Ask Lemmy

I like my job but I don't really think its the norm. I loved physiology and anatomy, bio based sciences and was watching a lot of House MD during my senior year of high school (interestingly enough, since then I never had interest in any medical shows ever anymore. Also house wasn't that great but HS me liked it).

Chose nursing and was blessed to have always worked around others that actually fucking cared about patients. If working in other hospitals with more jaded or burnt out nurses im sure my experience would be different. Make money too while helping them navigate the current healthcare system. So good pay, nice coworkers, and interest in what I do. Likely never going to be laid off. Most people are not as fortunate.

Tried to become a philosophy professor but couldn't get funding for my PhD - needed another 5% on my grades to get a distinction at MSc level to achieve that.

While studying philosophy I'd got interested in FOSS and Linux so I was vaguely aware that I found computers interesting. It turned out there was Scottish government funding for doing a MSc in Computing without needing to have done a relevant undergrad (Computer Science would have required a related UG degree).

Became a dev after doing the MSc Computing. Was a junior for 1 year then left that company and moved to another one at mid-level, where I realised I enjoyed the data related tasks. Promoted to senior after 3 years there. Also became aware Data Engineers got paid more than regular engineers.

Moved to my current company as a mid-level Data Engineer and recently became a Senior Data Engineer. Not 100% sure how it all happened given I've never been particularly good at maths however philosophy has a lot of problem solving/discrete mathematics type puzzles involved so that probably helped.

Lucked into it, kinda.

I wanted to be an industrial designer, but there are only a few schools that offer that degree in my country and I didn't get in, because I didn't have the illustration skills.

My fallback (a close 2nd) was to go into engineering, so that's what I initially went to university for. But I struggled with the calculus.
During my time in engineering, we had to take a programming class, and I was really good at it (compared to my engineering classmates). So I switched my major from engineering to computer science.

I graduated with my degree in computer science and I've been a coder ever since (last 15 years or so)