u/Emmannoying

I’ve just graduated with my bachelor’s and plan to take a gap year before going for my masters (required for my field) and despite having a pretty well paid job for my area I keep having people try to convince me I need to look for a different one because I need to “use my degree”. Literally all of the related jobs that my degree would be useful for around here pay LESS than my essentially fast food job I have right now.
Technically I could go through some training to get a certification for some better paying options, but that would cost practically what I would need to save for my masters anyway and take way too long! It feels like no one around me will listen to my reasoning for keeping my current job and they just want me to “use my degree” like having a job that pays me less than what I already make is gonna be so helpful.
I get that there could be some benefit to working in related areas for more experience before my masters but my options are literally

1. Make less money at semi-related jobs that aren’t necessarily directly related to my field.
   Or 2. Spend even more money wasting my time going through a one to two YEAR program where I wouldn’t even get the chance to actually use the certification I would get from it for any real amount of time before the start of the timeline I wanted for my masters degree.

Everyone keeps touting about “oh well most people around here don’t have a bachelors degree you need to use it!” No one around here has one because there aren’t any jobs for them other than field-specific ones you need a masters for anyway! So they LEAVE!

Maybe this is a weird question and I am misunderstanding what I have read online, but it seems like in order to work at all as an SLPA you need to have the 100 clinical hours to get the certification, but the easiest way to do that is to… work as an SLPA? But you need the hours to GET the certification in the first place?

I am also annoyed because in my undergrad we did clinic work for 50 hours but they are telling me that those hours are basically useless for anything at all (SO WHY DID YOU MAKE ME DO THEM TO GRADUATE??? separate rant there, but anyway).

I really do not want to go through a school program for it because I am trying to save for my Master’s and I will not have time to work as much as if I’m also having to do that. Unfortunately I made the mistake of mentioning SLPA work to my parents and they seem dead set on getting me to work as one for better money but it does not seem as simple as that. Sorry for the long post.