I'm in community college for an engineering degree because I think machines and shit are cool, but I don't even know if I want to be an engineer. I've been at this degree for way too long and made no progress because I get halfway through the semester and just stop caring and want to just play video games instead of homework and I fuck myself over all the time, I've never had an actual girlfriend and I work a shitty pool cleaning job that I hate. I honestly don't even know why I hate my job, the pay is decent and the work is not that hard, but I hate being in the sun, waking up early as hell, and getting home super late. I really like cooking and I'm very talented with it, but I'm not sure if I'm good enough to go to culinary school and be a cook instead. I have dreams and goals but they just feel impossible, everyone I know has surpassed me in life. My friends are living my dreams and it feels like I'm being left behind. One guy I know is trying to get me to join the army but I don't know if I want to do that either. I just have absolutely no clue what to even do with my life and it feels like I'm running out of time. Barely any social life, no romantic prospects, shitty wageslave job, and no passion for anything I could make into a career. I want to move out of my mom's house, live on my own or with a girlfriend, at a job that either I really enjoy or is easy enough to tolerate, and maybe start a family or some shit. It just feels like every day is the same but worse and I have no idea how to progress in my life. I'm only 23 but I feel like I have wasted my entire youth.
ofc its normal anon, majority of people at your age is like thatThey just "fake being competent".You said it yourself why you dont like your job. For cooking maybe try doing youtube shit? Or try being a personal cook for other people, prepping and selling them homemade dinners etc.You dont care for your studies cuz you dont have any reason to study, the lack of motivation is not a cause, but an outcome
Yes
>>34538615Don't do engineering for the money. You will hate it. If you don't enjoy the technical aspects of it you will constantly be mentally burned out.
Idk the answer anon, im also going back for a maths degree at 23 but im a fuck up up who previously dropped out and now have exams in 2 days but cant even muster to do some studying for them. Regardless what happens im moving out tho, maybe I need to lose that comfort to fix my life.
>>34538615>Is it normal to feel completely lost and have no idea what to do with your life at 23?yeah, very normal
>>34538615I don't know if it's of any help but,in the last two or three weeks, I've seen a weird rise in posts specifically about 23 years olds who feel like they're lost in life and/or "behind" their peers and I'm certain that you can find much more posts exactly like yours in the /adv/ archive. Your feelings, despite being valid,are not unique. That eering feeling of inadequacy,hopelessness and "wasted" time seems to be a very common phenomenon within that 19-25 age range. You can find examples of similar complains across multiple internet plataforms or even across diferents mediums(books,movies,etc.). I won't try to address in the depth the possible causes of that ever present sense of inadequacy that many young adults feel since I'd have to make a really lame blogpost. Also, you didn't make it clear in your post what kind of /adv/ice ou want,so here's my advice to you: stop seeking advice,deprive yourself of external influences and avoid overstimulating your brain/mind with useless information or escapism to dull your senses. You already have within you the intellectual capability to devise a plan of how you'll get out of this rut. By letting your mind "breathe",your thoughts will get clearer,less clouded,doubtful and abstract. As a human, you're forced to always take decisions that'll change the trajectory of your life, there's no escaping from it. So,start (healthily)pondering what to do,maybe choose goals(culinary?army?),and then ACT,DO STUFF. COLECT DATA. Stop spinning your wheels so much while time passes you by. You'll stick around for more 50 to 60 years at best. The time to do things is NOW.t. Fellow 23 years old zoomie
>>34538615Big guy. Please hear me out. I'm going to save you anywhere from several years to a lifetime of unnecessary suffering.Engineering kinda sucks. You're gonna be halfway through thermo or EM waves or any other big weeder class for your degree of choice and you're gonna wish you were doing something else even harder than now. Let me assure you, literally every other career path sucks 10x more dog dick for less return on investment than engineering. Sure, doctors might get paid more, but you have to endure an extra decade of schooling, take on a third of a million in student debt, and spend your entire career working with the worst tatted up harpies you can imagine. I'm guessing you weren't a vietnamese kid who was winning the international math olympiad when you were 16, so being a quant and making a bajillion dollars that way isn't happening for you. You're posting on 4chan, so you almost certainly don't have the connections and people skills to make a ton of money as a sales faggot. I'm guessing you don't want to grind your soft tissues into dust for dogshit pay, so trades aren't for you. I pinky promise that doing anything food related will be hell on earth, and the military is a pretty awful choice at this point. Now, engineering doesn't seem so bad, does it?>I have dreams and goals but they just feel impossibleThey are! Well, maybe they're not, but I'm guessing you couldn't actually formulate a real path to any of those dreams because they're not truly meant for you.>My friends are living my dreams and it feels like I'm being left behindThis is illusory. They might have some things better than you, but I promise their life is overall dogshit if they feel the need to post the highlights on faceberg or whatever.If you just push through and thug it out with your engineering degree, you can unlock a pretty decent and low stress career that leaves you with enough time to cook and shit. That's as good as it's gonna get, just accept it
>>34538681you got this buddy, i just recently passed the first level of the 3 levels of math i need for my degree. i really want to move out but it is way too expensive to live on my own unless im doing like 11 hour shifts or living in a crack shed
>>34538705 fortunately i can either rent with 3 friends or get student accom, and the UK helps with loans. Do u have neither options?
