Why on earth
do we gotta go threw such debt slavery to even find a job ???
Think 2 year is enough to find A job ??
The stress of school was pretty brutal ..
Internships that pay decent wouldn’t be bad but cannot accept no pay or anything..
If said job doesn’t pay enough to relocation it’s not worth it .. cost of living is insanity
Over 50-100mil + jobs already left usa that were desk jobs … in last few decades
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I'll give you credit for not going on disability.
To my mind, the key is to figure out what you want, make a plan to get it, and stick with it. Thinking about jobs that may have left will not change reality. Figure out what your options are here in the real world, not a world that does not exist.
I'm not sure my story will help, but here it is. Neither of my parents went to college. My dad had a business that was doing fairly well until the recession hit in 1973. My dad lost the business, became an alcoholic (later died from it), parents got divorced, we lived on food stamps and assistance.
I started college not knowing what I really wanted to do. Got bad grades, thought I was dumb, quit college and worked odd jobs including a minimum wage position cleaning the garage at a local auto service center. Even minimum wage jobs were scarce at that time without education or skills. Eventually got a skilled trade job, worked 10 hours per day M-F plus 5.5 hours every Saturday for about 3 years while taking night classes at a local community college (I still had hopes for something better).
Got laid off from the skilled trade job. At this point I was a college dropout with very little confidence in my abilities, living in a sh*thole apartment in a neighborhood with a well-earned reputation for prostitution, drugs, and all the other crimes that go with these activities. I fully expected to spend the rest of my life scraping to get by working minimum wage jobs.
With few other options, I signed up for classes at the local community college. But, this time around I was MOTIVATED big time. I viewed this as my last chance to have a chance at something better. I didn't care what it took to succeed, come hell or high water I was going to do it, whatever it took. At the risk of getting too far off track, the "I got nowhere else to go!" scene from An Officer and a Gentleman always resonates for me:
I worked my tail off in school, managed to get good grades, transferred to a state university, completed 3 years of engineering classes in 2 years by taking classes straight through the summer, went to graduate school, got a master's in engineering in a year, then got a job as as an engineer. It was financially difficult getting through school because I never got a dime from my parents.
Also, I have to say that I found grad school to be extremely stressful. In hindsight, I can see now that I wasted a lot of time and energy worrying and this was a complete waste of time. When you're in the middle of it, however, it's not so easy to turn off the worrying. On the other hand, I survived. Stressing out is unpleasant but it won't kill you. Neither will failure.
Unfortunately, at the time I started working as an engineer in the early 90s there were numerous reductions in defense spending. Even though I worked on commercial communications satellites, there were many layoffs in aerospace, and I was not sure what the long term prospects were (at that time the concern was that fiber optics would kill a big chunk of the satellite business).
So I quit and went to law school, in part because I felt that law would not be so dependent on a particular technology. Law school was somewhat stressful, but honestly for me it was mostly just boring (I had learned to deal with stress somewhat by then).
I started as an associate at a patent law firm upon graduation from law school. Law school was hideously expensive and I ran up huge student loan debt. My starting salary was not much more than I had been making as an engineer, and I was not able to buy even the tiniest of houses because my student loan payments ate up a huge percentage of my income.
I started to wonder if I was screwed, and I fell back into worry and stress. I lived in a tiny apartment and drove clunkers for almost 10 years while I paid down the student loan debt. My net worth was negative until around the age of 40, more than 20 years after I graduated from high school.
But, here's the key, as Winston Churchill said: "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense."
I stuck with it, learned to deal with the stress. To make a long story short, I am now a partner at a law firm, I've saved for retirement, I live in a very nice house (albeit far from a mansion!), drive decent vehicles, and life is good. Far from perfect, but good.
You will have to find your own path. None of us can decide what is right for you. But, you
can do it if you put your mind to it and persevere. I am certain of that.
