CareerAdvice #CollegeStruggles #ADHDStruggles #CareerPaths
Hey there,
It sounds like you’re facing a lot of challenges right now, and I can totally understand how overwhelming it can feel when every degree or career path you’re interested in seems to come with warnings or doubts from others. 🤷♂️ Here are a few thoughts and tips that might help you navigate through this tough time:
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Explore Your Interests: It’s great that you have a passion for Computer Science and are interested in pursuing a career in nursing. Take the time to explore both fields further and understand the pros and cons of each.
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Seek Guidance: Don’t hesitate to reach out to career counselors, mentors, or professionals in the fields you’re interested in. They might be able to provide valuable insights and advice based on their experiences.
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Consider Your Strengths: While your GPA might not be where you want it to be, remember that you have skills and qualities that are valuable in any career. Reflect on what makes you unique and how you can leverage those strengths in your chosen path.
- Look into Alternative Paths: If traditional college isn’t working for you, consider alternative education options like vocational schools, online courses, or certification programs that might better suit your learning style.
As for a possible solution, have you considered looking into hybrid roles that combine elements of both Computer Science and healthcare? For example, health informatics or medical technology fields might offer a blend of your interests and skills.
Remember, it’s okay to feel lost or uncertain about your future. Take it one step at a time, seek support from those around you, and explore different possibilities until you find the right fit for you. You’ve got this! 💪
Hope this helps, and best of luck on your journey ahead. Feel free to ask if you have any further questions or need more advice! 🌟
If you really think you would be a great nurse and that’s something you’re interested in pursuing, then you should definitely go for it.
A couple things
* Don’t compare yourself to others. No matter how successful/skilled you become, there will always be someone better.
* Outside of school, nobody cares about GPA
Regarding studying CS, I’d say keep going if you enjoy it. The entry level developer market is saturated right now, but a lot of it is folks that don’t have any CS interest and are just chasing the cushy high paying jobs. Ask anyone that interviews for these positions and they’ll tell you the majority of the candidates can’t program their way out of a wet paper bag.
I think about it like this: The good careers involve doing something difficult. If it was easy, they would offshore it, and some smart young person in Bangalore would be doing it for $5/hour.
So you want a career that involves doing something difficult. Something that has a barrier to entry. Something that other people cannot do.
My CS degree has paid off handsomely. I tell people that you have to be the right kind of crazy to be in my job. Most normal people will not stay in this job.
IF CS is your favorite, IMO that is what you should study. It won’t be easy at first. Eventually it will become second nature and you will be making bank..
unfortunately, you have an encountered online dooner culture where prefiessional complainers are egged on by outside agitators 🇷🇺 🇨🇳 to take every real ( and some invented) problem than falsely claim its massive and forever hurr durr LaTe StAgE CaPiTiLiSm ignore that propaganda
Every career has it ups and downs. I enjoy teaching special ed, though it requires a degree. The ups are liking mych of the job having benefits and amszing schedule that lets me slemd time with my family. money is tight cause of inflation, but doing ok0
You’re going to be ok and find something. No, you won’t be selling “content” for 100k an hour or what ever lie influencers are peddling this week. If you expect that, then you will become like theses downers avoid the trap
We’re pretty similar, I’m also a tech student that’s looking at healthcare roles (20 yo) but feel sort of trapped since I just did my 3rd year of college. I’m looking at nursing since it’s a secure role and easily accessible once you’re licensed as a RN/LPN but tbh there’s more roles to look at than just nursing. There’s radiology technician, physician assistant, etc. Roles to look at too which may be more interesting/fulfilling than nursing. You’ve been in school for quite some time so I don’t think you’d want to throw all that away so easily but you definitely have options after getting the CS degree you’re on the path for now… you can get the degree, look for jobs, and go back for nursing if it doesn’t work out by doing prerequisites.
Ill be real in a way not many are. The system and society we all live in is very broken. Compensation is at an all time low compared to efficiency and labor output. You will do more work than your predecessor in almost any field and likely get paid less.
There is no escape aside from nepotism. Just pick a field that interests you and keeps you stimulated/distracted and focus on building a network of mentors and friends in your work field. THAT is how you break out of the “bad” years of work. Ive found that ALL careers are now set up like this! Make sure the people you befriend are mobile too, because the only way to change your pay bracket and move up the pay ladder is to leave a company completely and go somewhere else. Forget loyalty to any company for any reason.