>>34538700thanks, thats actually pretty helpful. Yeah im a white male from a middle class family and i have a single mom. I have one irl friend and hes a stoner bum. My biggest problem is just school burnout and not knowing what kind of job i want with my degree. Also my mom really pressures me to get a job all the time when im unemployed, so i was thinking i could do army reserve and get a somewhat decent paycheck while being a full time student and just dealing with training to defend israel every other weekend. Idk if i want to stick with this pool job for the summer and try student/reserve in the fall, or make mom upset by just quitting 3 weeks into a new job. I would much prefer to let 4chan randoms decide my life choices for me ecks deee
>>34538615I'll go against answers here that say you can figure it out.I'm 40 and had tons of work and education experience.Honestly, the entire system is fucked. I taught English in Asia with no qualifications and became a master at it. In the UK I needed to do a maths course to even get into uni to do an education course, which was hell too. Then you're training for a year AND IF you get a job after that, which you probably won't cos it's saturated, you're then on pre-qualified status for 2 years. My plan was to get the qualification and go abroad but I wasn't going to take dick for years to do it. a fucking teaching job required just a high school diploma 50 years ago. The point is, EVERYTHING now is drawn out and deliberately long as possible for no good reason. I knew a guy who left school at 16 and got an engineering job for life, and it was ace. Now you need full school education, plus uni, plus a masters. It is not worth it.The feelings you have are what a sane person feels. The amount of work needed to be put in to get the same rewards as before has quadrupled or more. You shouldn't have to start an engineering job at fucking 22 at the earliest, you should be able to interview at companies and be hired based on potential and experience and then trained.Plus the rewards aren't even there. More work for weaker buying power, everything is expensive as fuck now. Plus even if you get the degree you're competing with every other cunt who has one plus pajeets and God knows who else, all for a spot at a company that is constantly looking for ways to save money and would kick you out as soon as they find a computer or foreigner to do it cheaper. So no, you're not crazy or wrong. The way things are set up is wrong. Most sane people would lose interest.
>>34538861Rare to see anons older than 30 post anything other than schadenfreude and torture porn about zoomers, kudos
>>34538615Most engineering jobs have nothing to do with the degree, if that makes you feel any better. Most engineering positions are related to keeping production lines moving, assembly errors, sourcing replacement parts because others have gone obsolete, etc.In my 15 years as an engineer at an airplane manufacturer I have yet to use a single lesson from college.
>>34538615Didn't read your absolute wall of text but yes it is very normal. And sometimes that's a good point in life to figure out what you *don't* want from life which is an equally important lesson.
Bump because I'm in the same game basically but not in college. I'm waiting until I have a clear path, I still don't know what to study neither.
>>34538615>Is it normal to feel completely lost and have no idea what to do with your life at 23?Yeah, around 23 you start to realize you are the captain of your own ship. Life is full of storms, pirates, and being lost. You need to learn to sail or your ship sinks and your life fucking sucks.
>>34540777disgusting inbred waste of space
>>34538732nope, america sucks balls
>>34538615Not knowing what to do with your life is the norm. There is no end goal. What is weird is thinking that everyone has it figured out. This is an invention created by the retarded school system failing to prepare you for actual adult life, your parents and social media too. just find a job that youre comfortable doing and pays well. and just do what you like
>>34542157i guess my ideal life is working an easy boring office job making good enough money to buy warhammer and having enough free time to paint my little dolls lmao, worst part is that i cant get any office jobs with just a high school diploma and i have no chances for nepotism
>>34538615Everything you said is perfectly normal. I felt the same way when I was in my early 20s. I wish I had stopped and just let myself enjoy life a bit more, in spite of the problems that felt so overwhelming.
>>34542216This is a very achievable and modest goal - many young people (and older) people are unrealistic about their long term goals.A high school diploma is absolutely fine for an easy boring office job. What you will likely to do is a few years doing a grunt boring office job before you can transition internally to something more comfy.Try apply for call centres or entry level admin roles. call centres really are the key. Being youthful is an advantage, and your education beyond high school doesn't matter. They will take you if you can show up and interview, and they often provide training. It's a shit job, but not as bad as labour and if you can hang in their a few years, you will be able to pivot to something more comfy that isn't 24/7 on a phone.You absolutely can achieve this goal with your level of education, and you will be in a better position for it without the student debt.
>>34542231that sounds awesome thank you, my issue though is that I'm extremely introverted, so calling people all day and being in a call center sounds like a nightmare lol </3 plus i have no clue where to look for jobs since indeed is total shit
>>34542276You can likely find these jobs on indeed. Introverted is ok for a call centre. Whatever office job you do, you are going to need to be able to use a phone, so it's good practice. The good thing about call centre work is you will pick up the confidence really quickly. What I would strongly urge is if you do want a comfy low skill office job later in life, start working in entry positions like call centres ASAP. Your education does not matter, but your experience does. A 28-30 year old with no work experience/education is going to struggle to get their foot in the door. A 22 year old isn't. It's ok to try and fail. Good luck anon. You can live your dream life and be known on a first name basis at the warhammer store.
It's probably too late. For me, age 23 was 7 years ago. I felt just like you. Felt like I had all this time to figure out my life cuz I'm young and shit. Yeah, no. If you aren't already established and on track to retire with at least $2,000,000 in the bank then you're screwed.
>>34543198You sound mentally ill
