To feel like I’ve wasted my life

Sounds like academia is your solution! Maybe take a bit of time out, to ponder your personal life and think about pursuing a career as a lecturer - win-win. You could end up applying to do a PhD scheme, where you're employed and funded by a uni, and you deliver some teaching. Look into it. I know the salary isn't great, but you would be doing something you love.

You are so so young with so many options in front of you. I started my current role at 44, which isn't related to my qualifications. But having qualifications is really useful as it shows that you can stick to something, plus have transferable skills. You will find your path in life, you have so much time. I didn't buy a house or get married to my late 30s. Life is long.

No, I can understand that. How did you find the actual study of the LPC? I thrived on the law degrees, because I'm more of an analytical person - as are you, clearly. The practical side showed me a world of snobbery and elitism, in applications for training contracts and pupillage.

Good for you OP, that’s great.

When you’re wanting to make changes to your life, breaking things down into smaller and achievable steps towards a bigger goal can really help to keep you moving forward while ensuring you still feel safe and in control.

So if packing up and going on a working holiday might be a future goal but something you don’t feel quite ready for yet, that’s absolutely fine, but have a think about what would help you feel ready, then make a list of those things and start planning to achieve them. From what you’ve said about yourself, a lot of this is about confidence and widening horizons, so steps towards that goal might be -

1. Go away for a weekend somewhere totally new by myself
2. Join the local Park Run and speak to at least one new person each time I go
3. Get back in touch with a uni friend and go and visit them in the city where they live for the weekend
4. Go to the next town over, sit in the pub by myself and have a drink, be open to having a chat with someone
5. Sign up to a singles event locally

These are all small things but designed to build confidence, develop your resilience and comfort levels in new situations, widen your social horizons and introduce you to new people and places. As you do these kinds of things more regularly, they become no big deal, and as you become more comfortable with doing things alone, meeting new people and putting yourself in unfamiliar situations and enjoying them, your self confidence and appetite for adventure and challenge will skyrocket and you’ll start seeing yourself doing all sorts of far more exciting things. Building up lots of positive experiences of being outside of your comfort zone helps you to see yourself as someone who can do things rather than someone who can’t - and also someone who makes life happen rather than waiting for life to happen to them.

I look forward to an update from you next year when you’re working on a yacht in the Mediterranean or on a farm in Peru 😊

Thanks for providing your husband's practice example, and his insight. I think he's spot on about the impact of advanced technology.

In a way, I know how you feel, OP.
At 26 I lived in a house-share, having worked for 3 years in a stressful and very demanding (but at the same time boring) corporate job for very little money. My monthly salary was enough to buy 5 pairs of average shoes. But everybody around me were telling me I've got it so good, because I had a permanent job (unemployment rate was nearly 20%). Nevertheless I was so low, angry and disappointed that I worked so hard for so many years for the kind of existence I had. I was also very, very lonely. Then 2008 crisis came and they froze our wages. It was then I decided I had to change something. After 2 years I left my home country and emigrated.
Today I have a job, but I am much happier with my own home and a family (2 kids).
Wish you all the best xxx.

Really hate the way our patriarchal society tries to make any woman over the age of 25 feel as if shes old and past it! It’s abhorrent.

Remember that today is the youngest you will ever be for the rest of your life. Just go for it.

Whenever someone complains to me about their age I remind them that growing old is a privilege. And it really is. My friend was 9wks from diagnosis to death. I’ve been reevaluating my life recently, as my youngest of 3 enters year 13 in a couple of weeks and will be off to Uni. I will be relocating somewhere cheaper (in South East) and so have been feeling a bit down that life is passing me by so quickly. But I also need to feel grateful that i’m still around.

26 is so young!!!! You've got loads of time to do different things.

I'm a boring 50-something who's always worked in education, but my sister has done loads of things - started with an art degree, then trained in stage management, left the theatre and travelled and worked in bars, offices, restaurants, then decided she wanted to be a paramedic and now is a lead paramedic with many years' experience, in her spare time went back to learning and got a 1st and a masters in paramedic science. She'd never have imagined doing that when she was 26!

Another friend of my age trained as a music teacher, then changed to midwifery, and now is a vicar!!! I think these days it's much easier for people to completely change career. Please don't think you are out of options at 26. Go follow your dreams.

