I'm 27 and just realized the benefits of a bachelor's degree

I'm a first generation student. My parents don't have degrees. The couldn't get into university in China and don't have the English skills to do it here. They would only pay if I studied what they wanted and I ended up with a useless community college diploma, which I accepted because I was naive enough to think any piece of paper would make me "employable." Like most Chinese I was terrified of debt and was too chickenshit to take out a loan to make my own educational decisions when I was younger. My "boyfriend" at the time wasn't into school and has been performing manual labour since high school. My drug addict ex had no degree. Of the "educated" people I knew, many were paying off debt with menial jobs unrelated to their field of study, whether it be economics or pharmacy or design or film, which made me continuously wary of school. Now I realize that was because of a bad economy and that just because they're not immediately working in their field, it doesn't mean they can't do it later.

The pandemic made me frustrated enough with retail work to go back to school to become something else and it has benefited me.