Why liberal arts?

You have used “English non-native” a couple of times. IME that has a pretty specific meaning, and I think it may be limiting your thinking. You are juggling a lot of pieces, so try separating them out:

  1. staying in the US (beyond a short, sanctioned period for those graduating from US unis) is essentially not an option for an international student with a freshly minted undergraduate degree- even in engineering or CS- because to hire you a company has to make the case that they cannot find any US citizens/legal residents to do the job, which is expensive and time-consuming. Odds go way up- but are still daunting- with a PG degree. Is living - permanently- in the US your goal?

  2. as several people have mentioned, your sense of career paths is more rigid than Americans tend to see them. Look how many “I don’t have X so I can’t Y” statements you have in your various posts- and how many times other posters have pointed out that actually, yes, you can get from X to Y. Right now it’s all theoretical for you. One of the things that (imo) the US system does better than the UK is the emphasis on internships and work experience, which gives you ways to taste-test different fields and the ways of working in them. You get a sense of what that work is like, but also the many and varied routes that the people at that place have taken to get there. @PurpleTitan’s reference to UI/UX (User Interface / User Experience) is a great example of where creativity, linguistics and CS all bump into each other. @juillet is a great example of what happens when you follow your interests. A study abroad paired with some internships might open some different ways of thinking.

  3. One of the Collegekids has ‘reverse engineered’ jobs that she would love to have for years now: when she sees somebody who has a job that she thinks she would love to have, she looks up their LinkedIn (or equivalent) info- and looks at how they got there. Years of doing that have shown her that a path may look sensible in retrospect- but it was in no way clear from the outset what way the career would unfold. You don’t have to have the perfect answer now- and most people do not. You are feeling the places where your current world doesn’t fit- but throwing it all out and starting again loses more than it gains. You have some hard-won experience to build one: focus on picking out what you want to keep, and figure out ways to build on those pieces, while minimizing the parts you don’t want.

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Thank you so much! sorry I was late to reply I was in an exam period - now that it’s over and I could breathe little better without the Oxbridge pressure, I took a step back and went after some personal enrichment, for example Harvard summer school which offers a sort of mini-liberal-arts experience. Also tried some C++ just getting started but can see it’s probably not for me.

Living in the US really isn’t my life goal - not even sure what that is. It’s just something that would be good if I could. If not then alright…I try not to overthink if that makes sense? Still feeling lost and uncertain but I’m willing myself to just try to take it one step at a time at the moment.

I can’t say how much I appreciate your advice. And thank you so much for listening.