Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Should I Study?
A fellow Slashdot reader is seeking advice on a new field of study: After many years at the same company, I'm now thinking of a change. At my current place of work, I have worked on many different projects, from server side development, to UI development, and most recently, a lot of data science work. If I were to rate myself, I consider myself to be a good developer, thorough, conscientious and always willing to learn new things. Even my recent foray into data science (though not entirely new, since my graduate studies specialized in machine learning) has had reasonable success, and ideally, I'd really like to continue working in this space.
But, I'm starting to feel in a rut and I'm looking for a change. And looking outside my company, I'm not sure how to begin. Should I hit the books again? Should I focus on any specific technologies? I haven't particularly kept up with new technology -- after working for so long, I tend to think of that as something I can learn, when I need to. Any advice on how I should go about preparing for interviews? I'm quite willing to put in a few months of work into prep, so all suggestions are welcome!
But, I'm starting to feel in a rut and I'm looking for a change. And looking outside my company, I'm not sure how to begin. Should I hit the books again? Should I focus on any specific technologies? I haven't particularly kept up with new technology -- after working for so long, I tend to think of that as something I can learn, when I need to. Any advice on how I should go about preparing for interviews? I'm quite willing to put in a few months of work into prep, so all suggestions are welcome!
If you're tired of data science already, jump on the AI bandwagon!
They also have MBIT if you want to stay in IT.
Money is the root of all Google.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The submitter sounds like a total loser, on par with all of the weasels who keep attacking APK.
If you haven't delved into it, try learning more about functional programming. In my experience, most devs haven't really built anything using FP, and it can be illuminating. react.js is a pretty good example of a system that works well with FP.
If it's machine learning and ai you are after, look at the hardware being released for this purpose.
Familiarize yourself with the development tools.
Why do you want to study a new field? What are your expectations from it, your goals?
Become a plumber.
Studying things that other people want you to sounds like a recipe for boredom.
Just saying - try a change in your own company first and put in 2 years experience while studying. Then look for a new job with the education and experience in the field you are looking to change to.
Look at the opportunity out there and become skilled at something completely different. There's a crapload to be made in many skilled trades now that Baby Boomers are retiring out. Some trades like plumbing and electrician can't find enough people, and the opportunity to become very successful is wide open. Be a long time before robots take the job of a plummer, electrician and other skilled laborer.
This is what I'd do if I were in my 30s even.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
If you already have skills in data science, then you'd be smart to pursue it. It's a rapidly growing area, and there appear to be good salaries associated with it.
Development, not so much.
I'm in Seattle area... People with Cisco CNE's, Security CISSP's are constantly getting poached. Good security people bring $200k-$1M salaries out here. Network engineers make in the $100K range (as do programmers out here).
AI is really growing an high paid, but you need a Phd to grab a top salary in AI. If you have that, you can start at the same wages (or more) of a neurosurgeon.
If I were 21 today and starting over... seriously.. I would spend 4 years in the military. Get out and get a job as a fire fighter. They start out here at $80K. Some work 10 days on, 20 days off..(those 10 days you live in the house). Retire at 53 or 54 with a full pension and health care and spend the next 30-40 years fishing, hunting, playing with grand kids, traveling... what ever.
This is a terrible submission. What the hell kind of question is "what should I study" with zero context? How fucking arbitrary is this?
I don't respond to AC's.
Original AC here. I should clarify - I don't want to entirely change my field of work. I still want to stay in programming, and possibly data science. I'm just really nervous about interviewing after a *very* long time, and I'm wondering how to go about it. I also have a very varied set of experiences, not specializing in any one thing - just really a matter of doing what was needed, when it was needed. I'm not sure how this will go down in interviews, and how to best portray it.
You're gonna stay stuck doing tasks and getting bored.
If you can, find a principal you like/admire/challenges you.
But not tech unless you like it as a hobby. Too many people get a price of paper and hate the job.
Find a passion and learn that.
I thought I accidentally went to Reddit.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's pretty simple to make a pile of dough for yourself. Get a pickup truck and small trailer for lawmowers. Buy a couple of Snapper push mowers. Hire two beaners from that bunch that hangs around 7-11. Pay them cash $10/hr, but only when you have work from the to do. Print a few flyers. Mow rich people's lawns for $150 to $200 per pop. Once you get rolling, you can do about a dozen customers per day, as many days as you are willing to work. Figure $2K per day, $60K per month.
