I’m in my mid-30s now, spending my time basically being a nervous wreck for not having a career yet.
I have a degree in a humanities field, which doesn’t seem to be worth very much in terms of the job market. I spent several years teaching overseas in China and South Korea, though. It was great experience and I often miss it, but ultimately there was no career progression. A dead end job, albeit one that allows you to see the world. After so many years of that, I started to feel stress about not having a real career and moved back to America.
I’ve completed the first three certs on FreeCodeCamp, done the Colt Steele Bootcamp course, dabbled with the Odin Project, AppAcademy’s free curriculum and a few odd web dev books here and there, as well as CodeAcademy. But I often feel depressed and stressed out. I feel like the only way to actually break into the industry is to have a connection, to know someone.
Sometimes I feel like I should go back to school just to try networking, meet people. I see stories of people talking about their success stories on here, and that does give me some hope. But most of the time I feel extremely stressed out. Essentially 99.9% of the job apps I send out get met with either no response or a form rejection letter. So I wonder if it’s worth it to enroll in a community college program just to network in the hopes of finding a job?
Right now I’m working at a grocery store just to have some sort of income. Sometimes I think about going back overseas to teach, because working at a grocery store with people who are ten years younger than me and don’t have a degree is just giving me more stress, but ultimately I feel that’s not going to be a long term solution.