Trust me, interest over money.
I'll demonstrate with a real-life example:
You know Singapore's facing a shortage of lawyers right? Many
people are leaving practice, that is, not migrating overseas, but
quitting the legal industry in its entirety.
Alot of Si-Ginnahs take law because it's supposedly a very glam
career; they enter law school, and find these huge stack of reading
to do - cases, history, legal theory blah blah blah blah blah -
from UK/AU even US/EU, and massive amounts of work and research to
do - not particularly interesting as well (even to lawyers today).
Very few people will actually step forth and say "I like law. I
like doing my readings. I like being in this adversarial
environment.", while meaning it. The reasons reported in our mass
media is that lawyers are underpaid, and overworked. Then again, we
know SG's media is never honest.
Law is one of those units, whereby Singaporeans receive no exposure
in their prior education - misconceptions arise from TV/Games (...
Pheonix Wright - what a load of bull****) etc. Everytime I hear
someone go "law .. wow" I think to myself "mmm, another "ignorant
being"".
Likewise, so is design. What makes you think designers don't earn
good money? Don't let archaic thought misguide you. I did law but
my sister went on to do design. Her prints have made it into
magazines, websites and clothes. Sure the money is not as good, but
hey for an under 30 year old girl to be able to live in her own
flat, drive a small car - I think that's pretty impressive and I'm
damn proud when I see her work outside - I point to my colleagues
and go, see that - that's done by my sister. Now she's playing with
the idea of doing architecture (which she is going to fund
herself). So it's never the end of the road even if you find you're
in a course you don't like.
Mind you, every career has its flaws - for law, you hold yourself
out to the chance of being sued by even your own client
(professional negligence), and when that happens, you might lose
your entire career. Disciplinary cases don't attract the attention
of the news, but it's not uncommon for lawyers to lose their
licence to practice over the smallest oversight like forgetting to
do this etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not putting law down; many people I know
have rewarding careers, but just as many have left to pursue their
interests - I'm just drawing an analogy to your dilema. Do you
really want to work 15 years before coming to the realisation "EH
SHIT! This is not what I want to do - I hate this" and then start
from scratch? Do you really want to be in the position whereby you
go back to drawing peanuts?
If you really want a rewarding career, do medicine. I have yet to
meet a single doctor who even dislikes their career. 12 of my
friends went on to do medicine; you never hear them complain, or
hear stories about how their colleagues complain about their
careers - only the long hours; as compared to law - I'm surrounded
by people moaning about their jobs and how much they hate it (in
Singapore, and now overseas where I'm based).