Stay in tech, just keep expectations low for how fast you can make a ton of money if you do like the work you do.
I think its because, no matter the path, the unyielding weight of capitalism and working is a fucking nightmare. I think we’re in a time where it isn’t worth it. You might make a lot of money but have no time to enjoy it. You work super hard and deal with idiots and make a difference but you don’t make much money. Eventually, you do something you love a lot for money and you’re no longer passionate for it. I’m 36 and I’m just waiting to die. I dont care at all about my degrees and I’m looking into manufacturing and things like that so I just stand somewhere, move product into a box, forklift it out, and go home. I know doctors, engineers, and others that just hate what they’re doing and regret it but what else can they do? We spent $40-80k on educations. Have to just grind it out until we die.
Career consultant here and I am about to go on a rant I hope everyone sees.
Everyone giving you career advice so far? Not an expert in the careers field.
“Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do X, Y, Z, A, B, C, D, E, F, G…..”
They sure all have a lot of Don’t….but do’s? They got nothing.
Because they have No. Idea. What. They. Are. Talking. About.
So, as a career consultant – people like myself ARE the experts of the hiring field, and we keep up with trends and downfalls of industries on a macro scale. The people giving you “Don’t”s on a MICRO scale. A very short-term, limited vision of what they have half-heard in whatever industry you are talking about.
They are saying to you “Don’t go into CS because there’s no jobs.” Why? Because in the MICRO scale, they think currently, IT is in a big slump, so they think there are no jobs. At all. Which is ridiculous.
On a MACRO scale, this is a very miniscule slump, due to the rise of AI, which has caused a miniscule upset in the entire IT field. It has not eliminated all jobs, but it is reorganizing certain jobs – which makes CEOs nervous which cuts back slightly on a few of the parts of IT which are in that reorganization as AI comes barreling in. In the MACRO scale, overall, within whole multi-millions of IT jobs, this is the equivalent of the industry having lost a small part of their liver.
Livers grow back. IT will recover. AI will cause more new job openings. People will pivot and train for those new job openings. You have to think MACRO scale! Train for those new job openings that may come in whatever CS way you like.
And for the love of God stop listening to those who are not in the CS field or a professional hiring field such as recruiters, hirers, and career services like mine. Don’t listen to the MICRO scale people who have no idea why such things are happening nor the root causes nor can think outside of their little pinhole of a box!
People who give tons of Dont’s are not someone to listen to, unless then have a LOT more Do’s and Good Explanation Why’s. There is a reason why not even one rule in this group has a “Don’t” in it…..because I wrote them all in the “Do/Good Explanation Why” way intentionally, and it allows for not only more freedom, but more access, more clarity, and WAY more positivity in this intentionally-supportive group.
That said, I want you to CONTINUE IN CS NO MATTER THE DONT’S YOU HEAR. If you are enjoying it and finding yourself having decent grades with it….then please take this as a sign that you’ve found a good path for you at this point in your life! I can also direct you to some strong resources for getting a few projects under your belt, one of whom I work with directly.
So yes, you are on the right path, stop listening to people who are thinking Micro and have no experience Macro, and complete your CS degree no matter if it takes longer or not. Colleges have these programs usually for a reason….they plan for Macro need, but General Implementation of that need, so you following up with more nuanced and specific study of concepts useful for the Macro of today and tomorrow, will be amazing for you.
I have ADHD and got really poor results when focusing on too much at once, meaning work full time + school full time.
My ADHD is accompanied by a mood disorder that made me super focused, positive, and capable at times, but unfocused, negative, and incapable at other times. A fully packed schedule was a disaster for me.
When I took 12 hours of classes with no work, and limited my social life, I got straight As, because I had the ability to focus when I could focus without falling behind and becoming emotionally distraught.
You’re just learning to manage your emotions and workflow as an adult. You will get better at it.
I suggest taking fewer classes and lengthening your time horizon, so you can do better on fewer classes, build your body of work outside of school, and finish your CS degree.
