This reminds me of my path: wanted to study EE because I thought that designing chips, working in a fab etc. would be cool, started studying EE and realised I w

This reminds me of my path: wanted to study EE because I thought that designing chips, working in a fab etc. would be cool, started studying EE and realised I would need to get a PhD to do the more interesting work (frankly I'm not smart enough to do a PhD), plus tepid job prospects in the UK. Ended up as a power systems engineer, which is the complete opposite in terms of scale from semiconductors!