Career Advice?

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So here's the deal: I don't have any marketable skills. Yes, I should go to school.

However, my dilemma is that I am not sure what I want to go to school for. I have deep interests in philosophy (especially philosophy of religion, though I am moving on from that) but philosophy is probably not a good career choice, as the jobs in that area are few and far between. I love logical thought, I find it a joy to learn about things like the Monty Hall Problem (google it).

That said, I thought it would be a good idea to take a peek at what like minded people have gotten into. So, if you like what you do, tell me what it is.

I recommend a computational kind of science like computer science, computational neuroscience (my study), computational XYZ science, etc. These involved lots of logical thought.

Accounting. That's logical.

Do you have to go into debt if you go to school?

It may be better to get a job that doesn't require a degree.

Higher paying jobs that require a degree typically involve a lot of social interaction--even jobs like engineering and computer programming.

Systems Analysis can be interesting and requires logical thought. Most of the time, you work with very logical people (i.e. the engineers who build what you design/define and the testers who do verification). Occasionally, you need to work with people who aren't so logical (i.e., the users of the software application). Then, sometimes, you need to work with idiots (i.e. the managers). The key is to avoid the idiots.

As a note, I don’t know if it’s a special interest, but I have been enamored with computers and software ever since I was quite young. I still remember my Mom taking me to the Lawrence Hall of Science, where we got to play games on their mainframe computers. Then, when I was in elementary school, one of birthday parties was at a place that had a time-share computer. We go to play computer games the entire day. Fun! Then, I took my first computer class as a Freshman in High School (which was pretty rare, back in the late 1970s).

Why am I telling you this? I would advise you to follow one of your (special) interests. It makes work so much more enjoyable.

I like what some of the other posters have said - accounting (that is the major I graduated with), engineering, computer science. You could always take a minor in philosophy. If I saw interviewing someone with an accounting or computer science major and a philosophy minor, I might throw a curveball and ask, "I noticed you took a philosophy minor in college. Why did you take that as a minor and how could you see using that at our company?" I think it would be an interesting major/minor combination. Having a philosophy minor tells me that you should be someone who express your ideas well and can critically think on different concepts and ideas within philosophy - by seeing things from various viewpoints. That translates into other areas outside of philosophy.

Computational neuroscience? Thank YOU for bringing this up. I have not previously heard of this, but it sounds way interesting. Is the job outlook in this career good? Also, any links you can post so that I can learn more about it would be helpful.

You could check out this online course: https://www.coursera.org/course/compneuro

Also wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_neuroscience

You can build comp model of a brain function from basic principles, which I think may appeal to your logical thought processes. People in this field study diverse topics from neurobio to cognition to artificial intelligence, all with clear logic of math and computation. This field is part of the growing field of brain research, and involves developmental of advanced comp skills, so I think it is a good area careerwise. There are many apps from human brain function to brain disorder to machine vision of rovers on mars.

I was working System Analyst for the international airport IT section. The fact is while the job itself seems to be logical and you are required to give logical result, you could spend huge amount of time speaking on meetings with illogical people from outside IT, future users of the software system, and this is often your duty to find out how their needs may be implemented in tech specification of the future system. So if you gonna be a System Analyst you should search for companies with more logical environment - by replies or by personal experience.

Agreed. The environment is critical. At my current contract, most of users are people with scientific backgrounds. It would suck if the users were all sales people.

I was a CAD manager, which I loved, but, there is a lot of lying and nepotism and bigotry in the construction industry and I don't really want to go back, too much "this is how we've always done it" and too little "what's a logical approach that would improve this?"

I'm now a "system specialist", so, I'm a system admin, doing software upgrades and customization and tech support, all within my single small department.
But, I also get to analyze the data, suggesting process improvements and better reporting to inform our decisions. It's quite cool.

Observing my users is interesting. They may not make much sense to me, but, I can learn their behavior, then program my software to close gaps (and prevent them from repeating mistakes).

I'm still struggling with a couple users who have emotional responses and say "I'm frustrated and I can't get this to work, let's ditch it for some other software." Because pointing out all the reasons they are wrong would backfire pretty badly. Lol.
I have to find positive ways to raise the profile of my system to keep it and me front of mind as the right way or the best way, so leadership will shoot down other demands.

I would agree with others; if you like computers, there is a high need for that and companies are starting to hire people with ASD just for that.

You could try sociology or anthropology.

My favorite professor from my undergrad school defined sociology as: A discipline for people who are interested in social issues but don't necessarily want to do anything about them. I would say that sociology is the new philosophy. Especially the critical studies genre. It assumes that anything you're studying is a social construction. For example, critical autism studies tries to gain a deeper understanding of autism by first recognizing that "autism" and "disability" are human inventions. Who is to say that one brain is better or more normal? Who exactly fits into this definition of "autistic"? You can critically study anything.

Anthropology is more of a removed, observing science. You can do an anthropological study of people in a coffee shop, just by writing down and drawing everything that happens around you. It's another way of deeply studying social phenomenon.