Try to absolutely ace your CS classes, and do well enough in general classes by taking it slow. Learning how to effectively “study slow” will change your life for the better.
If you need to pivot in your late 20s, do it, but getting that 4 year degree done now will be a HUGE win, don’t let the doomsayers scare you out of it.
Nursing is an emotional, psychological, and physical meatgrinder of a career. It’s where the squeeze from health insurance companies and wider corporate labor politics converge to create a place I wouldn’t send my worst enemy for vocational training. But, my parents are both RNs who had to retire early after being permanently disabled by their jobs, so maybe I’m bitter. We need nurses, as a society, but **you** don’t need to be cannon fodder in this stupid greed-war. There are people who want to be nurses because caring for people in that context is what matters most to them. They can be nurses and try to fix the system from the inside. If that’s not how you want to spend the better years of your life, probably don’t do it for the stable income.
Nobody who’s pointing kids towards nursing as a ‘good career’ knows what that career looks like in this century. In my opinion, it’s like telling every kid they should be a firefighter, but if a bunch of schools had for-profit firefighting degree mills.
People project their feelings to others. If you dig deep enough, you can probably find the reason why they think it is a bad idea and it likely has nothing to do with you.
If you have a genuine interest in CS, follow that. Try to finish your degree if you can, but start building some personal projects. Try getting internships or something to get a foot in the door.
People are going to trash talk every degree and career. Imagine what I went through while in school studying Philosophy lol
There are two types of people that do this: the first is the person that is ignorant of that field (or most things in general) and just parrots whatever they heard someone else say because they haven’t done their own research. The second is the person that studied the subject/worked in the field and it didn’t work out for them specifically, so they are bitter.
I know plenty of nurses and technology professionals that have been highly successful, and I know others where that path just wasn’t for them – usually, these are the gold-diggers (entered the field for the money) and not the passion-pursuers (people who entered the field because they like it or have a knack for it).
My advice would be to finish what you started – continue in CS. Bring that GPA up! You need at least a 2.0, but try for a 3.0+ if possible. If you haven’t tried tutoring, then you need to change that. If you have tried tutoring, but it didn’t work, then that means you went too late. You don’t seek tutoring when you need help, you seek it when know you will need help on the future (new concepts coming up, things I didn’t understand last time, a section of material that I have not heard of yet, etc).
Finally, I’m not seeing excuses like another person pointed out. I am seeing explanations. But it is a short, slippery, and steep from explaining a problem to using that as justification for an excuse. Be proactive, take the high road, and put your nose to the grindstone. And other cliches lol
You’ll be alright.
CS is a great field if you actually enjoy it and want to continue studying it for the remainder of your life. I have a lot of friends who work in that field and they basically said if you don’t eat think breathe coding you’re wasting your time getting a degree for it especially now adays. AI truly is eliminating all the bad programmers jobs, the good programmers will last for a while.
Btw what I mean by eat think breathe coding is you should be coding in your free time. You should be developing apps honing your skills and have things to show recruiters because good fkn luck getting an entry level programmer position now adays with literally zero anything besides their degree lol.
If you have a genuine interest in CS, you should study it. The market is bad right now, but 4 or 5 years ago people were getting 150k remote jobs like they were candy. The market fluctuates, that’s normal. Study machine learning and go get that bread.
I’m sorry to tell you but our parents don’t know anything about the way the job market works today. Technology has changed things too fast for gen X to keep up. They still think most jobs give pensions and retirements and you stay there for years. That’s just not true anymore. You’re not going to get a job and stay in it till you die like every generation before us. Technology will continue to evolve and jobs will continue to change.
Also 40% of job postings are fake, that means companies in ALL sectors are lying about their openings. So the job market is bad for everyone, not just CS.
have you tried non-stimulant adhd medication? look up atomoxetine. not controlled like adderall. might be helpful for you.
So I will say with nursing is that it’s so important you don’t end up with someone who eats their young so to speak. It’s sad that in nursing there are these kind of people and it’s really messed up when you’re training into the role with those kinds of folks.
Not to mention ratio staffing that ensures there’s enough nurses to patients to avoid unsafe ratios.
There are so many different kinds of roles besides just nursing. There’s people who are trained in RHIT for managing medical records and such. As well as technologist roles.