How do you know what is your dream?

There is a chance that you aren't old or experienced enough to know yet.  Your profile says you are only 28 years old.  Most people have many dreams, and many people try to live or attain some of them.  I know you have dreams, or you would be too apathetic to ask this question in the first place.

This particular dream, since you picked the topic career, has to do with your dream job.  Now we have to try and pull the answer out of you, because that is the only place it resides.  So, answer these questions about yourself for me, and we will work on it.

What do you like to do for fun?

Do you like to to things with your hands?

Do you like to do things with your mind?

How important is money to you?

How important is your standard of living to you?  How high does it has to be to satisfy you? 

Do you have any hobbies, and if so, what are they? 

What do you know the most about that you didn't learn in school?

What did you like to study in school?

What jobs did you have that you liked and what did you like about them?

The longer the answer to each question, the better.  Get back to me here with the answers.  I'm sure other people will get involved in the discussion as we go along. 

Tal, the end of your post illuminates one of the conflicts I was trying to bring out with my questions.  The conflict between the realities of making a living with the goal of living life as you want to.  You have financial security on one hand (engineering), but even though you like it, you aren't in love with it.  You are in love with movie making, which is a highly competitive field in many ways, especially at the creative levels, but very hard break into.  You have the mental aptitude for many areas of film making, and live stage productions, which call for having mathematical technical skills, as well as the facility for language and artistic expression.

   This is part of your problem, that you are very intelligent on both sides of your brain, not just one as most people are, and you can't be satisfied with favoring one over the other.  This is a good thing in many ways, and allows you opportunities that most people or counselors don't ever consider.  You are not "off the rack" so the normal courses of study are not for you, except as a temporary step to a unique and personal end.

Now, lets go back to the beginning of your post.  You were rejected for cinema studies and had a failed relationship because of being uneducated.   These may both have been blessings in disguise.  You should be judged (in my opinion) on the quality of your character, not your financial or educational attainments.  Especially in your personal relations.  To be misjudged by someone reflects more on their lack of understanding of the true values in life than on the person being judged..  The fact that you accept this judgment demonstrates your lack of understanding of your own true worth.

   Being rejected for cinema studies means almost nothing in my country.  If you want to do something, you do it.  Many people study cinema and can not find work in their field, while others don't even look at a book or lesson and just go out and make movies.  I will grant that there are more opportunities in my country than most places in the world, but I believe the basic philosophy holds true:  You don't need someone else's permission to do something you want to do.  You don't need a formal education in cinema to study the field and be good in it, nor do you need permission to make movies.  You try it and fail.  You learn from your failure and try again.  You keep on failing, and gaining knowledge and experience, until you are satisfied with your work.  For most film makers this point comes at never, no matter how many blockbuster hits they make.  In art there is never an end, only a beginning.  I have seen low budget films and other productions that were great artistically and/or financially.  I have seen commercially produced things that were horrible artistically and/or financially.  In the world of art much is serendipity.  Circumstances and people come together and the whole is greater or lesser than the sum of its parts.

Sometimes  education gets in the way of, or detracts from, your interests.  Take sound engineering.  You used to enjoy it before you studied it.  And you worked in the field as a DJ, a practical application that most likely you didn't have any formal lessons in.  This kind of thing happens over and over again to many people in many different fields.  Formal education sometimes has the effect of sucking all the joy out of the area of study.  In my own personal case, I like to write.  I wrote for a newspaper in the army (as a ghostwriter/editor and with my own column and byline), and was considered very skilled.  When I went to college and actually studied writing, I got worse for a while.  I picked up some technical skills that I didn't have before, but the creative side of my writing was shot, and I developed an antipathy towards journalism that I didn't have before.  After enough years away from college I regained my writing skills as an art, and I was better at it with the addition of the technical skills I had gained in school.  While I never have gone back to writing as a way of making money, I did get into the field in a creative way that satisfies me.  Art is about art, not about money.  That is why I asked all the questions about money and standard of living.  You most likely can't have every dream you dream, but you can have most of them in some measure.

   While I was in college, I studied a lot of things that interested me as electives.  I took an acting class, I took a class in theater management, I studied computer programming and mathematics.  I took a lot of classes that were not directly related to my major, and in many I was the only English major that took that class, ever.  This is a suggestion that I would like to make to you, take only the minimum classes you need to take to stay enrolled in your field, and broaden your education into the fields that you think you might like to know at least something about.

