I feel lost and confused, and I don't know where to begin
. There's a wall of text ahead, sorry for that.. I'm going to try to make this post as concise as I can, but English is not my first language, so please bear with me.
Recently, I turned 28 and sadly, up until this point in my life, I have accomplished virtually nothing I have ever longed for. To me, this is the direct results of not being well-matched with the education system and the general way of "life" in this doomed country. You may have already heard about the ongoing uprising in Iran and all the unbelievably horrible things about life in this
hell country (and this region in general).
The Iranian education system has never been a good fit with my learning style, although I almost aced at school each year (even though I also hate the Iranian school system which is inspired by third-world barracks' style of living... terrible), but there's a terrible university entrance exam here on par with a rigorous and meaningless spelling bee, only taking place once a year. I've wasted almost 3 years of my life for this bullshit.
Anyway, this "spelling bee" exam resulted in my placement at the country's largest system of universities, which is a private, yet affordable "university". I graduated from there with a B.Sc. of Electrical Engineering. This "university" is what I call a diploma mill, though many people would get offended by this, but basically, it's even worse than a high school. You can't believe how primitive and stupid it is. Almost no student there is eager and keen to learn and to develop themselves or some skills. They are mostly only interested in the degree at the end, and they do almost everything to cut corners, and the instructors or professors also help them with this. There's no appropriate lab at all, just a bunch of cheap, shitty, and faulty instruments that any poor hobbyist would have better ones at home. Yet, they don't allow you in the lab to experiment on your own, as if they had a million dollars equipment
. I hated every second of it.
During my time there, I got extremely depressed and unmotivated and couldn't really learn much, and I was trying to buy me time by being a student there so it took me so long to finish it, but I was able to finally "graduate", though being "illiterate".
Now, I want to start over, but I don't know how
. I don't even know where to begin from. As I said earlier, I haven't really experienced electrical engineering and the industry, not even the academia or the different sub-fields of EE. I like hacking things and electronics projects, also reading and researching science like physics, chemistry, biology, etc. and their applications. Computer science and engineering is another interesting field that I'm thinking about, especially because I like organizing data (data science?) and AI/ML, and also because I already have a computer which is all I'd need for learning CS (I hope), as opposed to EE which I'd need to have access to lab equipment which I can't afford or get access to.
I'd like to do different and innovative things and not some ordinary, repetitive things. And now there's the emerging AI "God" that can even code as good as an average programmer. I don't know what will be left for us humans to do. Nobody can compete with an intelligent machine. It all sounds like humans becoming obsolete in the near future.
So here I am, totally lost and confused. I don't even know what path to take. EE? What sub-field of EE? The computer science/engineering stuff? What will have a better job market and pay worldwide and won't get automated any soon? Where should I learn the essential things on my own? I already know about OCW, but I have a feeling that it's not well-suited for people like me as it's often too extensive and time-consuming and there's no help with the material when you get stuck.
Please let me know what you think. Your advice's and comments mean much to me.