BFA in Filmmaking with a concentration in Editing and Sound Design.
Now I'm an engineer on the Watson Data Platform at IBM.
I went to a conservatory film school program that was crazy hard, and through senior year and afterwards I had a lot of cool gigs that sound great but didn't materialize into anything long term.
The story of why I switched is pretty long, but I can sum it up by saying that you really have to WANT to be in film to make it, and I found that I didn't want it badly enough, so it was time to change.
In the wake of the Great Recession, the only industries that were hiring (that I could see) were sales, medicine, or engineering. I didn't want to do sales, I wasn't really cut out for medicine, so that left engineering. I figured I was good at using computers, so I should give programming a shot.
In a few months I was at community college taking Java I, writing HelloWorld for the first time, and loving it. About a year later I transferred to Georgia Tech to do a BS CS. Georgia Tech was nuts. The CS coursework was fascinating but the project workload was insanely intense. I also struggled with Math because my pre-calc and trig fundamentals from high school were really faded after years away. Also while I was there I battled chronic illnesses (much better now!) and was trying to edit a feature length documentary on the side. I got through it, but not without scars.
All the sudden, it was time to graduate, and I emerged from the hell of illness and coursework to realize that I was the Belle of the Ball with all these companies. I went with one that wasn't trying to girl me into doing project management or QA. I started off doing data engineering and using distributed systems. I'm now moving to work directly on those distributed systems.
I thought engineering would be just a day job, but it turns out the training of putting shots in sequence to make a whole transferred well to building little pieces of code and putting them together to make something that works and is internally consistent. I've also found, like others in this thread, that spoken and written communication and constructive criticism in the workplace comes very naturally. Recently, I've discovered that with this film school training and years of elementary and middle school acting classes, I can put together pretty compelling talks. My higher-ups are actively encouraging me to pursue that talent.
Interestingly, one of my higher-ups learned to code as a kid but did a degree and an early career in photography before moving back into software. It's been cool to have a mentor that really understand where I'm coming from.
Many folks feel restricted by 9 to 5's, but I feel free. I have a stable income, a stable schedule, and the money and free time to see my husband, build friendships, be active in my church, go kayaking, and pursue my art on my own terms.
I've recently taken up oil painting, something I have no real training in, and and it's been amazing. I'm producing work on my own terms that's meaningful to me and there's no external or internal pressure to make a living from it or even to show to anybody.
Do I miss film? Sometimes. Do I have regrets? Not really. I'd be lying if I said I didn't sometimes feel like an artist faking it as an engineer or an engineer faking it as an artist, but part of the training is to silence that self doubt and just do the work, whatever the work might be.