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Has anyone of you realized later that you chose the wrong university education/degree?

Tammuz said:
If so, what did you do then?
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Yes. And it ruined my life. Well, sort of. After highschool I went into Electrical Engineering, mostly because my dad was an engineer and I didn't have any better ideas. I attended one year and decided I didn't much like math. So I switched to an undergraduate degree in biopsych science. I enjoyed it and I would have gone on to my masters and Ph.D. and had a research career in it, but there was this girl I had a crush on. She wanted to go to law school and wanted somebody to practice the LSAT with, so I eagerly volunteered.

I wrote the LSAT with her, did very well, and got a scholarship to a law school. This was back when tuition was low enough that a scholarship paid for first year plus books. I decided it would be foolish to pass that up, so I went. No I didn't get the girl. She almost got into law school and was pissed at me for "taking her spot". Never saw or heard from her again since.

After first year law I won a prize that paid for half my second year. Decided I may as well do it, and the next thing I know, I am one year from having a law degree. Articling was a guaranteed job for a year, and I figured I could go back to my research career once I had done it and was a lawyer on top of whatever else I would go on to do.

I never went back to Science, and I have been practicing law, dabbling in various areas of it for the past 10 years. I started in personal injury law because that was who was hiring where I wanted to live (close to my family). I tried estates law for a while, and I am now in house counsel for a small company where I do as much business work as I do law.

I follow science journals and listen to a lot of science podcasts, and sometimes regret not making that my career. I just sort of went where the winds of fate send me, and I wound up ok, but I do regret not planning my path out more actively. I do think I would prefer to be a research scientist today.
 
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