Hi everyone. This post is kind of a follow-up to one I wrote a while ago called "Help! I don't know how to find a decent job." First of all, thank you to everyone who gave me advice back then — I didn’t reply to everyone, but I read your messages and they really helped me.
Let me tell you a bit about my story. I come from a well-off family and went to private school. Since I was young, I wanted to study psychology, but my family — especially my dad and brother — pressured me into choosing a “serious” career: medicine, law, or engineering. I ended up giving in and chose agricultural engineering. They didn’t force me, but I definitely gave in to the pressure.
When I turned 18, I moved to another country for university — just as my parents had planned. From my very first class, I knew I had chosen the wrong major, and my second internship only confirmed it. When I told my parents I wanted to switch, they reacted very negatively: “This is a gift, you can’t throw it away,” “We’ve already spent too much money on this,” and “You’re halfway through, just finish it and then you can do whatever you want.”
So, I pushed through and finished the degree as quickly as possible. I did discover I liked lab work, but after graduating, I couldn’t find a job. I ended up going back to my home country — which deeply disappointed my parents — worked as a waiter, volunteered to gain experience and build my résumé, and eventually got accepted into a master’s program at a great university thanks to a good academic contact. So, I packed my bags and went back abroad.
I should mention that I’m good at studying — I was raised to be. I joined a scientific research program, and I now have four published scientific papers.
That’s when I hit a personal crisis. The level of pressure during my master’s was brutal, and I ended up in therapy due to burnout. I stayed in therapy for two years, and during that time, I started to understand a lot of things about myself. My psychologist helped me see that I had let my family make all the important decisions in my life — and that it was comfortable to do so. It gave me someone to blame when things didn’t work out. But now it was time to take responsibility, make my own choices, and accept the consequences.
In the end, I chose not to pursue a PhD (which, again, deeply disappointed my parents) and tried to re-enter the job market outside of academia. I was unemployed for a year, but this time I decided not to go back to my home country. Eventually, I found a job teaching languages and biology at a private institute. The pay isn’t great, but I live independently.
Now I’m 30. And for the first time in my life, I feel like I actually have control over it… but I have no idea what to do with it.
I’ve always had external goals: finish high school, graduate, survive the master’s, get a job. But I never stopped to ask myself:
What do I actually want?
Right now, I feel stuck in a job that was supposed to be temporary. I’m thinking maybe I should just use my degrees to find something better paid — even if I don’t love it. But it frustrates me that I have no clear purpose, no direction, and I still don’t know what I want out of life.
Has anyone else been through this?
How did you figure out what you truly wanted to do with your life?