Fuck DevOps.
If you want to get much $$$ money, i recommend you to study Economy, Marketing, etc.
The rest of courses are dying ... and for badly paid jobs.
Don't ask such questions.
Get an AWS Cert, best study material is Udemy A Cloud Guru (Ryan Kroonenburg). I spent a few weeks on it, and passed my AWS cert, plus have a great introductory understanding of AWS cloud.
I have worked on many different projects [...] I tend to think of that as something I can learn, when I need to.
Sounds like you're a bit of a generalist with the will and ability to dive into a specialism when needed. If you really feel you need to "pick a side" and specialize, then all advice I can offer is: find something you love doing and specialize in that. But if you enjoy the learning process itself, the experimenting and ground-breaking work with new tech, then maybe you can find a job working in an innovation team.
Innovation is a bit of a buzzword, but there is plenty of legit innovation work out there. Innovation teams often offer a chance to learn new tech or new ways of doing things, and require a lot of flexibility from their team members. Perhaps that will suit you... I've been involved in innovation for 20 years or so, and I not only enjoy the great variety of technologies I have to deal with, but also the fact that I often get to wear many different hats: from project manager, team lead, architect, to coder and business analyst. Sometimes you'll be a one man team, sometimes the team will need someone to write a couple of tests for tomorrow's experiment or prepare a short presentation for a visiting VC, and yes I am sticking up my hand to volunteer. If you think that doing something yourself is often faster than getting others to do it for you, and if you can actually deliver results that way, then innovation might be something for you.
Positions in innovative work are few and far between and are often sought after, so you need to position yourself well for that when preparing your CV. Your background in data science and your machine learning study will help, since those fields are currently firmly hanging ten at the top of the hype cycle. But also emphasize your versatility as it's a key quality in such roles: show that you have experience in adapting to circumstances, and in diving in when the project calls for it.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Study art. Better yet: *Train* for an art.
Seriously. Is there an art (performing art in particular) where you say "OMG that is so awesome, I wish I could do that."? Study/train that. Obviously there are limits. If you're in a wheelchair doing ballet won't work. But perhaps music, singing, acting is something that would be an interesting challenge. I have a diploma in performing arts and even though I've never done anything remotely like that in the last 2 decades (except being quite good at social dancing (Argentine Tango)), the experience was like nothing else. It does help me do presentations, that's obvious, but I've also learned about styles and aesthetics, art history and how to move gracefully. It helps me with GUI design and understanding emotional aspects of the user experience.
Imagine getting a Chello and learning that. Your horizon will expand into a universe you couldn't dream of knowing doing IT/Software every day for the rest of your life. You probably have IT pretty much down and getting into some newfangled technology or PL is a walk in the park once you've got a broader perspective on life in general.
Art most likely won't earn you big bucks but from what I get that's not what you need right now anyway. Note that fine art is closer to programming as an art than performing arts, so I strongly suggest performing arts, but perhaps you do want to get into drawing or painting or illustraiont or - an intersection with IT - 3D/VR and stuff - then fine art might be a neat alternative.
But generally rest asured, if you move away from IT and into an art, your life in general will improve for the better. Especially with your life right now having you struggling for sense and meaning. If only art becomes an enriching addition to your life as an IT expert right now, that will spill over into your IT career and have measurable positive effects. Promise.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Real Estate at Trump University. It's just makes good business sense. With a small loan of one million dollars you could be well on your way to becoming our next president! We salute you, good sir, and will see you at the polls adrer a few erections.
So you can watch all the anime when you are unemployed.
Seriously, why do people think it's a good idea to change fields after doing the same job for years without any interest in advances in technology?
You think going back to school is going to help you there?
It's a mind set, not something you can just read in a book.
