Can you speak italian, french, and english fluently and if so how common is that around you? If you can speak several languages fluently and its not a common thing then you may want to look at law.

Dont commit to a course of study unless you are following your passion, or have a realistic plan to monetise the skills you get out of it.

Even if university is cheap/free in your region, the opportunity cost is steep. You will spend the next 3-5 years on subsistence wages, and come out the other end with very few practical skills beyond those of your specific area of study.

As cliché as it may sound, take a year off and bum around the world doing casual/seasonal labour while you figure out where you actually want to end up, because no-one else can define your future.

Live it and love it, no matter where you find yourself; now and in the future.

Good luck.

I was kind of lost in my late 20s and went to a career counselor. We did a bunch of exercises and I did a bunch of reading. After a few weeks with her help I narrowed it down to about 4-5 careers I was interested in. We then looked at job markets and education requirements and I picked a direction to go.

It’s been about 10 years and it was a great decision.

Get a degree in accounting. The last person to ever get the axe when jobs start getting cut are the accountants. It will be a boring job but the thing is, boring is good! Boring means your needs are met and you aren’t stressed out. Boredom is a first world problem. An easy, boring job that pays well is what I would tell my 27 y/o self to go for if I could. I’ve given my (now adult) kids this same advice FWIW.

Can confirm. Boring is the way. Accounting, economics, etc.

For me, I worked my ass off to be a person that works on movies and TV etc. Got lucky, held some dream positions, and even got to make my own thing.

However, if I could do it all again, I’d stay in the boring office job I had and share twice as much time with my family and friends.

Instead, I worked 80 hour weeks, made some decent money in respected roles, and then Covid took everyone and everything close to me. Money and respect mean nothing if you can’t share it with those you love.

Boring is the way. Don’t worry about liking your job in 10-20 years, worry about liking your life.

If you wouldn’t really want to do programming, don’t. That only gets worse for a lot of people. It’s something I enjoy and have done well at, and it can be tempting given the number of jobs and growth, and good pay. However the people I know who are most miserable are those who weren’t especially interested in the work but the jobs and the money.

I’m sure you could do programming, and you’d deal with it a few years, but it’s a specialty that not everyone will enjoy, and you may just get more and more miserable.

I Personally believe not enough people start from the other side, the subject matter interest. Pretty much every field needs programming or technical skills, and data science is exploding across many fields. Definitely an option to consider is whatever subject you like, but the technical skills to bring the automation or the data analysis. That going to be huge!

Museum guide?

The first option sounds to be fitting your interest the most, so why not go with that?

As it reads like another study course, the question is if the reasons for giving up your original course still persist. If so, deal with that first, I would suggest.

“Discover What You Are Best At” by Linda Gail.

I was about the same age as you are now when I found this book. It led me to a career I’d never even sonsidered before.

The first thing to consider is: can you afford the luxury of picking something you like?

In an ideal world we get the job we want, we have fun doing it, nice colleagues, etc… This may not be true for you. You can pick a job you don’t particularly like, if the job market seems good, use that to just afford living and go from there. That makes it somewhat easy, because you’re no longer picking something that’s “nice” you’re optimizing working conditions: working times, union coverage, how long the education takes, vs. how much it pays. Maybe you find that working in a sewage plant or being a plumber isn’t nice, but way better than doing a public facing customer service job. Or working your ass off in academia, 60 hours a week, with the reward of a wet handshake, a mention in a paper that’s cited 5 times that your supervisor uses to boost their standing but not yours and a two year timer on job stability.

I can’t picture myself in 5/10 years from now and can’t even imagine what type of job I’d love, bc everything seems out fo reach and impossible, just like it felt when I was 20.

I’m afraid of wasting time bc of my age

Besides the job, what do you even want? And that question is hard and some people don’t find the answer for decades, so don’t stress over it. Sometimes it takes a decade of life experience to come to an “obvious” conclusion. The trick is that the ten years aren’t “wasted”, they are *necessary" to give you the context to understand what you want.

