is a career center and an exploratory degree advising center, the latter of whom I have been in contact with and the former has told me to only seek them out when I am seeking jobs - they cannot be of much help for me academic-wise. My exploratory advisor was able to narrow it down to "Information Systems" and "English". I see what you mean regarding degrees that aren't of much use though... this is such a massive headache.
Can you turn your CS degree into a minor, so the time you spent feels less "wasted"?
What do you dislike about CS?
So my advisor is telling me to switch into Information Systems because the introductory CS course I am taking will count towards it. I was thinking about taking a cybersecurity minor but I am unsure about really committing to it, my cybersecurity class was rough this semester because the class changed professors and the next professor that came in doesn't really seem like he knows what he is doing and in the end I did not learn much about cybersecurity at all, it felt like.
As for what I dislike about CS, I really just don't like programming in general and the way the program is structured at my university is really math-heavy, and I am really terrible at math. I thought I could get by with computer science because I already use computers so much but in the end I really didn't like how it turned out at all, I do feel like I wasted my time and I hate myself a lot for it. Sorry...
I am switching out of CS to MCB right now. It is easy to convince parents because they think it's for the sake of becoming a doctor (it's not). It's okay to not know what to do yet, just try to do it in a community college instead of a 4 year university...
English majors make good money in certain fields. UX writer.
Yeah this can become a problem. I'd suggest looking into what job you want and choose the major from there, not the other way around. University is 4 years, job is 50 years.
What is MCB and what do you mean it isn't for the sake of becoming a doctor? Unfortunately, I am committed to a 4 year university right now. I really do wish I had gone into a community college, or perhaps no college at all given how depressed I have been since enrolling, but I had gotten a nice honor diploma coming out of high school, a high GPA, and a scholarship. I ended up losing that scholarship due to poor grades, I am now getting by through financial aid - sorry I have limited so many of your options here, it seems like my situation is becoming more and more hopeless...
What is a UX writer? And as for searching for a job I'd like to do instead, my view is murky there also... I just don't know what, because it is hard for me to conceive of these jobs, something I can see myself doing for 50 years.