Imagine some kind of quasi-intelligent software technology that lets you manage all the scattered pieces of your digital life in one slick UI. Your photos/videos. Your emails. Your office documents and source code files. Your daily task list. Your games and apps and movies and music. Phonecalls you should make. People you should meet up with. Places you want to visit or dine at. Websites and blogs and social media accounts you should check for news or information or research on. Things you have to pay for. Things you have to file or send off to somewhere. Things you have to physically do. Things you are waiting to be delivered to you. Pretty much anything you have to do or want to do in any given week of your work and leisure time. But not a stupid "cloud service" where all this sits on somebody else's datacenter servers half a world away where it is datamined to death, or is accessed through some stupid smartspeaker device that is also tethered into the internet, peeking into your home and work and general life all the time. A fluid, intelligently designed visual user interface that sits firmly on your computing devices/home server of choice, does not constantly send collected info about you to some faceless corporation, and can keep track of pretty much anything in your life for you, and even launch 3rd party software for you when you click on a task, or intelligently automate many tasks for you, such as ordering flowers for your wife from a particular internet site on Tuesday, or waiting for a certain stock to hit a certain value level and then buying 500 Dollars worth of that stock. Your server side coding, UI design and data science experience would probably be perfect for creating something like that. A sort of Super-UI through which you can perform and keep track of a hundred different necessary tasks, but one that gives you peace of mind because all data is local - not sent to 3rd parties over the internet. If I had your particular skills, I'd probably build something like that.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Want to make serious money = get a CISSP and be a security professional. Crazy money is being made now and for the next 10 years easy.
Want to take the mind off, not work in an office and like working with your hands = electrician or plumber. They make good money some of the work sux but you are not stuck in an office/cube.
Want to be happy = do what you like/love but don't expect money.
teach.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
You might really enjoy making merkins.
Why does it matter?
Stop being an ageist prick.
They mentioned "after many years at the same company" and "since my graduate studies", so you can probably set a lower bound just from those hints.
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
Depending on your feelings about it, you might consider seeing if you could help out a university looking for people to help with their data science programs. It would be a major shift, it would probably be a lot of fun, and you'd get to help students out, so it's at least worth looking into. In the alternative, maybe pick up a masters in a new field.
For all the Facebook outrage, this site is resembling FB more every day.
You could try out for the NBA.. seriously
* Do what interests you, and/or
* Do what pays.
Next question.
For long-term job security, either get into AI / machine learning / anything to do with automation, or else something as immune to automation as possible, because those will be the last jobs to go.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Go back to school, get a master's or Ph D. If you can teach at a university level, the working conditions (hours, ability to have fun, ability to do one's own research, prestige) can't really be beat.
Medical school (even abroad), residency, and working as a physician or researcher is also a nice gig. Consider going abroad and staying -- steady pay from a public system + benefits + ability to help people are good things.
You might consider becoming a high school computer science teacher. Thereâ(TM)s tremendous demand for people with your skills, although you would also need to learn/develop classroom management, curriculum design and other teaching skills (non-trivial). I left high tech to become a high school teacher 17 years ago. For the right person, teaching is an amazing, rewarding and demanding career. Many states have professional hire programs for computer science teachers that help you shortcut the typical two year ed degree rigamarole. Give it some thought. JR
... especially the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Everyone believes they have it. Most believe they have studied it. Only the rare few actually can truthfully say they have books on their shelves on syllogisms, categorical logic, set theory, and criticality.
Do that and you will leave the echelons of truly good developers below you.
Wilderness survival.
Cabin building.
Water cleansing.
Very Basic engineering / how to use your hands.
Woodworking.
AGRICULTURE.
Animal husbandry.
Basic medicine / biology.
Basic weapons and self defence training.
Sustainable energy generation.
How to build a basic windmill / watermill.
Oh and did I mention
AGRICULTURE?
Fucking jews.
I have a theory about careers and life. Most people are doing the thing that they can get paid the most for. OK, sure, some people lumber along with untapped potential, and occasionally they break out of their rut and hit the big time. That is not the usual story though.
So you must be very careful about your salary. If you do something sufficiently different, you will 'starting over' in some sense. Yes you have experience but your employer won't be willing to accept that experience as relevant for your new job. Or at least that's the danger.
Are you willing to take a major salary hit? Most are not. We tend to adopt a lifestyle up the level of our ability to pay. This means that you have limitations on your level of change you can accept.
