Lemmy, I have completed tens of modules across several different universities. I have been course-hopping for long enough that I’d have a bachelors degree by now had I found and stayed on a course that suited me. I can’t be asked to commit to one and study it for yet another 3 years before I get a degree*. Yet I feel like all of the effort that I have expended up to this point will go unacknowledged, just because it was spread across several unis and doesn’t fall into any of their pre-defined study plans. I am a person driven by short bouts of intense curiosity of the type that dives down Wikipedia rabbitholes**. I want to do a highly qualified job but am failing to fit in to the rigid framework that academia sets you. I have several Master’s theses that I’d start researching tomorrow if the system let me. Yet without so much as a bachelor’s I might as well go work in a supermarket. How do I move on from here?
*Perhaps it’s also because I’m now in my early 20s and finally want to have some time to explore.
**I am a logical thinker and predominantly interested in STEM topics.
I’ll second what another commenter said about talking to a doctor, because it does sound like this might be more than just disinterest. That said, drop out. Get a job and work for a while. Try different things. The path we think we want in our late teens and early 20s is often very different from where we end up, and that can be a good thing. I finally quit trying to force myself to finish my degree when I was 22 and I wish I’d done it much sooner. I did eventually go back and get a different degree in my 30s, but in the meantime, I worked at jobs I never expected to find interesting and learned a ton while building a solid resume. College is great, but it’s not for everyone, and it’s definitely not for everyone at “college age.”
How hard would you say it is to get into a field without the required degree? Because I feel like what’s weighing me down is not that I’m unwilling to learn, but that I struggle to prosper under the monotonous lecture->exam system that is a requirement for most degrees.
It’s really dependent on the field. I started a job as a temp and then proved that I was smart enough to do other things, so I got hired permanently, but it wasn’t in the field I was studying, just something I ended up enjoying. There are some jobs where that won’t cut it. Whatever your dream job is might be one of those, but I don’t really believe in dream jobs, so I was open to stuff that seemed kind of weird on the surface. I learned a lot about what mattered to me in a job doing that.