Stuck on career decisions... any suggestions?

[sicsicsic]

I've been going to my Community College for a year now and I have been on the course of Electronics Technology. I aced DC/AC principles, Digital and Analog classes but it honestly isn't sticking with me. I went to work for a shop as a technician and I gotta say I really don't care for it at all. I quit in not time. The other people who were in my class have a real passion for it... but not me.

So I'm going to change my career direction.

Since I was a kid I always loved messing with computers, just like many of you guys. I always tinkered with every single possible setting in any OS I was using, I liked editing text documents that changed setting as well (boot settings, etc). Mac OS and Windows for the most part, naturally, since about 1994 (I was born in '85). I have also built about 10 systems by now for myself and others, and many would say I can handle just about any general to intermediate issue with Windows and most standard networking simply from self teaching and experimenting, and I'm always learning something new.

I also love modding my systems (cell phone, ipods, xbox, psp, ds... anything I get my hands on) purely for the joy of exploiting. Just putting it out there that I am always understanding and learning computers. I'm always the go-to guy of all my friends and family.

I currently work just under management, soon as assistant manager, at GameStop and I love it, but I'm not sure a career in retail is what I want. I'm sticking with it through school. I used to work at CircuitCity with FireDog and it was fun to tinker and fix computers but I hated the sales portion where I was pushed to brutally rip people off and hated being belittled by management when I didn't. Safe to say I quit there too.

With that said, I was looking through programs at my school and it's quite a range:

Business Applications Programmer
Communications Manager
Computer Engineer
Computer Sales
Database Specialist
Network Administrator
Programming Manager
Scientific Applications Programmer
Software Application Specialist
Software Engineer
Systems Analyst
Systems Programmer

Sales is pretty much scratched out and I'm not sure if I would be willing to devote the time to learning full out programming language. I'm a bit naive when it comes to it but I'll say looking at C++ can be intimidating. HTML I understand however.

So in a nutshell: I love computers, and while I know quite a bit I wouldn't say I'm a full out genius or engineer material.

What kind of career goal would you suggest I should look into. A comfortable yet exciting one that is demanded decently, and has pay of about $70k annually in california. I tried researching them but it was hard to figure out which one is actually a good idea.

Thanks for reading all that, and your suggestion could change my life! (No pressure or anything)

🙂

 

[KLin]

time for your annual post eh? If you love computers, you could always go into business for yourself as a consultant.

 

[pontifex]

i bet a lot of us in IT have a similar story but are dying slow deaths from our jobs and want out asap.

 

[Gibson486]

Circuits and Electronics is pretty boring with just an associates. You pretty much are just going to be a lab rat that does test procedures all day unless you find a company that is willing to give you a shot at the upper level stuff. That said, yeah, the material it self is bland and you really do have to have a passion for it.

One job you may like however, is consulting. I do not mean cosulting as in you your self go and find work, I mean cosulting with a firm like CDM. while CDM itself rarely hires people with just an associates, their smaller competitors do. I work at one of these gigs, but personally, I think I picked the wrong field. In your case, however, it actually sounds like what you may want to do. I have an EE and tried this out because I thought I hated working in the electronics field. All i can say now is that I really miss it.