I keep seeing this subreddit popping up in my feed. I was working on my MSEE in 2023 when a bunch of life drama happened and I was derailed. I won’t go into the sob story.

The point is that I have experience with most high level programming languages, am good at studying ⁽when ^motivated) and learn new skills quickly.

I also have experience in manufacturing and construction from before I returned to college. I received AWS certifications in various welding techniques.

I’ve been applying to jobs since I was in college, but keep getting no real interest because I don’t have any real industry specialization, and I didn’t complete a degree in engineering. I never really had an interest in becoming a PHD in physics, so I didn’t really pursue that. I did want to study high temperature plasmas and work with plasma field theory, but my university wasn’t suited for that, and I never got any contact back from the other universities I applied to. I understand that I wasn’t an early 20s something that was fresh and ready to learn, and was a bit more jaded than my younger peers.

I held a high school teaching position for physics for a year, but quickly realized that teaching wasn’t for me. I understand that my students were not exactly suited to learn physics and were forced into it (private schools…) but the experience left a very bad taste in my mouth and I have avoided applying to schools as a result.

Aside from taking a long walk on a short pier, what should I do? I don’t have any real interest in IT or software engineering (I can do IT, but SWE is intensely boring). Plus SWE is being heavily automated at the moment anyway and the positions are not favorable for entry level employees.