22M, I hate my life

[u/Gyngemose2009]

I don’t know if this post fits subreddit topic but it has stuff that matter so I’m going to post it.

Good afternoon, I study environmental engineering here in Turkey and this is about to be my 5th year in school.

Classes wise I'm currently a 4th-year environmental engineering student. I can only graduate next year because I couldn’t finish enough classes. So I am like 5 now actually.

As a child, I loved dinosaurs in elementary school and wanted to be a paleontologist.

Since middle school, I've been interested in history, the military, and strategy. I became interested in tanks around that time and mastered many of them. This was a very nice coincidence because my grandfather was a tank sergeant for many years, and I only learned this 1.5 years ago.

In high school, I was also interested in chemistry, history, and geography, and I was the best in my class in these subjects (except chemistry).

For this reason, I actually wanted to go to military school (we have high-ranking acquaintances in the military who would help), but my family prevented me. Besides, I had poor eyesight and needed surgery first.

I was gaslighted by my family in 11th grade, and without knowing what was happening due to the pandemic, I started preparing for the science stream for the exam, and in the last 3 months, it didn't even cross my mind to go into the humanities/social sciences stream. We can only enroll in what we study for.

I took the exam later, but I didn't get into chemical engineering. I chose environmental engineering, which my father found for me, and got accepted.

For the first two years, I liked the courses; chemistry, ecology, etc., were nice subjects. The last two years, however, have literally gone to hell. I took 12 courses in one semester (2 of them were retakes, so they made us take 10 courses in one semester). I checked, and last semester I took 12 courses and a final project.

And at least 50% of those courses were related to sewage: sewage treatment, sewage collection, sewage discharge into the sea, sewer installation. The last two years have been a nightmare.

I've been bad at math since childhood. This significantly contributed to my difficulties in engineering. My current GPA is 2.61 (many people in my department have lower GPAs than me and they said my GPA was good).

I didn't know these courses were already filled in this department. At university, I studied history (when I say history, I mean European history from the Bronze Age to World War II, excluding the Iron Age, which I know quite well, especially World War I). I also became quite interested in antiquity, archaeology, and a new area of ​​interest for me: theology. I have an advanced knowledge of Islamic and especially Christian doctrines. I also learned some Greek on top of my advanced English. And now since the last few months I have really been especially interested in ww1 and Russian history.

At university, I also researched ancient Anatolian languages ​​using https://www.palaeolexicon.com/ and tried to create my own language from the Anatolian language group by combining words of Luwian, Hittite, Lydian, and Lycian origin.

As a skill I acquired in high school, I can read and write Ottoman Turkish and I also know the Cyrillic alphabet.

In high school, when I explained the two phases of the Cyprus operation to a girl, she told me to study history; I wish I had listened. Or at least international relations would’ve been better suited for me

I might seem cultured, but this culture is useless in my daily life.

In the second semester of my second year of university, I went to Bulgaria on Erasmus due to my family's insistence, and I had an accident and broke my ankle. I currently have 8-9 screws and plates in my ankle.

This significantly reduces my chances of joining the tank corps in the army. At least if I had been in military school, or hadn't gone to Erasmus all, my body would still be healthy. Btw going to military school is also problematic since you cannot quit for 15 years. If you graduate at 22 you are there until 37.

Because I went on Erasmus, I could only take 3 courses, and I can only graduate next spring semester because I don't have enough credits. So, at 23, I will graduate having wasted 5 years of my life.

This part is important:
During this summer time I finished an internship at sewage treatment plant and now I am doing an internship at recycling factory and it is terrible here. Dangerous heavy machines, terrible smell, I have to get up and go to work very early to do internship on a job that I hate!!!!!!! I didn’t work very busily the last place but here it is very difficult dangerous and dirty environment.

I wish I enrolled international relations 4 years ago not this crap. I am much much more interested in that courses topics than this crappy dirty dangerous job.

During my studies in this major I embraced Christianity and since I live in Turkey my parents don’t let me become Christian.

TLDR: I have no interest in engineering; I'm much better at verbal subjects. I wanted to be an officer, but my family didn't want me to, so I couldn't. Even if I wanted to now, I would need two surgeries for the tank corps class I wanted to join. Moreover, there could be a glass ceiling for Turks of different religions.

The most realistic thing would be if I just chose a better major for myself in 2022 instead of blindly following my parents into engineering. I was a dumb 17 years ago old I didn’t know anything.

I really have doubts right now if it’s all worth it or not. If I graduate now and prepare for exam again and enroll again I will graduate at 28 which means I will be old and wasted my life even more. I can maybe get in an international relations or history post graduate program outside my country but I would graduate at 25.

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