We are generally limited in the time we have, but it’s only really urgent in three aspects: if you are terminally ill, you are becoming old or disabled and physically can’t do certain things and family planning. If you know you want kids, make a plan for 10 years into the future. That’s important because the requirements around kids are completely different than without. I don’t think traveling with toddlers is smart, kids are expensive, they will eat your time and attention. If you want to get something bigger done, consider doing it before having kids, or your kids making you choose them instead of your “dream”. Which can be bad, because you never ever want to think that you could have done X if only you didn’t have kids. That’s a regret that poisons a lot of things.

Anyway, YOU still have plenty of time. At least 10 years, probably 20, until you even have to start worrying about anything.

Do you care for art, people, technology, animals? Sitting on a couch? Sports? Cooking? Baking? Culture? Anything?

If nothing particular jumps at you, it’s totally fine to browse e.g. movies, technology, memes, comics, music, literature, or to travel until you find something that strikes you. Like, do you even know what’s out there? How are you supposed to pick something you like if you haven’t seen anything?

Society throws a lot of things at you that you are supposed to care about and supposed to do, but you have to actually explore and decide if those things are actually for you, or if you just believe or do them because everyone you know does them or talks about them.

I recommend writing a diary or taking notes on this. Revisiting your old thoughts can be difficult and it’s easier to organize your thoughts on paper.

Personally, I finished a technical education, worked in a few projects and even finished a few things I didn’t like to test out what I didn’t like and want to avoid. E.g. I worked in a city I didn’t live in, commuted 3 hours one way every other weekend, lived in conditions I didn’t like… It wasn’t nice in the moment, but now I know what to avoid.

Final note: statistics say you are not alone. The opposite in fact, lots of young people go through the same issues. So maybe that’s comforting, idk.

So far, I found that many people underestimate the soft skills they bring. For many (not all) jobs the actual knowledge of the field you need to fulfill the job can be learned quite fast. But they need people that are good organizers or good communicators or good critics, or people that dive in and check every detail or people good in seeing the bigger picture. I sometimes think its more important to find a job fitting to your softskills than to your degree. In an ideal Job it would be both of course.

For example. My father switched fields from social worker to systems administrator. Most would say what a big shift, but he just loves to help people - no matter if its their daily life or their computers he can help with. But IT had better job opportunities. He is very happy.

Tell us more about your skills and maybe we have more specific ideas for you.

What was that study course and what made it hell? Might want to a avoid a similar situation in the future.

What exactly seems out of reach and impossible? If you had something specific in mind but gave it up, it might be a good way forward to consider something similar with less (or more manageable) obstacles.

Have you considered job perspectives abroad? It might be even harder to get a good picture of the situation abroad, but there could be chances there.

What are your passions or things you like? Languages, obviously, and that is great because that gives you a much greater area to look for jobs (if you want to maybe go abroad).

I’m 48. You have ages. Do it now or you’ll be me remembering when I was you.

Jobs are just a means to live life. If you can make money doing something you love, great. But if you can’t, use the money from work to pursue your hobbies and interests.

I can’t picture myself in 5/10 years from now and can’t even imagine what type of job I’d love, bc everything seems out fo reach and impossible

You’re approaching this with 100% the wrong view and attitude. You sound like you’re trying to define your life by what job you have. Your job should just be the way you fund your life.

Find out what you want out of life. Do you want a family? Do you want to travel? Make art? Build community? Learn what hobbies you enjoy, how you want to spend your days, who you like to surround yourself with. Then figure out what you need financially to make that happen to the best of your ability. (Nothing will ever be perfect, and you shouldn’t expect that.) Then find a job that can fund the lifestyle you want.

Who cares what the job is? That’s not what life is about. That’s just how you pay for your life. Most people don’t love their job. Hell, most people don’t even like their job. It’s just how we get food and shelter.