Hello, humans!

This is my second entry in English and today I've been thinking about money in today's world.

I'm going to talk from my own experience and that of some of my colleagues.

I was born and raised in Latin America. I had access to education and all the necessities a kid could have, but we weren't able to afford some things, like expensive gifts or vacations. Sometimes I overheard my parents talking about their debt and bills they had to pay. In short, I have always been aware that money is a must. If you don't have money, you can't afford food, rent, or anything else.

Later in life, when I had to choose a major, I had in mind how expensive it could be moving to a major city or the materials for studying a degree can be. I chose an engineering major but was awarded a scholarship, which allowed me to forget about student fees and the government gave me enough money to afford most of the stuff I needed during my semesters.

I can confidently say that I am a privileged person because not many young people have the good fortune I did. I finished my courses and applied to an intership, I chose to go into industry rather than research because my scholarship was ending that semester and after that I knew I had to find a way to get by on my own. My parents couldn't give me enough money because I was living in a big and expensive city, so I had to find a job soon.

The sad thing is that when my friends and I were applying to interships and entry-level jobs, we were in for a huge disappointment: how our degree led to very few opportunities. We obviously found a lot of offers for software engineers, but not for electronics engineers. We had to pick between two options: go into software or be unemployed.

For some of my friends it was absolutely soul-crushing. They obviously wanted to work in the field we had studied for 10 semesters, but the reality was challenging. I was shocked too, but I knew I didn't have many options, so I said yes to the first internship offer I got.

Nowadays most of my former classmates are working in fields unrelated to our degree, some are unemployed and some had a really hard time finding a job related to electronic design. Those who decided to stick to the hardware design field are a minority, and most of them had parents who supported them during the time they were unemployed.

This is it.

Now tell me, have you ever given up on a dream or a life project because you couldn't afford it? If you have a degree, are you working in the same field or did you change paths?

Thanks for reading this long post!