Thread: How do you change your career path?

This is a problem I've had trouble talking about and don't know where to do so! I'm sure we've all been disatisfied with our jobs or future careers... but has anyone here ever desperately wanted to do something else for a living, and made the drastic change to do it?

This might be long!

I've been feeling very stressed out lately because I'm well into my second year at an art school, majoring in graphic design. I was never, at any point, happy or excited about it at all... and I'm not getting any "college thrill", nor do I feel like I'm soaking up information and wholesom education. I feel like I'm throwing HUGE, HUGE amounts of valuable money at some joke of a school. I'm serious... I really feel like my education here is a worthless joke.

I'm very scared right now because many members of my family who were in graphic design/printing/advertising fields were laid off since the conomic crash. I'm worried about how well I will do when I get out there with a degree in an art field. Regardless of whether or not the economy gets better, design is still more of a luxury than a necessity, and we will always be the first people to get laid off.


Here's a whole other part to the problem:

Since I've been going to school in Baltimore city, I often frequent the aquarium. And I must confess, ever since the first time I saw dolphins up close several years ago, I fell SO in love with them instantly and was so enchanted that I cried, and I immediately realized what my dream is. I continue to tear up everytime I see them. I've spent hunreds of dollars to get up close with them, and I've bought books and documentaries on dolphins, whales, and biology in general. I adore animals, I donate to Defenders of Wildlife, I don't eat meat, and I work with dogs daily. I am completely in love with the idea of dolphin training, and even more in love with my dolphin friends at the Baltimore Aquarium.

But I'm in art. That's a VARY far cry from marine biology, zoology, animal behavioral studies, or even psychology. I'm very far away from that dream, and I'm only half way through college.

I'm so stressed out! I should have never gone ino art. What should I do? Stay and hate it, or leave and waste the tens of thousands of dollars I've already poured into being here? Have you ever made a huge change in your life like that?