People who had no idea what they wanted to do with their life after school, how did it work out?

I'm so late, but whatever.

I was the top ranked student in school every year, graduated valedictorian. I had a partial scholarship for college, but the terms were insanely strict (15 credit hours minimum per semester, 3.5GPA per semester). I had grown up in extreme poverty, so I had to take out loans and work more than full time during college. I'd had retail jobs since I was 15.

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. I'd always loved science, so I started out with a biology major and computer sciences minor. However, with my job and school I was barely eating or sleeping and ended up in the hospital. I just couldn't handle all of that at once and dropped out at the end of my first year.

My mom had taken out a loan to buy me a computer for college in 1997. I knew I didn't want to work in retail my whole life, so I began teaching myself software. I got a job at AOL, spent a year and a half on the phones in tech support, taught my mom what I knew, got her to get a job at AOL (she cleaned houses before that), and I got off the phones into Quality Assurance.

The job there lead to me working at Honeywell and 3M, then into casino software. My mom got into casino software QA and now works in the legal department. I met a genius developer ten years my junior and now I'm a housewife. Mom and I are both solidly middle class now.

It all worked out, by chance, luck, and by effort.

/r/AskReddit Thread