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... then you grow up and realize you are either not satisfied with your job or simply haven't decided yet what you want to be (yup, this happens).
emotion_facepalm

Even though I always dreamed I would be working in arts, I never gave myself the opportunity nor did I take art seriously.
Now that I'm 34 years old, haven't majored in anything, and work part-time in a shop at a mall I realize that this is not what I want and that I should have followed my heart when I was younger.
Yes, it is never too late to go back and study what you feel passionate about which is what I'm in the process of and hopefully will become a professional illustrator and writer.
I just don't know if I'll be able to succeed and continue to help my partner with our financial duties as adults.

Many of you are still young but I'd like to ask if what you are studying now (in college) is what you dreamed of when you were wee ones.

I know, I know, but seriously, it really is never too late to follow your dreams. One artist I can think of at the moment, Wassily Kandinsky, was a lawyer and decided that he wanted to become an artist at 30, so he went off and became a very successful painter. That's the great thing about art- you don't necessarily need training, or need to be young and physically fit, or be a super genius or anything. You just need to be able to portray emotion.

I think you should follow your dreams up to a point. Some dreams like artist/writer/musician are not going to lead to success for everyone. In reality one has to balance what one wants to do, and what needs to do in order to survive. For example, I love to draw, but I doubt a career in this field will be financially secure. Ideally, I think the goal should be to find what you like to do as a hobby and try to look for ways a job incorporates that aspect.

I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be. I'm one of those girls who just wants to be a wife and mother, honestly. At 23, I'm just crying over my bachelor degree and barely employed at this point. The problem is that so many things require additional schooling and/or certification, which require time and money. Then, there's the fear of say, going for my masters and finding that either I can't use it or don't want to use it down the road. I also want to do something I'll be good at, but I can't really identify what all of my strengths are or find things that would translate to a well-paying career. At jobs I've had in the past, I've never felt adequate. It's frustrating. stressed

To address the first post, my degree isn't one I was even aware of until I made it to college, actually. I wanted to be all sorts of different things when I was young. Actress, writer, nurse, race car driver, just to name a few.

As a kid, I wanted to be one thing...then that led to another and then to another. I had a reason to give up every one of those dreams. I still struggle with what I truly want to do and am slowly trying to discover that. I haven't had any work experience so that doesn't help me in figuring out what I actually enjoy.

The careers I've wanted to do, and why I gave it up:

-I wanted to be a zoologist as a child. I thought it'd be awesome to work with animals all day. However, it's a lot of schooling and you probably won't get paid what all you put into that degree. Also, it's saddening to see animals in exhibits - not able to run free in the wild. Some zoologists have veterinary medicine and I can't stand putting an animal down.

-I wanted to be a vet at one time, but I can't stand seeing animals in pain - even if you are helping them. I couldn't put an animal down. I remember my best friend telling me they had a dog and their best friend was the vet that had to put it down because my friends dad took the dog in to have it euthanized. My friend didn't forgive his dad, but never blamed his friend because it's part of his job. I could never be stuck in a situation like that.

-At one point in time, I thought I could be a great nurse or doctor. As I grew older, I discovered I wouldn't want to deal with what medical professionals do. It would be hard for me to treat patients without growing an attachment to them in a sense that I truly care about their well-being and if they died, my heart would probably break.

-I thought I could be a good EMT/paramedic because you treat a patient on scene and in the ambulance until you get to the hospital - then you drop them off and don't know what happened to them unless you go poking around to find out. Although, some scenes that EMT's and paramedics are exposed to are extremely traumatic and I'm not sure how I would handle it in the long run.

-I thought it would be great to be law enforcement or FBI, but it's hard to have a relationship with somebody else or get married because there are always people after you. I am paranoid as it is, I don't think I could live my life knowing people are always after me. As for law enforcement, it's a dangerous job - some officers get killed in something that was supposed to be as simple as a traffic stop. If I had a husband and kids, I wouldn't want to continue that job.

-I've thought about making sound effects for movies, but I am not a patient person. I'm not sure what education it takes and people treated me like it was a joke. I am a creative individual, but you have to be creative on a whim in that career. Plus, it may involve moving to movie making cities, which I wouldn't care much for.

There are many more, but those are the basic ones. I still am trying to find something that I want to do. In college, I have been doing a basic degree...just the general stuff. It was English at first, but then I realized that I don't want any jobs one can get with an English major as their main degree. So I switched out of that.