Should this be true, then either:
1). Branch out to different activities at your current company. This is the safest play. Unfortunately it sounds like you have already done a lot of this and it no longer appeals. I'm speaking of different activities in your current position, by the way;
2). Apply for a different job at your current company. Still reasonably safe, this will be helpful in getting credit for all those years of experience you now have;
3). Apply for a very similar job at a different company. While this might seem to keep you in your rut, I doubt that's true here. Certain kinds of jobs have cookie-cutter duties in most companies, but IT is rarely one of those cookie-cutter situations.
Personally I'm a fan of #3. I did it years ago to escape a poor employer and it paid off. The different organizational dynamics played out at both the macro and micro levels. It refreshed my entire career prospects and revitalized my personal outlook as well.
and they give on the job training
Follow either passion or money, pick 1.
When I got all the money I was willing to whore myself out to achieve, I started following my passions. Been doing that the last 10 yrs. I sleep better, lost 80 lbs, travel more, see family much more, and life is fun again. I work about 80% less than before.
If you can find people who want to pay you for following your passion, that isn't so bad either, provided it fits your new desired schedule.
Why not ask if they are a woman, eye colour, black, jewish, have ginger hair, or how many kids they have?
You're being an utter cunt by asking this question, and the real tragedy is you don't even realize it.
It's the one business that's guaranteed to never become obsolete.
Retirement age in IT!
Historically Phrenology has been a more reliable source of income than AI skills. AI comes and goes in popularity. Phrenology and Astrology are forever.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
how to not be a whinging douchebag
Hmmm, you seem new to the human race. Here's a hint: OTHER people *will* ask.
Bioscience. We had digital technology in the 20th Century and we will have Biotechnology in the 21st. You can thank me later.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Girls and drinking. Or boys and weed if that's legal. Or just social customs on websites or people.
actually that is important information at the dick sucking factory
I'd avoid any career in IT or Software Development. Why? Companies 20 years ago viewed IT as a core competency that needed to be developed in house and fostered. Now they view it as something that they can buy or outsource. That's not good if you're starting out and looking to get 40+ years in the industry. Sure, there's always web development jobs but all these bootcamps and schools popping out web developers only plays into the hands of minimal wage growth.
My suggestion, apprentice as a Plumber or HVAC tech. Both are well paid, in-demand and everybody has plugged up a toilet from time to time.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
No, you're being an utter fool.
Age matters. If you're old, male, and white good fucking luck finding a new career.
itâ(TM)s pretty goddamn easy though. Maybe you just suck
decision science with focus on cost-benefit analysis.
Funny, I know quite a few 35-40 year old men just starting med school. I know some 45 year old new Ph D.'s as well. Problem is that American white men are their own worst enemy -- they're expected to follow a career for life by society, like some 1950s nightmare. Society doesn't jugge a 40 year old woman going back to school OTOH.
" Society doesn't jugge a 40 year old woman "
I haven't jugged a 40 year old woman recently, is it like motorboating?
Life !
If you're looking for variety, go into sysadmin/operations type jobs with a healthy dose of in-house development, perhaps a small business or startup.
Alternatively given your brief resume, I have a feeling you may be more into research/academics, if you want to do research yourself, get/finish/use a PhD but otherwise good institutions are always clamoring for good people (data/computational/research scientist) regardless of your degree. If you go more into the administration/operations of a research institution rather than the academia, you'll get to do a lot of stuff.
If you just want to make money, right now I'd say, find the recent buzzword and apply for jobs - hundreds of applicants are lining up for AI-related point-and-click programming and for some weird reason companies are paying up the wazoo for them. But real commercial programming is not very prevalent anymore, you're usually tying together some cloud accounts these days and a workflow in between them, it's boring.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
And pussies.
Rocket science.
To boldly go where no man has gone before.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
What's that you say?
Well OK then. Let's really try thinking outside-the-box. Start studying medicine with a long-term plan on getting a job in Pediatric ICU or Pediatric cardiac OR.
Roughly 19 years schooling, residency and fellowship.
That means you'll be about 75 by the time you're ready to start work. You might have racked up some enormous education bills to pay off. Just guessing that'll take 10 years to pay off. Then you can start saving for retirement. Another 30 years ought to do the trick. Assuming that Parkinson's or Alzheimer's hasn't set in by then, you can probably look forward to settling into a nice relaxing retirement at 105. Tee time's 5am. Be there!
