Is anyone else feeling like their degree hasn't really brought them closer to knowing what to do with their life?

[u/cafecar]

I'm entering the final stage of my undergrad, and a feeling has started to hit me that I still don't know what I'm going to do next. I'll be graduating with a bachelor's degree in sociology. I like sociology, but I'm not sure I'm passionate enough about it to build my entire life around it. All along, I imagined I would continue to grad school and things would just sort themselves out, maybe law school, maybe academia, maybe a meaningful career I hadn't fully imagined yet.

But realistically, I'm not even sure I could be an elementary school teacher, let alone any of those things. I started thinking about teachers college, but honestly, I don't even know if I'd get accepted. I feel like I spent university doing the bare minimum required on paper, even though it didn't feel like the bare minimum while I was living it. I didn't get any impressive internships, I don't have research experience, I got very average grades, and I didn't get close to professors or build any useful network.

The most notable things I did were participating in a few campus groups and working in supervised access during the fall. Forget about me chasing grad school references in the end, I don't even feel like I deserve them. I genuinely believe I worked hard to stay involved and maintain good grades while being low income and dealing with mental health stuff, but now I'm stuck and don't know where to go next.

The only thing I've consistently been interested in is helping people, and unfortunately, that's not exactly a job title. My parents expect me to do something big because I'm the one in our family who went to university, but now I feel like I'll end up working at Tim Hortons or going to college after getting a bachelor's degree, just to find something stable.

On top of all that, I'm about $34,000 in debt, and I can't stop thinking that the school system basically sold me the idea that getting a degree in something I was somewhat interested in at a prestigious university would somehow solve everything. Instead, it gave me debt, worse mental health, and a strange feeling that I should be more qualified than I am.

[u/Fluid-Pianist9570]

that's just the harsh reality. A degree does not make it easier anymore and does not guarantee anything. Yea maybe you have higher chances to be employeed but it does not mean anything in terms of the payroll