Might have chosen the wrong bachelor's

[Ithior]

I don't know if this is the right place for this.

First of all, I'm in the last year of my bachelor's (Economics). As I get closer to the end of the course, I'm starting to wonder if this is the right degree for me, and that makes me unmotivated to study my current units. I can't find any reason for me to study any given subject because I can't find anything interesting about it.

Anyway, maybe I should start from the beginning: when I had to choose a course for highschool. I was a good student at almost everything (except history and a bit of drawing, I don't really know the english name of the subject). When going to highschool, there are 4 main paths you can choose here: science and technology, socio-economic sciences, social sciences/humanities, and arts.
At the time I didn't know much about what economics was about, and I thought humanities was basically history and portuguese/english/french classes. I also thought that science and technology would only get you jobs like civil engineer, or research/teaching.
So with all this in mind, I thought humanities was too boring, science and technology would be good for research only (which I didn't want at the time) and it would require perfect knowledge of maths (at the time, I was good at maths but was going through a phase where I did a lot of silly mistakes and didn't really understand some concepts, but I could work with them anyway). So that kind of put me off from those two areas. Since I thought arts would get me no jobs, I dismissed that too.
Then there was economics. I didn't know a thing about it. I only thought that it had the perfect balance between maths/logical thinking and interpretation. I was good at saving money too, so I thought it would be the best given the choices I had.

As I went through highschool I didn't have any particular interest in economics, but I still had the same misconceptions about the other areas, so I kept going the same way. During highschool I was never very interested in learning new things.

When I finished highschool, I just continued studying economics. I thought that I would eventually find something about economics that would really interest me, and that kept me going forward. But it was always the same thing, I never got interested in any specific subject. It never stopped me from having good grades though, but my higher marks were always in things like maths and statistics.

And now I've reached the last year of my bachelor's, and I started thinking that maybe I don't really enjoy any of this. At first I started looking at master's degrees, but I never found anything that picked my interest. I started looking into other areas, and I read a lot of stuff on subjects related to psychology (mostly self improvement and personality types), astronomy, programming, japanese, pharmaceutical sciences. I don't know if any of these would be interesting enough for me to pursue a career in that field though.

So now I feel like I'm at a crossroads and I don't know what I really feel or what I should do. I think it's a good idea to finish the bachelor's since it's only 5 more months. But what happens next?

Do I really dislike this area or do I dislike the way this social science is viewed and studied? Is there something else I would enjoy doing more than this? If so, is it any of the areas I've been looking into lately or is it something else that I never tried before? If I don't think it's one of those areas I've been looking into, is it because I don't really enjoy it that much or because I'm afraid I'll never manage to understand the more complicated things of the specific subject? Is there even anything that I would love to study and learn more about for the rest of my life?

And if I can't make that decision fast enough, will I have to wait a whole year before I can start university all over again? Would I be able to do well in university while still having a job, even though youth unemployment is at 40%? I don't want my mother to pay for another degree because of my bad decisions, she already had to pay for this one and my sister's at the same time.

I think that's all I wanted to say. As you can see I'm pretty confused as to what I should do with my career. I never had any real ambition career-wise and I didn't have any big dreams as a kid. In yearbooks I would write that I wanted to be a football or tennis player because there wasn't anything that I wanted to do when I got older, so I just wrote I wanted to play whatever sport I was playing at the time. But I'm a smart and intelligent person, and I believe that I'm pretty good at problem-solving and thinking of lots of perspectives/consequences/errors that can occur, etc. and I think that I'm throwing away my talent by not doing anything meaningful; it also feels like an insult to people who weren't lucky enough to have my qualities, like a "I have the qualities to do anything I want, but I don't want to do anything" sort of thing.

I just wanted to share this with someone else. I've been bottling up all these indecisions inside me without sharing them with anyone, and I think my family/friends wouldn't really understand my problem. I don't share much about me, like my problems, the fact that I have a bit of an avoidant personality, social perfectionism, the fact that I feel like I can't trust or connect with people and that I feel lonely, and stuff like that. I think they just see a calm, smart and reserved person who always has everything under control.

If you reached this far, thanks for reading.

 

[planemo]

I think you should finish your degree and then look at all possible job opportunities. It's much better to have a degree than not having one, and in time if you want to study something else by correspondence or part time you can go that route.

I did do Economics as a subject (but that was many years ago now), but i'm assuming you're doing accounting/bookkeeping as well?

I must admit i was never really properly prepared in making a career choice, and i had massive misconceptions about so many fields of study, that my options were very limited. I had to quit my degree for a lot of reasons, but due to my avoidant personality would i have made a successful professional of myself? to be honest i'm not sure.

if you can see a career counselor and ask about how it is that you can make the most of your current degree, that would be very beneficial. try to speak to your professors as well, and ask them about what different types of jobs there are for you. I think you will find it easier if you know what you're looking for in a job, and the only way to get to know that is by asking those who have got the same degree and to see what career decisions they eventually made.

just as making a decision as what to study would have been so much easier if you had every option available and with detailed knowledge of the characteristics and pros and cons of each of these career paths, so the same is needed to make the step from having a degree to using it and making a profession out of it.

looking back i made a lot of poor decisions based on a lot of indecision and lackluster info.
i think it's still very much possible for you to excel with an economics degree since you have been able to get this far, and if you absolutely hated it or had no real ability at it, i doubt you would have got to where you are right now.

 

[ImNotMyIllness]

You have to find what you're interests are. Your major does prepare and limit you to a degree as to the number of opportunities that you have. I think Economics is a good pick for a bad economy. But, that doesn't mean you have to stay in that field! A Bachelor degree is really nothing more than a sign to employers that you know can get up in the morning and tie your shoes. Focus on getting good grades. When you graduate, you can even work in completely a unrelated field.

 

[Ithior]

Thanks for replying guys.
Guess I'll have to talk to some of my teachers, but that might not be easy for me given my avoidant personality.

Anyway apparently I'm going through a quarter-life crisis, good to know I'm not alone on this... my friends seem to have everything figured out for themselves already.