Overthinking my future and academic major! Advise me please

I'm a second year data science student and I'm starting to regret the choice I made. Lately, I've been overthinking a lot about my past decisions concerning my academic path. Btw, I'm not from UK, I'm from another country.
When I graduated from high school, I took all the entry exams to different schools and unis and I ended up with two admissions: medicine and a bachelor's degree in data science. Let me explain to you how I used to see things at that time: first of all, during high school, I never thought of becoming a doctor or an engineer or a dentist or a business manager... I never imagined myself in a certain position. I was just studying hard and getting good marks while enjoying most of the subjects. But when I finished high school, I wanted to go for something unconventional and unsual at least in my environment especially that I'm a girl and in our society, girls are always associated with certain jobs such medicine, nursing, assistance... But never with the tech field, and in my family, there's no one majoring or working in the tech field so that's why I wanted to challenge myself and go for data science for the following reasons:
- challenge myself
- prove that women can succeed in tech
- flexibility, possibility of working remotely...
- study my master's degree abroad
- work and live abroad
But I never went and looked for the subjects I'll be studying or the salaries in my country... And I always ignored the hiring process and the stress, frustration and mental breakdown it might cause.
I don't do side projects besides my uni courses, I don't read or follow news about tech, I find myself taking too much time to understand and solve the coding problems and I realize day after day that I didn't develop a lot my critical thinking and complex problem-solving skills that a every single person in the tech field needs.
Also, next year I'll be graduating and I'll have to do after a master's degree but I don't know what speciality to choose and one of things I planned when choosing this degree was doing my master's degree abroad but now I'm overthinking it too cause I'm afraid of going alone... Right now, I just wish I did medicine from the beginning to avoid all of this chaos and mess I'm doing with my life. If I did medicine, I would have stayed next to my family, secured for sure a job after graduation (whether working for public hospitals or opening my own medical office), gained people's respect and validation, maybe loved what I'm studying (bcz I used to like science and biology and get good grades in it) and worked hard bcz I've always been a hard worker in high school. My dad tried plenty of times to convince me to go for medicine but I didn't listen to him and whenever he's talking about a certain doctor he visited, his eyes brighten up and he keeps telling me you could have made that amount of money just in a week...
Even though I see people in data science have good careers and working on themselves, I doesn't get inspired and my mind prefers sticking to regret and making me feel down and useless.
I don't know what to do now, and this situation is making me sick and scared day after day. I'm always sad and crying and I've lost motivation to live. Even though, I got out or go to the gym, I can't help but keep thinking about my future and my worth!!!!
Please I need your advice!!!

Reply 1

hotpud

You don't get respect and status simply from studying medicine. You must earn that and it can be done regardless of what you do.

What you you enjoy? What makes you happy? Do that! If being close to family is important then focus on that.

Life is simply about having a set of choices to make. There is no such thing as a bad choice. You simply end up with a new set of options. The only difference is they might not be the options you thought you would have. But every situation can be turned around. You just have to keep looking forward rather than regretting the past.

Good luck.