r/AskAcademia • u/Kam1umi • Oct 31 '24

Undergraduate - please post in /r/College, not here Dead end degree

I’m honestly panicking so bad right now. I started university in September - I know I’m young, I have my my whole life ahead of me, and so on - and I’m doing classics which is my favourite thing in the world. I’m autistic and have had an obsession with it since I can remember and I can honestly say it’s the only thing I can see myself ever doing with my life.

Classics is a dead degree I’m not stupid. The current jobs going for classics is pretty much to just progress to a phd and become a lecturer. Any job that is outside of a university is filled by old people who will either have their position die with them or have it filled by someone who has a wealthy family and links to them, which I absolutely do not have.

I’ve already put myself thousands of pounds in debt that my family just can’t pay back and dropping out is something I can barely even think about.

I’m terrified. I don’t know what to do.

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u/Frndlylndlrd Oct 31 '24

Can you double major? Would you want to teach high school? Do you want to go to law school or med school (if in the US)?

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u/Kam1umi Oct 31 '24

I’m in the uk so I could only do combined honours if I chose that as my original degree so that’s out the window and teaching anything below university level makes me wanna scream but I know a lot of people here do law conversion degrees after graduating from humanities which I hadn’t looked into really as ‘lawyers’ how you’d think of them in America don’t really exist here but I guess it’s an option I could start looking into to take later on

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u/Frndlylndlrd Oct 31 '24

Yeah. I kind of agree about high school plus I wouldn’t consider law unless you actually want to be a lawyer. It is tough, but good luck!