Recently an old co-worker of mine sent an email asking to interview me for a story she was writing on “Career Innovators” for a website called Quarterlette – voted “Top 10 Sites for Millennial Women” by Forbes. I am hardly a career innovator, so I asked her why me?
Jes (former co-worker) had recently left the job we worked at together to pursue her MBA/MPH at Berkeley and said she was writing a series on women who made bold changes in the early years of their careers to follow a dream. As soon as I heard that, I was in and answered all of her questions (and then some). I worked in public relations for 5+ years here in NYC, and for four of those years I was also going to school part time at NYU working towards my MS, RD. Although I worked in healthcare PR, most of the job was not nutrition or health-related but more your basic PR – writing (which I liked), budgeting (liked), client management (hated), media relations (hated), junior staff management (kind of hated) and a lot of passive aggressive females (hated so much). Jes was my co-worker for at least three of those years, and she definitely saw me at my worst. That is, a hot stressed out, miserable mess. The only thing that kept me sane through those years was knowing I was working towards a new career in something I was really passionate about, and every day that went by was one day closer to getting there.
taken just before graduation
I started classes at NYU in January of 2008 (!!) at age 25 and knew it would take several years to finish the program (prerequisites called “DPD” – basically an undergraduate degree in nutrition and dietetics – Masters classes and the dietetic internship). I also knew it was going to cost an arm and a leg, and although I made a decent living in PR, it was nowhere near enough to pay for school. I have always supported myself 100% when it comes to finances, so my options were: student loans and student loans. But I didn’t really hesitate – the pros of being in debt until age 125 outweighed the cons of staying in a career I hated FOREVER. I was able to move into my own apartment, pay my rent and save some money by continuing to work full-time while going to school part-time, which was key because I knew the time would come when I would have to quit in order to do the full-time, year-long dietetic internship required prior to becoming an RD. It was stressful, but I made it work. Still, I can’t even tell you how many times I felt so jealous of classmates whose parents, husbands or trust funds were footing the bill for grad school, paying their rent, etc. It drove me nuts when people with endless resources encouraged others to “go for it!” when it came to something really expensive like going back to school or making a career or life change. They just don’t get it, I always though to myself. Of course it’s easy for them.
This is the main reason why I was excited for Jes to feature me in her article. Money makes the world go ’round, and it often prevents people from really “going for it” when it comes to career or life changes. So does age – everyone has their own definition of what “old” is, but I’ve often heard that used as a reason for staying in an unfulfilling career or not pursuing passions. Even though I don’t have to start paying my student loans back until next month (and sweet Jesus, it is frightening), I like to think I’m a pretty good example of someone who decided to “go for it” knowing I wouldn’t be an RD until around age 30 and that I would need to make some pretty serious financial sacrifices and get some generous help from Uncle Sam (i.e., federal loans).
I’ll probably be making those financial sacrifices for the long haul as clinical dietitians are highly underpaid and like I said above, the student loan repayments will start next month. But as I sit here typing and think about the past six years, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love my job and my patients (most of them…), and am really excited about some new career opportunities coming my way. It feels like I’m almost in the position I had envisioned back in 2008 when I first set foot in NYU, and it would have never come to fruition if I hadn’t initially decided to go for it – finances* and age be damned.
The article Jes wrote was published last week here.
What about you? Have you had a similar experience?
*I know college students are accumulating massive amounts of debt, and I don’t want this to come across as be carefree and just take out all of the loans! Obviously there has to be some planning involved through the entire process, but federal student loans exist for a reason. I think a lot of it is what you make of it – know how much debt you’re going to accumulate and plan accordingly.