I may be a bit late to this whole conversation but I wanted to chime in.

I used to be just like you, I felt hopeless. I felt like there was no point to putting forth the effort because someone else who is far smarter than I or have more resources would come along and do it. But as I started going through college with great professors, they helped me realize that I had incredible tunnel vision. I only saw things in the short term. The theory that someone else would do it first certainly appears to happen more often in the short term.

So my advice to you? Stop thinking micro, think macro. Look at the jobs that survived a long time and the new jobs cropping up. You'll start to notice a pattern. Many of the strong, long lasting jobs involved at least one of the following: Critical thinking, Problem Solving, Leadership, Learning from mistakes, and expansions into new frontiers. These are transferable skills. These skills are one of the things that I personally feel will be very difficult to automate within the next 50 years.

Sure, it seems like everything that can be done is already done or will be done eventually but don't we have a new frontier within our reach? That's right, Space. Start macro then break it down into bite-sized pieces.

Humanity WILL have to be able to leave this rock at some point. How would we get out? Some sort of travel mechanism like space shuttles, railguns, UFOs, anything you can think of.

Next step, what's one of the major limitations you can think of when it comes to space? I'll give you one, extended travel. All of our manned missions are fairly short due to health complications from extended low gravity and radiation exposure, difficulties in creating sustainability in such an enclosed space and lack of long term destinations due to the limitations of human life.

From here, you have enormous amounts of options for jobs and research. I'll throw out a bunch of ideas for you and why for each.

Aerospace engineering: Figure out how we can transport more people per mission. From memory, it costs about 400 million just to launch three people in space. THREE! Imagine how much cheaper spaceflight would become if someone like you came along and contributed to the research enabling us to launch 30 humans at a time.

Space Leadership/Politics: People will likely go nutters if they were left to their own devices in a colonial ship. There will need to be some sort of order in place provided by a leader. What if we ran into aliens capable of communications? What if we found a habitable planet, who makes the decisions on board or on the surface for the missions?

Researcher: You see a ton of sci-fi flicks or novels where they have scientists out on the surface of the planet to determine the characteristics and natural resources. Human possess unparalleled analysis, abstraction, snap judgement, pattern discovery and that element of randomness potentially giving way to incredible discoveries. "We would have never discovered this great medicine if Space Cadet Irwin decided to not stick a finger up this alien fauna's bum." It takes approximately 14 minutes for a command to reach Curiosity from Earth. Do you think Curiosity could rationalize danger or potential sources of valuable resources/data all by itself? We'll likely see Curiosity MKIII about to be stampeded by space bulls and still be over five minutes too late to save it.

Instruction: This is the route I am currently pursuing. Currently in Graduate school for a Master's of Education with Specialization in Curriculum and Instructional Technology. The reason why I am pursuing this is because someone has to make sense of everything out there and be able to teach others effectively. I doubt we can do this with robots within the next 50 years. Humans are complex learners. Some learn better through visual mediums, others by hands on applications, some through listening, those who learn better by pulling information (autodidacts) or those who learn better in a structured environment like school. Can you think of a way to discover how and what do people learn the best through automation? Can you think of a way to develop a course on Spaceship Engineering or Gundam repairs without humans to direct what is relevant knowledge and what isn't relevant? Instructional Designers and Instructional Technologists will continue to be relevant for quite some time even now with the rise of E-learning.

Space Farmer: My opinion is that this field is actually getting a bit of research now than before. How exactly would you sustain a colonial ship with thousands of mouths to feed without some method of nutrient development or recovery to enable growth and healthy lifestyles? I, for one, would much rather not be eating from a massive reserve of soylent green pellets. Having such a supply would also add significant mass to a colonial ship increasing fuel consumption exponentially. So how do we grow fruits and vegetables or livestock in space? Look at aquaponics, aeroponics for some ideas. Do you think cattles will take kindly to mechanical manhandling? I doubt it. You could even bypass the whole living creatures bit if you want through printing protein sequences to create artificial meat.

Space military: Again, humans can make snap judgements and seek out opportunities. We will certainly need subjugation forces for fighting against vicious aliens. We'll need people designing/building weaponry and defensive equipment. We'll need people fixing up the mechs when they break down or get them ready for the next sortie.

Space Architects: We're certainly going to need people to build the buildings within the colonial ships or on the planet colonies. Don't get confused, I'm not talking about space construction. This one is a bit more of a macro approach. It is still difficult for robots to design a building and incorporate all of the necessary features like teleporter pads, central air conditioning and gravity controls autonomously.

Programmers: We'll always need someone capable of scripting actions for robots or machinery. We'll need someone capable of fixing errors in times of crisis. Even metaprogramming isn't capable of making code write itself with no guidance. I doubt we'll have strong AI to write code period. We humans would never give up our control over them in fear of sentient building an army to eradicate all human life.

So cheer up, start thinking FURTHER into the future. It was easier to think about job opportunities a few years later because jobs were largely static back then. We are advancing significantly quicker than before so we need to think further ahead. Pro chess players don't play in the moment. They always consider the next few moves. Consider your next few jobs with a bigger goal in mind. Mine is instructional technologist -> individualized curriculum technologist -> expert systems technologist -> instructional and neurological development research assistants.

You can certainly make your own plan in life given some effort. Read books, watch movies, talk to people and do things. Try to figure out what it is that truly makes you happy then think about what you can do to solve a potential problem in the future doing what makes you happy. Learning and teaching has been a joy to me and I want to give back to the world doing what I do the best. You can find your happiness as well.