There is nothing I am interested in

[eltodesukane]

"..and once you do you never make very much."
Making very much is really not important at all.
Doing something you enjoy is.
Even a simple basic job can be pleasant in a good social environment.
Doing a janitorial job with friendly coworkers may well be more rewarding than stressing alone all day long while programming a supercomputer or fixing the space shuttle.

About language, going to Japan to teach beginner's English as a second language is something my neighbor has done happily for many years.
http://www.all-about-teaching-english-in-japan.com/
http://www.aeonet.com/

 

[Allin]

You're only following Dewgale's advice for three words at a time. Seriously: you need to stop looking at this problem from the wrong direction. You will never find something you will like to do if you are only/primarily looking for things you don't like to do/don't think you can do.

Engineering is broad, but the not-so-dirty secret is that a great many engineering jobs don't require math beyond algebra. So as long as you can struggle through the math successfully it in college, not liking/being "bad" at math doesn't need to prevent you from being an engineer. So stop using that as an excuse/roadblock and answer the question: what do you want in a job?

Some jobs have changed e.

I picked engineering because it seemed to combine a lot of my likes, but I discovered I hate math with a passion. I took a test offered by my school but it came back "engineering fits you" which it doesn't. The other things on the lists basically sounded like glorified repairman. I don't want to spend my life telling people to try turning it on, or try resetting it. I also don't want to work my current job, or anything like it again. I feel stuck and hopeless, can anyone help me out here? I also don't want to work outside, at all if it can be helped.

You can do a 2-year college degree in technology. (But do it in 3 years or more.) I repeat russ_watters' conclusion: ''What do you want in a job?'' It suggests to think of the kind of people you desire to work with; and how friendly & respectly you want to be talked/traited. The idea is to combine applied maths, basic applied physics, sounds for music/movie/computer-game industry, one foreign language, intro to computers, accoustics, basic car repairing. The softwares for high-technologists and for concretly practicing engineers take the bigger part of "doing maths"; they are robots and as such memorize all the formulas. The costs of academics studies as extremely high. So a 2 year college degree is a wise strat. Then in the future, you could do a 4-year B.Technology (post degree) which is 60 credits, thus can be done in two years full time on campus. Some universities or institutes of technology, offer on line courses and at partial time, like SAIT in Alberta. Ask your future professional corporation if they accept the diploma and the college/institute/university you are planning to study at. For any math course, buy the textbook & student workbook/solutionary, and read them thoroughly before registering in the course.

 

[votingmachine]

I've not had a career. I've had a lot of jobs. Some I hated, some I loved. I don't particularly expect that anyone will have an exact career, where they work exactly on the things that are most interesting to them, and get rewarded well for that. I have found that when assigned some random difficult thing, I get more interested in it as I work harder on it. I have worked years on something that I am sure i would have found an incredibly boring bit of science, if asked in advance. At one time I was quite likely among the world's leading experts on one particular protein, but one of no interest to most people. I still found it intellectually rewarding.

You don't like your current job. You have my sympathy. I've had a few jobs I hated. It drains you. Make a plan to move on from that. Even to a similar job with different people ... who knows, a slight shift can matter sometimes. Or an extreme change might be warranted ... I don't know.

From Tom Sawyer;
"Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

I'm not a career expert ... as I said, I don't know that I've had a career, just a series of jobs. I think you might be rejecting jobs you would like, by denigrating them as glorified repairman. I enjoy repairing things, and I enjoy hard work. I might have found being a plumber very satisfying. Don't rule it our just because the job title is not overly ego-satisfying.

 

[Russell Ensslin]

Just remember, they call it work. They don't call it play because it's not always fun.

 

[symbolipoint]

Now we are making some progress from the Tom Sawyer quote which votingmachine gave.
Tyrion101 and other people who do not know what direction to take for which career can try asking themselves some questions:

• Do you think of yourself as more of a scientist, or as more of a developer?
• Do you want to think and plan and try to understand the physical or natural world, or do you want to be able to do urgent tasks?
• Are you more interested in scientific understanding, or are you more interested in using technology?
• Are you more interested in the natural physical world or more interested in the biological world?
• What specific job would you want if payment level was unimportant?
• How is your computer programming design skills? What programming languages are you an expert? OR which have you used for any long, or big projects?

 

[Mark Harder]

Tyrion,
Have other people in your life told you that you're no good at math? Or is that your own evaluation? I know that many teachers will go out of their way to convince women that they can't do math, simply because they're women. Which is totally false and unjust. You need encouragement and assistance. Have you tried hiring a tutor? Perhaps some individual attention will help you remove the mental barriers between you and the study of mathematics.

Another point. You don't say how well you perform in other subjects. Logical and critical thinking abilities are extremely important in all field of intellectual work. Even computer programming is more about logic than the usual mathematical skills like calculus and differential equations. All sorts of upper-level high school work and college courses, including those that teach languages and cultures, including literature in other languages are open to you. Take one example I have 3 old college friends who majored in "International Relations", and not one of them directly works in international relations. One is a managing editor of a major US newspaper, the other 2 are corporate lawyers. How does that work? The international relations degree can be obtained by studying a wide array of course choices, literature, economics, geography, politics of course, history, foreign languages and literature, sociology and on and on. You can choose courses in the things you love, for one thing. What they learned in all these courses is a.) how to recognize patterns in data and thoughts and b.) how to think logically and critically. I have to confess that these 3 have been far more successful (in terms of income and position in their fields) than I have been in my scientific career. Unlike scientists, who must compete with the whole world for jobs and resources, lawyers have sort of job security that comes from doing work that can only be done in a specific society. I wouldn't trade places, mind you. I went into the sciences out of passion, not a desire for a 6-figure income. Law is but one example of a career where bright people can excel. There are many others. Keep an open mind. You don't need to have a career path in mind when you enter college. Let your curiosity guide you. But first, you have to get out of the slough of despond and think creatively and relax a bit.