Lemmy, I have completed tens of modules across several different universities. I have been course-hopping for long enough that I’d have a bachelors degree by now had I found and stayed on a course that suited me. I can’t be asked to commit to one and study it for yet another 3 years before I get a degree*. Yet I feel like all of the effort that I have expended up to this point will go unacknowledged, just because it was spread across several unis and doesn’t fall into any of their pre-defined study plans. I am a person driven by short bouts of intense curiosity of the type that dives down Wikipedia rabbitholes**. I want to do a highly qualified job but am failing to fit in to the rigid framework that academia sets you. I have several Master’s theses that I’d start researching tomorrow if the system let me. Yet without so much as a bachelor’s I might as well go work in a supermarket. How do I move on from here?
*Perhaps it’s also because I’m now in my early 20s and finally want to have some time to explore.
**I am a logical thinker and predominantly interested in STEM topics.
I have recently told this to a niece in a similar situation: I was also in a situation like that, and I wish someone had told me to just go work for a year or so, you can go back to studying after. At worst you earn some money, while at best you earn perspective and figure out what you really want (and earn some money).
At best you stop accumulating debt for a while until you have a better reason to do so.
This makes sense for most people, but OP sounds like the type of person I am: leaving school for a year meant leaving school entirely. Because getting back to it is hard.
I would suggest sticking it through and talking with an advisor to get on track and prevent any more deviations from the path. Just getting it done would have served me well in my early 20s and it wouldn’t have taken me 9 years to finish a Bachelor’s.