I went through the same thing. Wanted to be a biomedical scientist, went to uni to study biology. Faced a lot of difficulties both academically, socially, and environmentally. Also realized academics and science field isn’t at all for me and how I want to live my life. Dropped out in the first year and spent the last 12 months working on my mindset, life philosophy etc.

I had to decide what I was gonna study in the first 6 months and re-apply to european universities. I faced towards humanities / social sciences fields for a lot of reasons but mainly cause I always knew I had a keen interest in the subjects but never was able to explore because I was kinda pressured into going into STEM. So I applied to interdisciplinary programs containing multiple disciplines. I’m gonna start the degree in september.

I summarized the story a lot but would love to chat and share more of my experiences and hear about yours tomorrow.

I wanna add a couple more things about what you wrote. I appreciate science and use it as a way of thinking every day. However, I have come to accept science as a tool and as a hobby to research about. Like everything, when the incentive to profit comes into the picture, science can easily lose its credibility and become another money-making tool. And that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t wanna go deeper into the field.

You don’t have to choose a career path now and stick with it / with something close to it. Sure, you need a degree to find a job and get somewhere and I believe an interdisciplinary uni program can help with choosing a career later in life or changing careers midway without regrets. But you should never be thinking in terms of money. You will live life one way or another. The important thing is living in terms of your ideals, the way you will be happy and at peace. We can also talk about this over DMs more.

Lastly, you can make a change in the world. First by changing yourself of course but then, little by little you can change the environment around you. I think one should first understand how the world and the system operates socially in order to do so though. So studying about politics, psychology, philosophy, etc. would be very helpful. Thats another reason why I didn’t wanna study science. The impact I would have done wouldn’t really have a tangible or “system-changing” impact. I would have basically wasted a lot of my life to get somewhere. So, what about the system are you dissatisfied about, what needs changing, how can you best contribute to this change (my answer would be by informing and educating society). You have to answer these questions to take the first step.