Did I go for a worst-case scenario? Obviously. Just to make a point age can be a relevant factor.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
No, you are still wrong. Your argument for being ageist is fundamentally: "don't advise people to do things they can't be guaranteed to complete".
There is a lot to be had by going on the journey, and if someone wants to start a medicine career at 55 then good on them. If they can't complete it because they die along the way, then so be it.
I assure you that the use of age as a qualifier for advice, will only ever result in prejudice and cannot be useful or constructive in any way.
Your graduate studies specialized in machine learning...but you 'haven't particularly kept up with new technology' and 'after working for so long' are here asking what you should study next?
You didn't work long - graduate studies specializing in machine learning and working 'long' don't go hand in hand. Maybe it's long to you...but it's not long to people that have been working long lol.
Every second job involving a little math is basically data analysis right now. If you already some data to play with, you can get hands-on experience as well.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
You're being an utter cunt by asking this question, and the real tragedy is you don't even realize it.
What do you suppose calling someone a cunt says about yourself?
Some professions have practical and or mandatory retirement ages. For older people ROI on perusing career choices requiring spending $$$ and time in school for many years may not add up. You can forget about joining virtually any branch of military once you've reached mid 30's.
Why not ask if they are a woman
Female prostitutes, porn actresses, models, hooters girls and booth babes are in much higher demand than their male counterparts. Younger women tend to be more attractive and can be expected to make more in these fields.
eye colour ,blacks, jewish, have ginger hair,
All seems rather pointless.
or how many kids they have?
This is a very important question. The more kids you have the more you have to make and the less time you have to make it. This means whoring yourself out to the highest bidder without regard for personal choice or moral consideration. If you end up at Facebook or LinkedIn or a Male Gigolo that's fine so long as your making bank and punching out at 5.
use your skills in the service of what is right... avoid companies who are evil... such as facebook, google, amazon, microsoft, apple and sony
Go to a seminar on Quantum Computing, one thing you'll quickly pick up in the audience is that there are a lot of people who have experience with quantum physics.
There are also a lot of people who have great skills in computer programming. There's almost no one who has an understanding of both.
At some stage in the future quantum computing may be abstract enough for developers to not need an understanding of quantum physics in the same way most developers don't understand nand and nor gates transitors, multiplexors etc etc. However we're a long way from that and in the interim there'll be shortage of people who understand quantum computer design and programming
After five years at the same company doing the same soul-sucking work in web development, I decided to hit the books again.
For me, I decided to start fresh and go to university for a bachelor and master title in embedded systems, but if you already got those under your belt, then you can always apply for a Ph. D. position at any university in the world. While an MIT or Stanford Ph. D. does come with great bragging rights, many other smaller universities, especially abroad, are happy to have you. Like the one I went to, which is a small but focused university able to compete with many bigger universities in my specific field (Embedded).
If Academia isn't a suitable position then pick any field of interest and learn enough to land a job in that.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
"What do you suppose calling someone a cunt says about yourself?"
I don't give a shit what you think about me. I know I'm not a prejudiced dick-head who is stuck defending an indefensible position, brought about through your delusion.
Good fucking luck with life, cunt.
You're a sad person.
Hello, OP here
That sounds like something right up my street
Animal husbandry
Lots and lots of Physics.
"Tee time's 5am."
Bit early for 18 holes, no?
You need to get a piece of paper that demonstrates that you have mastered an in-demand discipline in the economic sense so that you can have a place to live and food to eat and hopefully be able to retire some day. The consequences of not doing this are likely to be poverty unless you come from a wealthy family.
We'll make great pets
Study any programming applicable to additive manufacturing. Many facets of this. Build path generation. Building cloud apps to run algorithms on shape optimization. Ananysis codes to presict behavior. User interfaces to manipulate 3d geometry. The industry is on a high growth trajectory.
This is an difficult question to answer mostly because we are in a period of incredibly rapid change and there are no guarantees. To put that remark in perspective, see the Metcalfe Foundation's report for the Ontario (Canada) government called "Working Better" (https://metcalffoundation.com/stories/publications/working-better-creating-a-high-performing-labour-market-in-ontario-2/). On p. 23, you will see a graphic showing the fragmented career path that is currently our reality. This is how things are and it isn't likely to change in the near future.
