Damn shame, that. Programming is what got me hired away mid-college, into gainful employment that has buoyed me ever since, with only three months out of fifteen years unemployed since. However I’ve always maintained that programming is more art than science - it’s a creative act that you either have the knack for, or most emphatically don’t and possibly never will. (Which doesn’t stop some people from trying, to everyone’s sorrow.)
But in any case, you can say you don’t like money all you want, but you gotta pay the bills and cover the cost of that extensive lego collection that you’ll want. This means that you need to convince somebody that you have skills worth paying for, and be willing to put in the time doing the job you get.
So look at it from that perspective. You need a job, which means you need to be employable. Getting yourself to that point is the goal: be employable, doing something.
Have you tried working for the post office? Its hard to get in but when you do, you can go 2 routes. Work as a mail handler and basically work in a facility helping the machines run (mostly changing out bags and boxes) or start as a carrier (what we used to call a mailman).
Once you are in you can look around and try out for various jobs such as clerk or in maintenance.
Another is try at your local government like city or county. Maybe work customer service at the DMV or something. Maybe mow lawns in the parks. Thing is once your in you can try for better jobs.
Another is a big corporation like say Disney. Maybe you start taking tickets or cleaning rooms but you can move on from there.
So try the post office or your local government and see if you can get in.
I’ve been using Outlook in corporate environments for over two decades so it’s weird to me that you consider it obsolete. What do people use instead of it? And I really wasn’t thinking of scripting or programming skills at all but that someone should be comfortable using a PC as part of the normal course of operations. Now, I’m old, so perhaps all the young people today already are, but lots of people in the older generations are not.
As for the types of jobs, I’ll describe one. I worked for a company where I had to have stuff shipped around the US and the world. I worked with a small local freight forwarding company. I could call them up and tell them I had stuff to be picked up and they would take care of it. They’d deal with the customs paperwork as needed and arrange for the transport at both ends. Sometimes this meant moving an entire trade show exhibit from the warehouse to a convention center. Sometimes it meant a box of T-shirts to go to the overseas office. (Gotta be careful there, or the customs and duty can be expensive.) Once it required them to send a truck to Harley-Davidson headquarters (Milwaukee?) to pick up a motorcycle engine on a stand and a motorcycle that they were lending us to display in our booth at a trade show in Detroit. (We had sold them some software that allowed them to view their CAD drawings in 3D using VR hardware.)
So there are office people at the freight forwarding company who field these calls and make the arrangements. They know how to complete those customs forms, how to contact drivers, and know enough to ask if I need a truck with a liftgate (as I didn’t have a loading dock). Now you could go to school and study something like logistics but I’ll bet many people in jobs like this just get hired and learn on the job.
I think there are a wide variety of jobs like that, that the OP can get even with a degree in “interdisciplinary studies”.
Er, Outlook is pretty consistently in the top three email clients used on desktop computers, and I suspect that’s a lot higher in the business world, where Microsoft still has a strong presence. Similar to how everyone (including me) uses Word at work, despite it being garbage - it’s what comes on the box and its use is mandated by management.
Like…literally any. Any least any that take place in an office.
Companies use Outlook for email and scheduling meetings on people’s calendar.
Excel can actually get pretty complex if you are building financial models or performing complex analysis. Powerpoint is more “art” than “science”.
But these are all tools used in an office, not “skills” or jobs in and of themselves. Like, people hire roofers or HVAC technicians. They don’t hire a guy with a hammer or a bag of wrenches.
Alright, my ignorance has been fought, defeated, paraded through the streets to the Colosseum where it was publicly strangled in front of the Senate and the plebes.
The alternative to college is life. College is just a short pause on life to build your toolbox, make you a more well rounded individual, etc. before you take on life.
So Machinaforce, take the pause off and move forward with life. Billions of people are doing it everyday.