   You will find many connections between unrelated fields that others don't observe for lack of knowledge.  For example, except for a few details that you may be unaware of, you are already a set designer in the movie field.  You have demonstrated that in your post, even though most people, including you, would not be aware of that.  The best set designer I have had personal experience with was a construction worker that went to college and studied to be a director in drama.  He had post graduate skills before he ever started.  He just needed to pick up on a few details of perspective and gain the experience of relating his skills to the field.

   I have to take a break from writing this for a while.  This is time consuming and I have things I have to take of.  I will post more later, and I have referred this question to another person that I think can be of great (and possibly more immediate) help to you. 

A number of things in your post show that you like and understand processes or algorithms (your liking of biology and history and engineering).  You have the ability to take a problem, come up with a plan or program that resolves that problem, and then see it carried out.  You can schedule work, people and events and enjoy seeing it carried out.  You like meaning in the things you do, not just working for money, and you like your work to mean something to others.

   The shortcut answer or easy answer would say, with your engineering skills and cinema desires, work in special effects in the film or television industry, or in performance art.  Set design and construction are also areas where you might fit in well with the skill set you have.  This is something you can possibly experiment with while you are in school very easily if your school has programs in the broadcast, performance or film arts.  Most productions take an enormous amount of volunteer work to produce in school, and I am sure that you would be welcome to work, even if you weren't enrolled in a particular program.

You will learn more by volunteering than you will in class, and it costs you no money, yet you still get to cite it on a resume (though ultimately I hope to advise you in a way that you never need a resume).  You will probably have to figure out how to reduce your engineering schedule and homework load in order to have enough time to work in productions.  I know from experience that they are very time consuming at certain times.  The practical experience will teach you the hierarchy of production for fields, i.e. chain of commands, for each field.  Example, for live performance theater, the building itself has a director of theater, a house manager, a box office manager, and each has assistants, plus building maintenance and security (which apply to all large buildings).  These operate continuously regardless of and independent of the performances.  The performances themselves have a hierarchy, as does everything else.  It would take too much time to go more into this, and you will learn it on your own soon enough.  That is the point of volunteering to work on productions, to learn all the general facets for free (not counting your sweat equity in the lessons).

   I think that after you get some experience (either in school or community productions if none are available in school), you will meet other students or like minded people who want to work on independent productions.  At this point, I think that you can possibly start on what I think may actually be your dream job - producer or director.  Most likely producer as you seem to be strongly in favor of making money, and producers make more than anyone else with the least amount of experience and education.  You could start now, if you like, but it would be helpful if you had an overall understanding first.  But go ahead if you like, and experiment with being a producer now.  You know you won't be successful at first because you don't know enough yet.  If you can learn quickly enough from your mistakes, you can succeed eventually.  I'm just pointing out the easiest path I can think of.  Not many people have the skill and temperament to be a producer.  It is not an easy thing to do, and if you involve other people in a production, they want you to succeed as their leader, or you all fail.  You don't want to let other people down, so you don't want to lead them blindly.

 There are many ways to make money with independent productions, and with modern technology you can avoid the expense of film by using video recording.  In my country we have public access cable, which is a free way of getting the use of expensive equipment and studio space.  If you don't have anything like that there, I am sure that you can still find the basic equipment you need by borrowing or renting it, or buying it used.  Or maybe you can find an aspiring film maker with the equipment in need of a producer.

However you start, your first films or videos are going to be low budget.  That doesn't make them bad, just cheap.  The more talent and skill you can put into it, the less cheap it will look in the final outcome.  In one of the most popular songs recorded in my country (by Buddy Holly, "Peggy Sue") the drum on the recording was an oatmeal box.  In every recording you find of this song you will be listening to someone playing an oatmeal box in a car garage, recorded by an old one track reel to reel machine.

Yet the song was played by almost every radio station in the country.

There are lots of contests and other ways to make money with film making or videos.  Television has an insatiable appetite.  Industrial training films and advertising are another market.  These are things you can get into while you are still in college with the local market.

I can't say that this is exactly what you should do.  The more experience you gain, the more you will be able to decide for yourself which way your dream takes you.  This is just what I think from reading your posts.  It may be that designing and building special effects is your dream, or set design and construction.  Just as long as you keep dreaming and trying to make those dreams come true, I think you will be on the right path.  And if it doesn't work out for you, you are still studying engineering, and you will have a better understanding of yourself.