You seem to care about the 'image' of a career, rather than the career itself. Perhaps you should seek some sort of counciling in this regard, it may help you be content with yourself and lose some of these superficial concerns.

Most people's reasoning for becoming an engineer is that they are interested in it. Read the off-topics for threads that involve 'how did you get started in electronics?', or what do you do? You will see that the posters got into the field because they are fascinated by technology, they loved to tinker! They didn't get into it for the wrong reasons.

Please don't take my words harshly,

Steve

 

I can't contribute a lot to the conversation except in one detail, the job market is rough for everybody. The higher your degree the more likely you'll get one. An associates isn't worth too much nowdays, so plan for the long haul.

 

You'll Never know until you try, and if you don't well...the regret may be worse.

Best of Luck on whatever you decide.

 

Remember, technicians implement what engineers dream of!

--Rich

 

I loved Forrest M. Mims books, what a great author. He really has a way of explaining things that seem complicated. I suggest you read every book you can find with his name on it. Build the circuits he has, I still do. My dad gave me a book the other day that i used to make my projects out of when i was a kid. i think it was the "Engineers Mini Notebook" series, and i had 1 and 2, i think he made a 3 but i havent made an effort to find it yet.

As you gain more expierience, concepts of how things work and integrate with each other form the building blocks to perform any task you could imagine.

It's amazing that I've sat at home and watched my dad play with tubes, then I get a little older and grab ahold of some transistors, (transistors later replaced most electron tubes in the 70's i think...idk, i wasnt't there lol), and then get on the family PC, which has a Pentium 4 processor core that consists of over 2 Million Transistors! and all of them together are about the size of a quarter!

I have thought for a long time about why i like to do what i do, and the answer is because electronics is always changing. from through hole to SMT, and SMT to the "nano-wires" and such. It's an ever changing field that always and will continue to have surprises as technology advances into the future...

Electronics seems boring to most, but it really is exciting.

Think of it like, you have the BIGGEST collection of LEGO's you could imagine with tons of special pieces, what are you going to build with them?