Quarter Life-Crisis Compounded

     “I made 6 figures but hated what I did, so I quit and started taking classes towards medical school. Did I do the right thing?” This was the first thing out of this woman’s mouth after she plopped down in a chair across from me. Her eyes were as big as a teacup Chihuahua and her fear was so intense I wondered if we’d need an extra chair at the table for it.

      I’m seeing an influx of people using the current economic tidy-bowl as a good excuse to explore other career options, or adopting a wait-and-see mentality towards the working world but planning on jumping ship when the world stops spinning. Some economists have compared this mentality to an ostrich with it’s head in the sand. I don’t see it that way at all.

     Investing in yourself is always worth it. Education enriches our lives but know when to say enough is enough. When to stop pushing towards the next brass ring and then the next brass ring and then the…. You get the picture. When is enough enough? How can we find the joy in what we do instead of looking for it over the next hill?

     I questioned the worried student and it turned out that she had always wanted to be a doctor and after a slew of department layoffs her workload had increased to epic proportions. With each load of extra work dumped on her office desk her job satisfaction decreased.

     It's true she made a rash decision due, in part, to pressure building up within her. Hindsight being 20/20 she could now see the reasons behind the decisions she’d made. The choice to quit her job and enroll in the first few classes on the road to medical school made her realize that she hated those classes. At the same time the more she learned about medical school and the medical profession as a whole, the more she learned those things weren’t for her.

     Finding our bliss is hard. It can be even harder during the nine to five grind. Inaction in the face of a problem we know a solution to increases stress. The lesson here is to start planning on a new career, if that is what you truly want, but, make sure to take a few steps along that path before doing anything rash. Just to make sure the road is pleasing.

     And the woman sweating through premed classes? We explored options available to her and looked at what it was she loved to do, which was something she should have looked at first thing, and she eventually started a PhD program in literature. Which at last report, she was gleefully along the path towards and loving every moment.