Please help - what should be field of studying and working?

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So I am desperate here because I have to make a decision. I have already done 1,5 years of college and for changing "majors" I have to start it all over again, so each change is 5 more years of study. And I don't want to end up in a hated job or field. Please help. Sorry if post ends up long.
Currently I am studying law and international relations. I am thinking of quitting law, but I can't really decide. Also I got a seat at one of the best and most famous law schools in my whole country, so quitting it is a big decision. Is it a good fit for aspies?
Advantages:
- it is said it's a good job for introverts
- you do almost everything by yourself, and in some ocupations at home
- you help people and this is very important for me for the job to be motivating and fulfilling

Disadvantages:
- the processes could make me very anxious
- I don't like discussions
- in order to be a good lawyer you have to get famous and for this you need people skills and networking
- for most Jobs at lawyers' offices you end up doing more like bureacracy, and managing due dates, and I think this is boring and I wanted something that is intellectually challeging. Also I would suck at this because of executive function.
I could be something other than lawyer right? I can't think of anything that helps mitigate the disadvantages.

I was also thinking of being na academic in the field of international relations, but in order to do extensive research I would have to be really interested in the field. My special interest is behavior/culture, but I don't really see how this can be useful to anyone, as I said, for me this is important for the job to be fulfilling. For instance, doing masters on what is the proportion of european immigrants that take baths everyday compared to african descendentes would be interesting, but not useful or important to anyone.

Another option would be engineering. I am very good at maths and I have skills (like other aspies) that would make a good engineer, like attention to details and focus. At the same time, I don't think studying the contraction laws of metals is a personification of interesting. I thought of mathmatics, because I don't like those practical engineering stuff but I like the abstract stuff.

Well, I don't know.

Law is a huge field, since you like international relations, how about a focus on international law? Or immigration law? How about corporate law for multi-national corporations?

There are tons of opportunities to mix international relation and law.

A lot of good lawyers get famous not through networking, but because of the cases they win. The social stuff comes into play if you want to be a Judge.

Being an academic in anything is very hard. There aren't a ton of tenture positions, and being an adjunct faculty can be very taxing and doesn't pay very well at all. Lots of adjuncts are either bouncing around waiting for a tenture track position to open or retired professionals looking to make a few extra bucks. A lot of my adjunct faculty were retired professionals.

Engineering is always an in demand field.

Your age is definitely the 'normal' NT time to assess career track choices, and it's okay to feel the pressure to do this. Just remember...people on the spectrum tend to 'settle out' at a later age and it's not unusual to have a wide field of interests that don't seem to connect. Try not to stress too much over your apparent 'lack of direction or drive'. For anyone with HFA/ASD, getting a degree that is rather general, but has broad applications might be a good idea. In other words, don't worry too much about the long term 'job thing' right now.

I read your post and I'm referring to what you say truly interests you - Behavior /Culture. Is it that you are fascinated with an individualistic 'what makes people tick' sort of thing, or more of the broad cultural perspective of how society works? Is this a reflection of trying to simply figure out where you fit in to society and how to develop your own behavioral patterns? Do you see this interest as a a long term foundation in your life, or is it a passing thing?

You're not in a bad major - it can lead to a lot of areas. There are a lot of related careers in the law/international relations/ policy analysis and governmental fields...do you have an investigative sort of approach - would you be interested in law enforcement or political work? When you write about your job being helpful - are you concerned with broad social issues or personal ones?

Last, but not least. Is there a career counseling and testing service on your campus? You might benefit from a battery of career testing. While some of the results and suggestions can be pretty revealing - some of the 'answers' can be down right hilarious (I was told I'd make a good piano tuner). If it's available, it probably wouldn't hurt to try. Failing that, there are probably online career interest tests as well.

Take all non-professional advice 'with a grain of salt'...

Lawyers have over 50% unemployment post grad. Unless you are a "beautiful mind" type that people will want for your brilliance, if you can't be a salesman, you won't likely do well with a law degree...and it kills most anything else you might want to do in life.

If you got the math skills, you cannot go wrong with engineering, computer science, or anything in the STEM field. I'm 90% left brained so it hurts me to say I was absolutely terrible at Math and couldn't do anything in the STEM field, so I ended up graduating with an English degree. An English degree is not the worse thing in the world but it's not something that can lead to gainful employment right away like something in the STEM field.

Thanks for all answers! You guys are helping a lot

I talked to older law students or lawyers and they told me the social skills are important because you have to be a likeable person. Here in Brazil at least you have to know everyone so you can ask your judge friend to agilize your process or the copy guy to make you the first in line etc Just like asking favors with everyone.



I should be relieved in hearing that but anxiety is my specialty


Since I can remember I have been interested in that. I read about the aspie types and there was "the anthropologist" and this one fits me perfectly well, I continuously analyze society like I am an anthropologist in a remote tropical village. It started when I was really young, because of my inability to understand people, I guess. "Mom, why is he saying this?" or "Why is it people lie?". So I started doing my own researches and everything started to make sense and I got fascinated. Mostly I empathize on how culture influenciates behaviour in each group/subgroup, but also I want to know why people act and think the way they do. But not much the psychology thing because of psychoanalisis which unfortunately still spoils a lot of psychologiy; I would like neuroscience and personality stuff though.


Hmm... I want to make my life be meaningful and fulfilling, and I feel like I should help others and society; don't know if this is an illusion though and life will never make sense. But at least I know I would be happier trying to make a difference than not trying.


In my high school we had career counseling but it was kind of useless. The questions were really hard, like: "would you like to be inspecionating machines?" or "would you like to be a professor?" how would I know?? well, I am here exactly so that you help me figure out!

what?? really? hope in my country the unemployment is not so high.
(if I understood what you said right) Yeah, the impression I have is that being a lawyer is having to sell yourself and your work all the time to find and keep clients. I wouldn't do well with that.


What keeps me from engineering is the question: "would I be able to study something that is so different from my obssessive interest?" I have the impression I wouldn't be motivated enough and would be spending all day in my obssessive interest and not study a bit and end up failling. I don't find it interesting, at all, and concentrating for things that are not interesting for me, like other aspies, is really hard.
At the same time I could do research on my interests as a hobbie. If I got an engineering job I could have the money and time to spend in other things that are more interesting. I actually know engineers that are fascinated about history. Well, I don't know... Complicated

You may want to look into Engineering Physics. The math would be pretty intense, but once you can "speak" the mathematical language, you actually gain the ability to "see" things that can't be seen.

High math ability, attention to detail, ability to focus, and (once the basics are out of the way) a whole boatload of abstract thought and principle.