Existential Crisis?

[themainattraction]

I decided to post here of all places because I feel the people here would offer good perspectives

I'm in my first semester of my Master's in industrial engineering which I'm paying for out of pocket (long story short, i receive settlement checks from a car accident I had when I was little), but I'm not sure if it's worth it.

I have a B.S. in civil engineering with a solid GPA, decided that wasn't for me so I barely pursued a career

I have a pattern of changing paths quickly, I guess because I haven't found something that fills me completely. I'm a dancer, and that's my passion undoubtedly, but there's something missing there too. I'm 23 and still lost, but today especially when I realized after a midterm that i bombed that maybe this isn't for me. Yes, the subject matter was difficult, but the effort I put into it was nowhere near enough. I just don't want it enough.

Ideally, I'd be out of school spending all my time painting and dancing and writing and forming relationships; the one thing I value most is bonds with the people in my life, My creative side is much more prominent than my technical side, but my artistic dreams were crushed back in 4th grade when my math/science teacher told me it would be a waste of time to pursue. Yet from the beginning of summer until january all I did was dance, meet people, travel (to other dance festivals), paint a couple of times, pick up a bit of guitar, and enjoy time with my closest friends, and I still felt something was missing. But it was probably the best 8 months I've lived so far. The downside was that there was a lot of wasted time too, lying around doing nothing productive. And I actually was on the verge of becoming a dance teacher twice but didn't because, well...i would have "wasted" my education...

There is a split inside me between what I want to do (dance, paint, write) and what I feel i ought to do (study engineering, become engineer, blah blah). I'm not trying to play the victim, but it doesn't help that I go to a top university, because there's so much pressure from friends and family to be *great*, to do something *amazing*. Honestly, all i want is just enough to get by for now and support my artistic endeavors. Yet if I drop everything and pursue my passions (not necessarily my dream, since I'm not quite sure what that is yet) I feel that I'd be doing everyone and myself a great disservice.

And of course when I seek advice from friends or family they say I have to finish, because I'm fortunate enough to have made it and getting the degree will open so many doors to so many places. I'm not arguing with that, I'm just trying to decide if it's worth it if I don't really want it.

I still have some fight left in me, I'll make it through the semester and get my 15 credits of graduate coursework, but I'm not sure about afterwards.

I want to be truly happy, and I feel this isn't necessarily the path to it. Also, I should definitely work on seduction because I feel that would add an entirely new and exciting dimension to my life but I get complacent because I have my dancing, and that does a lot already.

So I'm just asking for guidance, really. Stick with this until it's over, since it'll make getting jobs later a lot easier, or drop this and pursue my artistic endeavors which may also open doors to creative jobs I might enjoy more. I'm not saying anything in concrete, because I don't even know what I want yet. Maybe it's time to take a few months off during summer and go soul searching? For like the 8th time... Or should I just start learning, truly learning, the art of seduction, because maybe that's the thing that's "missing"? I do miss being in love, and all that cutesy shit

thanks in advance!

 

[Marty]

The Main Attraction,

I'd suggest you take a personality test—one of the most respected is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, you may have heard of it.

The reason I suggest this is because one you have used it to help you determine your personality type, there is a wealth of information on the tendencies you are likely to be prone to, and recommendations on how to deal with those and make the most of it.

What I detect in what you've written is that you get deeply absorbed in a subject, but can then unexpectedly lose interest when something different gets your attention, even after achieving very highly in the initial field. This affects me and is to some extent a feature of my ENFP personality type (and it seems this tendency is even passed down genetically to the younger generation).

But I wouldn't make any assumptions, take the test first and figure it out for yourself.

-Marty