I majored in Early Childhood Education because I wanted to own a daycare. I'm currently using my degree to teach ESL online so I don't think it was a waste. A part of me wants to go back to school for Art and Developmental psychology but I don't know if those are worth it.
I think what you plan on doing after you get your degree and if you love what you're doing greatly depends on whether it's worth it.

I love Thailand. Whenever I have an opportunity I go there. But is your ex the father of your child/children?

M.A. in theology. And I don't regret it.
But then I went to Law School, and I erased the bad karma.

I wanted to go into Archaeology because I wanted to be like Indiana Jones. LOL. Well, that was in my early teens and then when I graduated high school i did seriously consider a career in Archaeology. I applied at 2 local universities and got accepted into both. If I chose one I would go into Archaeology. If I chose the other it would be Science then Veterinary Medicine. I ended up getting a scholarship to the first so I started my path in Archaeology. Loved the program because it was multidisciplinary. In addition to the department’s required courses I had to take biology, history, physics, statistics, languages, etc. I loved learning everything. I loved my classes, my labs, field school.

Graduated top of my department and decided to do an extra year to get an Honours degree but the department advisor said I should apply for the Masters program instead. I had 4 days before application deadline and thought no way I would get in but wouldn’t hurt to apply. Well, I got accepted. But at this point I was a little burnt out. Courses were fine but my supervisors hated each other and I was caught in the middle. I was just too burnt out to deal with all that and I left.

I tried other things for awhile then decided to reapply for grad school. Back to Archaeology. I thought not a chance anyone would accept someone who left the program. But nope, I got accepted back AND I also got accepted at another university out of province. Decided to leave my previous life behind and move to the next province. I gave the grad program a try. I really did but I had a family then and a household of responsibilities and it was getting harder and harder to juggle everything. I quit and hadn’t looked back.

I did love it. The research, the field work. I got to travel to remote places, camp out for months. I loved the lab work and working with my trainees. Loved the teaching part. But with family it was just not feasible for me to spend a lot of time away and concentrating on research. One day may be when I’m old and feeble I might finish my Masters degree. Right now I’m starting my own business.

The “link” between education and career is a recent thing. Originally higher education was the Provence of the wealthy, and the home for “great thinkers”- with patrons or a marketable skill. Somewhere in the 20th century, notably thanks to the GI bill post WWII, there was a seeming correlation between higher education and lifetime earnings potential. There are some degrees that have some marketabliy- engineering for example. There are huge numbers of degrees where graduate or PhD are the only paths to any hope or expectation of higher earning in that field- that’s true for liberal arts and applied liberal arts. The job gaps in America at least are where there are vocational fields no one is going out and getting the correct training in- where I live at this time of the year HVAC skills are in high demand and there aren’t enough warm bodies with the appropriate skills. The vexing part is in “past” think, we all understood there are “physical” focused jobs and “mental” focused jobs. Conventional thinking was get into a mental job as fast as you can, but much of the “demand gap” is a bit of both. My degrees got me entry into a field, now it is what I accumulate as knowledge and the ability to adapt to change that keeps me employed. If I were to ever get another graduate degree, it would be purely for something of interest- like “letters” for example. I babble on lol I guess I would say in society people need to delink expectations of fiscally lucrative careers from education. People will be better served to figure outlets for their passions in life while also plotting a “job” path that will be tolerable and cover the bills. And people are better served by not linking career choices and/or degrees to “who” they are as a person.

I always took the path of least resistance like water does. Sometimes that is good, so here I am today a product of doing the least possible. LOL

No, both times I chose a degree path it was because there was a clear course towards a specific job afterwards. There are other courses of study I've been interested in due to subject matter, but I couldn't clearly see what specific job they'd result in, whether I would enjoy it, or how I would use that degree to get a well-paying job in general. So I didn't go for those degrees.

I think a lot of people wind up hurting when they pick a degree that sounds easy or interesting but they have no idea what kind of job it'll lead to afterwards, if any. It's a much safer bet to put your eye on a particular job or career and then do what needs to be done in order to be qualified, which ftr is almost always more than just getting a degree.

I enjoy academia and need outside structure to learn the things I'm interested in learning, so I may go back for more or further degrees at some point, but currently what I really need is a well-paying job, so I set my sights on one (within a field I'm already interested in) and I'm doing what I need to do to get it.

To answer the question definitively - hell No! My father played a part as he originally was majoring in architecture before switching to chemical engineering (more lucrative). However he kept a briefcase of drafting tools that I played with as a kid. Then in high school I took drafting classes as an elective so architectural engineering technology was my major and architecture is my career.

I chose accounting because a) I thought it was easy, and b) it's a safe job - even in a recession accountants are needed. It's not sexy, but pays well enough.

I was single and on my own so other than being young and stupid I had a very enjoyable college experience. I love taking classes and learning. If I could afford it I would be a perpetual student. The best thing I liked about my college experience is that I learned how to think: critically and with empathy. I was a studio art major by the way.

There must have been something good about it.