One of the best choices you can make is to study something different from what you are doing now, but which could apply to what you are doing now. If, for example, a programmer was working on computer games, studying art might be useful. If you are working for a bank, studying eCommerce might be useful. It all depends. Carl Bereiter (Bereiter, C. (2002). Education and mind in the knowledge age. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) suggests that a traditional liberal arts education, with its emphasis on diverse subjects, analysis and clear thinking, is very useful when things are as uncertain as they are now.
Don't worry, no new software tech since the 70s. Mostly just brushing up on the latest buzzwords and finding out which of the 50 year old technology they're actually talking about. Getting familiar with the latest tools is important, even if those tools are just reincarnations of old tools.
There's a high demand for nurses (male or female). .....and commercial truck drivers.
If you are even wondering about it, you clearly do not have what it takes. Do some menial work instead, or go into management - you can still make lots of many with either. With the former, at least, you will be useful.
Super versatile and not too specialized. It will always be in demand, even after the fall of society. Don't just stick to theory, learn practical applications and uses as well.
Learn the language of another country you have an interest in, move there and work with startups trying to get off the ground that have solid financial backing. If family makes that too difficult to pursue, then get your MBA and prepare for a management position before you get age-discriminated out of your field of work.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Are you listening? Plastics.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
As someone who just earned a couple of Masters degrees in business for an insane price tag, I recommend that you exercise caution when transitioning careers. Breaking into a new field that is more of a passion project than one that is in demand is just brutal. Unless you are financially set and don't need the income, a transition could wreck you financially. The absolutely insane cost of graduate school cannot be understated and needs to be weighed against any advancement you may experience through it. It is massively easier to have a career track inside of a company that supports you rather than doing it on your own.
No, you are still wrong. Your argument for being ageist is fundamentally: "don't advise people to do things they can't be guaranteed to complete".
There is a lot to be had by going on the journey, and if someone wants to start a medicine career at 55 then good on them. If they can't complete it because they die along the way, then so be it.
I assure you that the use of age as a qualifier for advice, will only ever result in prejudice and cannot be useful or constructive in any way.
Point taken. For many of us, the journey is the destination.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
"Tee time's 5am."
Bit early for 18 holes, no?
It takes a while to get both the user and the walker out of, and back into, the cart 12 times per hole. Times foursome.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I think the parent of your comment (grandparent) was merely trolling/expressing discontent with the practice of ageism in the industry, and forewarning the OP of a challenge he or she might face other than skillset or field of study.
I do agree that the age of the OP should not be made available in order to avoid unnecessarily influencing the results. By not knowing the age of the OP it will provide the OP with more accurate knowledge of the situation. The age of the OP and the time frame required for a field of study and gaining experience does matter, but that is a decision to be made by the OP, not the Slashdot commentors.
You forgot the part of studying for the MCAT. That'll be at least a year.
Write down your dilemma questions and solution set. Take a break; a sabbatical maybe travel year trip live in hostels around the world just off the technology planet you are consumed with every day.
Ugly ruts comforting familiarity are the bane of existence. Freedom is the emergency parachute out of the uglies onto planet reality.
Return in a year, return to your list. You'll have no problem answering the questions.
Go on Coursera and find something interesting... learn a foreign language, study geology or biology. Sounds a bit like you have learnt to use useful tools but don't have anything to do with them. Data analysis is boring when you have no interest in the data - find something you want to learn more about and worry about tools and frameworks another day.
History means you get learn about all fields of human endeavour.
Welding and NDT.
OMG, you're such a
SOLIDER tot O ; `^ AREAL on AREAL . SOLIDER `SOLIDER `
O us are . O O on O tot O `O tot O `O tot O tot O tot
O us are `O . O . O us are O us are O tot O tot O tot
AREAL on O tot O `O `NIGH `O `NIGH `O tot O tot O tot
O us are SOLIDER `O tot O `O tot O `O tot O tot O tot
O us are O tot O `O tot O `O tot O `O tot O tot O tot
O us are O tot O . AREAL on AREAL . SOLIDER tot O tot
Indeed. A lot of debt.
You must be a trust fund brat. It's becoming rarer, but in some jurisdictions liabilities can be passed on.