What career should I pick?

Advice

Hey everyone! I recently joined Reddit in hopes of gaining some clarity in the confusion I've been dealing with. I am 19 and going back to Community College after a gap year and I'm so stuck on what degree/career to choose. I want something that can guarantee me being financially stable. That's my main goal. I don't want to pick a degree that won't help me get there in the long run. I'm not sure if it's a toxic mindset to prioritize money over passion but coming from an immigrant family I feel as though I do not have that freedom to branch out and discover my passion. I have recently been juggling between a career in healthcare more specifically Radiologist Technologist or my area of interest which would be something in Law/Politics.

I have seen that some careers in healthcare can take as little as 2 years of schooling to be able to work in that field. I know that the schooling required is not easy but I feel like I can discipline myself and work hard enough to get through it. On the other hand Law/Politics has been my main passion. I've been thinking about switching to that area since my first semester but again I didn't want to make a wrong choice. I always imagine that if money and the amount of school it takes was out of the equation, I would 100% make the switch without a doubt. I wish there was a way I could at least just be in those classes because I'm genuinely so interested in it. But I don't want to make a decision based on emotion I want to be very logical about this. This might be the hardest decision I ever had to make because for some reason I just feel like I'm running out of time.

I realize though that healthcare may be more stable given the high demand there always is. I can't say the same for Law/Politics because I've seen how most of it is all about "who you know" rather than what you know.

Mainly though this feels risky having to decide I really don't want to make a mistake and choose a degree that turns out to be unstable or over saturated. My first semester in college I picked my major to be in Psychology and realizing how many people around me also chose Psychology really made me think about how over-saturated that major was. That's one of the main reasons I am deciding on a new major/degree. Also I feel as though I should mention I live in Northern California so everything is quite competitive. So yeah, I am on the edge about this since I have to decide this week so I'm sorry if this post was long lol but I would really appreciate any advice right now :) !

Posted Aug 12, 2026, 3:17 AM UTC

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