Help-Last year of college, hate my major and im scared about the future

[lonely.boy1]

Hello.
Just recently i started my last year of college. When i started it i wasn't sure that what i wanted to do and major on but i kept up with it and pass all the years and all my classes, i ended up getting the motivation to study for it but is not something i was sure that i wanted to do.
Im on law school and now that my last year is starting im facing what life after college will be - interships and exam to the bar association - and to be honest im not sure i even want to make the bar exam but without it my college degree doesn't have much value. I have been to classes and every class when we are studying laws and cases i have been sick to my stomach.
The end of college is near and im scared. I could always get a job at something in retail or something for a while since they are always looking for people but even though there is nothing wrong with those jobs, i did study for years more and i would end up working in a job that doesn't require those qualifications.

I think im just scared that i lost 3 years of my life,money and i won't be doing anything with it. Also the life after college is scaring me because i all i did all my life basicly was study and even though i would like a job and earn my own money, im scared of what that would be like since i only had 1 job before. Everyday im dreading my trip to college and classes and i just feel like skipping classes and stay at home

Have any of you experience this? What did you did after college/school?
Sorry about the big thread but i just wanted some place to vent a little and not everybody around me would understand this.

[Dr.Bobby]

Whoever said that college imitates life? It doesn't. The classes you take give you the proper background to actually apply the abilities and skills you (supposedly) mastered in college, but I don't think you can project what it must be like to actually have a career in the law based on your experiences in classrooms! Even 'internships' and the like aren't correlated, b/c you're still in a student role. It's a lot different, 'Learning' and 'doing', regardless of your major.

Your anxiety is understandable, people change a lot during college, and with it interests and desires. The expectation that people are supposed to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives and declare that and work towards it when they lack the experience to make that informed choice is a regrettable part of the process. It would be better to be born old, to have the benefit of maturity and experience to guide us, but we don't.

What we get instead is developing awareness of our emerging abilities and interests, which guide us (along with some adult supervision) as we start the process of declaring a major, an interest, and pursuing a degree in it. Let's assume that your choice way back to pursue a career in law was sound, that it was based on some awareness of yourself and your abilities, and that maybe what you're experiencing now is an unfortunate (and common!) combination of transitional jitters to the adult world coupled with a lack of actual hands on experience with your chosen major. Give it some time, you can always make life changes, but after you have some real world experience with it.

[Dream]

Law school is tough. The job market for lawyers is tough. I wish you the best.

[lonely.boy1]

Dream, thank for the reply and the support. It is in fact tough for lawyers and not only. It is even tougher to have the dedication to fight for a job in something that is not really your passion like in my case.

____

Dr.Bobby,
Thank you so much for the reply, i really like reading your response. You are right in so many aspects and this(life, this fears and decisions) is in fact part of life and something that we need to face in order to grow. I guess i shouldn't let my major define me but at the same time it was a couple of years and money spent and i didn't want that to be for nothing and its tough to find a job even with a college degree and being something that im not passionate about is even harder.
That is why i don't know if i should even take the bar exam or not, because i don't know if i want to keep working in legal departments because right now i cringe just being in class and listen to the teacher.
At the same time there is not any other major/area that im passionate about or see myself doing =/ it makes me feel like a loser when almost everybody else knows what they want to do.

I should probably just let this year run and finish it and see how it goes but im the type of person that likes to have a plan and everything planed out so that is hard and is making me even more depressed.

[Dr.Bobby]

I'm glad you found my response helpful!

Listen, I think you have to trust your judgment, think back to what inspired you to study law in the first place, what the inspiration or spark was. Then ask yourself if you're usually right about those kinds of things, do you believe your judgments (esp. about yourself) are usually correct? People who go into a profession and go thru college to accomplish that goal are typically pretty smart, those decisions are usually not made impulsively. What I'm suggesting in your case is to focus not so much on the classroom/college experience of law (which really isn't reflective of the practice of law) but rather your own understanding of yourself.

Real life really is different than college, preparation (College) for any profession isn't like the actual practice (or employment) of it, your doubt isn't necessarily founded in accuracy. Really give consideration of taking just one more test (the Bar) and see how it all feels after you've made that transition and are actually using all that you've learned IRL.