Hello Everyone. I am a 24 year old women in NYC. I have gotten my masters in Education and have been a middle school ELA teacher for almost 2 years. I am not working at the moment and I do not want to go back to the classroom as the classroom management is out of control and the leadership is not helpful at all.

I won’t lie, I am a good teacher, but I am not passionate about it. I felt that when I was in college, I started with business major, did horrible and switched to teaching as I had no other options (my college had some stupid boring ass majors no offense). All the other majors were useless. I just somehow wanted to pass college and get a job. Teaching definitely ended up being not what I expected it to be but I learned a lot. My fellow teachers will understand how draining it is and how it takes a toll on your mental health. Plus the workload is crazy with no work life balance.

I am trying to go back to school job as a counselor as I want to make use of the degree at the moment as I liked the one on one aspect of dealing with students.

I know you all are thinking I have made some dumb decisions but I had no one to guide me. I literally had to fall several times to learn my lessons.

Now, I have always been a fan of True Crime documentaries. I like watching and researching about school shooters, serial killers, Lone Wolf/Self Radicalized Terrorists. As in I like exploring their childhood, their motives, what made them change in a bad way, what makes them different from us, etc. I am always in this Reddit TrueCrime discussion group where I love to talk to people about it, having agreements, disagreements, the common patterns we notice and how their actions affects the general population.

So I was thinking since I finally found what I am passionate about, to the point that I am spending hours and hours researching on different cases, should I pursue a career on this. Some of my friends are saying to take time and learn more about this career path, another friend is saying I am just hyped about it and it will go away.

So what would you guys suggest?

**And if someone is a criminal/forensic psychologist here, how is the career path? Is it competitive? How are the courses? Is it easy to get jobs or other experiences? How is the stress and how risky it is to deal with criminals? What are something you didn’t know before but learned and realized after you started working? Do you enjoy it or regret it and why?