@Cara707 I'm so sorry you feel like this. As a 52 year old, 37 now looks young and full of opportunity to me! I'm sorry if illness or other circumstances mean this is not the case for you.

@WastedMyPotential it's brilliant you will be a qualified solicitor, and the NHS job sounds good. Give it a try. I listened to a great Desert Island Discs today with a woman who had a law degree (I know not as involved as full solicitor training) but was a post-disaster planner/manager. She was amazing. The world is at your feet; you still have countless possibilities. Have the marriage and children aim but develop a job that is right for you too, just in case.

Bestie you will do it, one step at a time. Vienna waits for you listen to it by Billy Joel

I’m 26, live at home and have no chance of buying a house before I’m 30.

How can you have "wasted your life" when you've barely even started it?

You are young, in good health, intelligent enough to get a degree (or two), housed, and presumably supported in some other ways by your parents, in good enough health to study and work. And you have a degree in a field that can be fairly well paid, or adapted to working in many other industries.

I think the sad thing about women, is at every age, we feel old.

As we are told that women over 25 are going downhill.

I remember when i was 27 i felt old. Looking back i see i was so young.

I remember when i was 36 i felt old. Looking back, it was young.

Now im 41 and i feel a bit old, but i do feel appreciative to still be here

I've not read it all, but I felt this way till I was 31, I then got a job I enjoyed. The first three after graduation I hated. It might still all work out okay. Also you need a work life balance. Look at being a solicitor for a charity, or council, or a company that employs in-house solicitors. Private practice isn't for everyone.

You took the words out of my mouth. I always remind my best friend of a day we drove to get a takeaway and it was my 26th Bday and we were complaining about the fact we were the wrong side of our 20’s! Just ordered her 49th bday card earlier. A close friend of mine died at 57 earlier this year, and sitting at her beside day after day watching her life ebb away really did show me that life is short.

OP, with kindness, you’re 26. You’re so young still and most young people your age don’t buy until their 30’s. You’ll get there with a job you enjoy, and go on some dates in the meantime and enjoy your life. Life isn’t all about academic and work success, but relationships with others and finding job in the small things.

So much good advice here.

I guess that loads of us who clicked on your thread did so because your title resonated. It's a fortunate (busy?) person who's never had that sense of squandering the precious gift of life. Much worse to feel that though in one's 50s or 60s.

Among all the wise and useful words of advice it was the post from @EnidSpytonthat really touched me. Worth re reading.

Work is hard, life is hard and at 26 it just seems totally daunting having all those decades ahead of you. My daughter is exactly your age and although she enjoys her job as a healthcare professional it's tough going. Really hard to see yourself doing it year in, year out. So don't think that far ahead😉

Get out there (after tying up that legal qualification) Keep it in your back pocket. See how the NHS job works out. If it doesn't then try something else - season on a cruise ship sounds fab.

That old quote from Kierkegaard "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards" gets trundled out a lot because it's true.
All the best - you've got this💐

I did the same - hated the LPC and knew it wasn't for me pretty fast. You still have a valued degree and a lot of options open to you. I had accounting as an optional module (long time ago now so not sure how things work more recently) and that gave me exemptions for qualifying as an accountant, which I did alongside working. I went into industry rather than practice as I knew from law that working for a big five accounting firm also wouldn't have been for me. Been doing that now for 25 years and the money is good but I have had enough and looking for something else to do until I can retire........also bought some lottery tickets for tonight 😂

Don’t be hasty in turning your back on law entirely. The great thing about law is it’s so varied. If you don’t like the area / type of firm you are in you can move. I’ve worked in high street / mid level / magic circle doing criminal / corporate / now private client on my own. All very different. Don’t fling the baby out with the bath water! And low paid jobs can be stressful too - having an exacting boss as a secretary isn’t fun I temped as a student and it wasn’t an easy gig you’re better off rung the one with the secretary.

Also harsh truth you are likely to attract better men if you stay in a professional job - all the solicitors married each other (myself included actually) not secretaries.

So get into a different career!

OP, ignore the ungenerous comments. Lots of us know what it's like to invest a lot in a particular path and then realise it was a mirage, or that you were exploited as cheap labour. Salaries in this country are just too low. Highly-qualified and capable people should have better options. It's not unreasonable to feel dissatisfied. Having a 'normal life' shouldn't feel so out-of-reach.