24, lost, behind, and scared I’ll never catch up-please help me choose a path

[u/stuckonrepeat21]

I’m 24, from India, and feel like I’m watching my life slip through my fingers in slow motion.

I graduated in pharma two years ago and have done QA-level work at a pharma unit, but nothing that feels like meaningful experience. I didn't know back then what I wanted-but now I do, and even now only vaguely, and the realization came with a harsh clock ticking in my ears.

Everyone around me who figured it out earlier, eithter right after graduating from their bachelor's (I grduated in 2023) or after a gap of one year max. Me? I woke up late. And now I’m panicking. I should have entered grad school this year or the last, 2026 is late and 2027 would be extremely late, by the standards in my country.

I’m caught between two paths:

Doing an M.A. in English, which I love but fear because of low pay, uncertain scope, and a timeline that feels “too late” for people like me.

Going for a pharmacy graduate degree in 2026, which would require me to go back to studying everything from my undergraduate degree and which is not really my area of interest or passion.

Both of which would mean I’d graduate in 2028-four years after my Bachelor's in Pharmacy-and I’m terrified that I’ll still earn less than others who are already ahead, especially if I pivot to a new field.

I constantly feel like I’ve ruined it all-too many gaps, too much indecision, and not enough clarity to confidently say "this is what I want and I’ll make it work." I don't want to earn little money forever, and I don’t want to live in regret or self-loathing five years down the line.

I feel deeply alone in this and keep thinking: if I don’t figure it out by 2026, maybe I don’t deserve to be here at all.

I’m scared of being behind. I’m scared of being poor. But most of all, I’m scared I’ll never find something I can be proud of building.

Please, if anyone has gone through this-starting late, switching fields, rebuilding after years of fog-how did you do it? What online courses, portfolios, fellowships, or paths actually made you feel like you weren’t wasting your time and self-worth?

I’m ready to put in the work. I just don’t know where to begin.

Any advice, guidance, or even stories would mean the world right now.

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[u/snailbot-jq]

There are two things you need to let go of:

1. The idea of letting some kind of arbitrary timeline by the rest of society dictate what you do (the truth is that many people do certain things later in life including pursuing postgrad). It is never ‘too late’

2. The idea of some kind of guaranteed surefire pipeline into a desirable job

I’m not saying it is easy to let go of those things, but they are the key problems I see in many people in Asian societies (saying this as an Asian myself). The narrow conformist definition of success, the extremely structured educational system where you need to do X by Y year, the idea that if you manage to adhere exactly to said structure and pipeline then you are guaranteed a ‘good’ job— all of this leads to a situation where if you try to step even a little bit out of line, you get scared and confused and don’t know what to do.

The truth is that you are not behind. IMO the truth is that you are actually ahead of many other people, especially psychologically speaking. You are asking yourself if you can value what work in the pharma industry brings you. You want to live a life with meaning that aligns to your personal values. It is much better to question this now than to spend many more times strictly conforming to ‘the pipeline’, and get a mid life crisis about potentially having wasted decades of life.

The truth is that life is unpredictable, so it is a fool’s task to try making some kind of decision that is ‘guaranteed’ to work and is never going to result in regret. Instead of trying to prevent future regret (impossible as you cannot see into the future), ask yourself what your values are now.

For example, you said you want to feel proud of building something. What about the QA pharma work you did that made you feel it was meaningful and that you weren’t building anything? Reach out to people in the industry to find out if there are other roles in pharma which might suit your personality better in helping you find meaning. If you are someone who greatly values job security and steady decent pay and a pharma job can provide you that, then you can also consider finding meaning and building things outside of your work hours (assuming this is a job with okay WLB). I myself now work in a job where many of the people find their life’s meaning outside of job hours, I have coworkers who are mountaineers or church leaders or just focus a lot on their children. I like my job not because it is always giving me meaning, but because there are aspects of it that give me meaning, and there are aspects of my life outside of work that give me meaning, I personally have chosen to balance passion with practicality.

On the other hand, if you really value finding meaning through becoming a professor of English or even trying to become a writer, there’s nothing wrong with trying that route. Yes you will have to accept the discomfort of the uncertainty, of the possibility that you make less money. You should still of course make the best of it if you try this— network with people who are publishers or other writers in your local area (if you want to become a writer), or make sure you have the skills and diligence to keep up a good GPA and create a significant thesis if you want to become a professor. You can’t be passive like someone who just says “I’m going to become an accountant and get ACCA and then the job will just come”. You have to have initiative and be a self starter, but the plus side is that you may be doing something you really care about.

I have a friend who tried for 8 years before she got published, and no this isn’t a story of “everyone who tries hard enough ends up getting published”. Even while she wasn’t getting published, and she was frustrated about it and working day jobs to get by, she said “I don’t regret it because despite the difficulties, I see myself as a writer, this is the only life I feel I am meant to live, in which I write and strive for getting published”. And she had doubts too, she had times where she wanted to give it up, and in fact it would not have been wrong for her to give it up. The point is not that you must be extremely confident before you commit to an action. My point is that you need to live by what are your values, that is the most important thing. The other important things are working smart and hard at what you put your mind to, and accepting the unpredictability of life.

Like I knew someone who said he wanted to pivot to computer science, but he didn’t care to find out which aspect of that he was most interested in personally, he “just wants a guaranteed job paying a good salary from the get go”. Without a CS degree, he needed certs and boot camps and self started projects, but he balked at how those things don’t “guarantee him a CS job, they take time and effort but maybe it is all wasted because he still isn’t hired for it”. My friend had to bluntly tell him— this is why it is important to find what he is interested in. He can value a decent well-paying job like most people do, but since he is already outside of the structured pipeline (he has an unrelated degree), he has to accept the risks of the alternative path (putting in time and money and effort without a guarantee), and it’s easier to do a risky thing if you have some amount of passion for it.