Will I be able to truly study what I really want in life or will I have to choose the source in which will provide me more money ?
#Doubts # Reality
2 answers
G. Mark’s Answer
This is one of those "open-ended" questions where the possible answers vary quite a bit. But with that disclaimer -- YMMV, as they say -- I'll give the answer I give my students. The good news is that yes, you will likely be able to study what you really want in life. In general, unless you find yourself being interested in something generally considered useless, people simply tend to be really good at things they really like. There are very, very few human activities that involve nothing of value to anyone. I tell my students that if they are interested in something, they'll likely want to spend time doing it, will get better at it than average, and be able to convince other people to support that activity. Like giving them a job or money. And if you're good at something, you'll likely make more money at it. Also, note "Parkinson's Law" wherein the needs increase to fill the available resources. In this case, you'll spend what you earn and you'll tailor your lifestyle -- usually, ideally -- to meet your income. The upside to this is that whatever your lifestyle is like, you'll be doing something you love. And that, in my opinion, is the most important thing in life.
Paul’s Answer
I agree with Mark's answer. Study what you love and the work will follow.
I studied economics and ended up working in technology consulting. I will never use the specific technical skills that I learned in college but I loved learning about economics and that was reward enough. And from a career perspective, I'm very happy with how much money I'm earning and I wouldn't be earning anymore if I'd done something more relevant like computer science.
Unless you have a very specific career interest, often your field of study won't have that much impact on how much you end up earning. Studying almost anything provides you with a set of core skills such as critical thinking, analysis, communication etc. that you can apply to almost any job.
Having said all that, when you're deciding on college courses don't just think about what you love to study. Think about what kind of work you'd love to do as well. Because while you can make lots of money with basically any degree, you can't do any kind of job with any degree. So if you want to work in healthcare, do a health degree. If you want to be a programmer, do a computer science degree. If you want to build things, do an engineering degree and so on. This is something I wish someone had told me when I was picking out my college courses. I ended up really enjoying my time in college and getting a great job at the end of it. But I love programming and I struggle to find work as a programmer because I never studied computer science (despite the fact that I've since taught myself how to do it).
So in summary: don't worry about the money. Study what you love and the money will follow. But do think about what you actually want to work on in life and try to tailor your college course towards that.
Best regards,
Paul