When I graduated high school, I went to school for theatrical set design. About a year in depression and the realization that I hated the politics in professional theatre caused me to drop out. I took some time off for a couple of years and went to the local community college with intentions of getting core classes out of the way but the first semester was booked for everything except...theatre classes. I got roped into at least taking some of those so I didn't have to delay my education another semester and I fell back in love. I figured maybe I had just been at a shitty school before (well known for theatre, but still an awful experience.)
Nope. After I left the community college, back to a university theatre program, same thing. I just hated the clique-y, holier than thou mentality. Everybody was best friends to your face but quick to throw you under the bus if they thought it would get them involved on the next production.
On top of that, around the same time my boyfriend of 4 years cheated on me with my best friend, so again, depression got the better of me and I dropped out one more time. I felt like a failure, watching all the people I had started college life with graduate, and get good jobs, being successful artists, starting to get married, etc. and here I was alone, depressed, and making sandwiches for a living.
That sandwich shop introduced me to my husband, even though we didn't date for a long time, we became really close. He helped me see my potential when everybody else had abandoned me. I left the sandwich place to work in coffee as a manager and did that for the next 5 years. Eventually we got married, had a kid, and that inspired me to go back to school for a third time.
I pursued a degree in Technology and Information Systems. Seven years after the lowest point in my life (a decade after I started college in the first place), I finally graduated with my bachelor's. I was hired in a data management position (which still isn't even really what my degree was in) at a huge aerospace company 2 weeks after I walked the stage and have never felt more fulfilled in my life. The change has been kind of shocking, a totally different crowd than anybody I've ever worked or played with, so I think that's been the biggest adjustment. There are hundreds of hours of training videos available for anything I could wish to get knowledgeable in, because they would much rather hire internally for the highly specialized positions than externally.
I don't know if that was exactly what you were looking for, but I wanted to answer because a lot of places I interviewed questioned: 1) why was I graduating with my BS at 29 years old and 2) why did I work in the service industry for SO long instead of jumping to a more "professional" field