I am in my early 20's. I was working right out of Highschool and have limited higher education, really just an accredited certificate in IT that took one year. Recently I was able to land a job in IT support that would offer the highest salary I've gotten so far in my career; nothing insane but still the highest I've personally gotten, around $45k which is good for my location. I start in about two weeks. However over the last few years I've been having a consistent thought in my head that I really want to go to school to major in Computer Engineering like I've always wanted to. I'm getting to that age where I am afraid to wait much longer to do so. IT is okay, but my passion is in the sciences, and IT jobs are really not going to offer me the experience or knowledge necessary to do what I really want to be doing as a long term career.
My desires have put me in a predicament. With this new job, I will have no time to take classes due to the work hours taking up the entire day and many weekends and my school does not offer classes early enough or late enough (not even online) for me to even take a single class, let alone full time. Full time work and school while extremely taxing is not something I am opposed to doing, but with this essentially non-negotiable schedule it won't even be possible. So the options are find a different part time job or full time job with more flexible hours, but certainly less pay.
I would certainly need to take out students loans and be in debt for the next 4 years if this is a choice I made and I would be required to consistently budget hard and be low on cash since I live on my own and have many bills to pay; all this to be able to eventually be on my path to my desired career that I feel more passionate about. On the other hand, I could keep this job and not go to school and live comfortably as a single person for the foreseeable future but not get my desired education anytime soon. What decision would you make here?
Submitted February 25, 2022 at 10:31PM by Good_mineral https://ift.tt/ZgTX6cv
