Steph's Blog

I’ve decided to put the whole career change on-hold for now to devote more time to my writing. I’m currently working on a novel and am hoping to do more freelance writing on the side. It’s tough with a full-time job, but of all the various things I’ve tried in my life, I always come back to writing. That’s saying something. So, I want to allow myself the time to write and see where it takes me. Perhaps the career-change will be something as basic as that – to become a full-time writer. We’ll see, and I’ll keep you posted.

One annoying thing about going back to school to change careers is the prerequisite classes you have to take even before applying to degree programs. To become an OT, I need to take a laundry list of science classes and psychology classes. Of course, if you’re young enough to have taken these courses while still an undergrad and within the last decade, then you’re off the hook. But, I am not one of these recent grads and even if I was, I didn’t take science or psychology classes being a history and literature major.

Happy to say I got a 94.3% on my first pre-req, Intro. to Psych, and am now taking a Developmental Psychology 6-week class over the Summer Semester. I was happy to learn that it would only last six weeks, but when I read the syllabus and class schedule, I almost cried. This is no joke. I am supposed to log in five days a week for approximately two hours at a time. You’re probably thinking, oh, you can fake that, it’s an online class. But no, oh no, if I don’t put in at least 10 hours a week I will fall way behind. This first week, I have nearly 12 assignments already and 100 pages of reading to do. This is an undergrad summer semester course, are you kidding me?

The nerd, overachieving side of me wants to get an A in the course and the slacker, rebellious side wants to take short-cuts and just get a passing grade. I’ll find a balance somewhere in between, that leans towards the A because heck, I need some decent teacher recommendations and any scholarships that I can gather up to pay for a costly graduate school tuition.

When I type in the words “career change” into Google, a list of somewhat boring, advicey-type websites pop up. I do another search and add the word “blog” and I get more interesting results, but still mostly made-up of sites that offer advice. I don’t mind the advice, and it’s actually practical for me, but I’m searching for something more personal – a career changer’s account of how they came to the decision in the first place, what they did to go about changing their career, and how they felt during the whole process. You see, I’m seriously considering changing careers and like most big (and small) decisions in my life I research the hell out of it.

So, I figured why not start jotting down my own experiences so that others who are also looking to change careers can read about what one person went through. Also, it’s a way for me to organize my thoughts into one place.

I’ve been researching various careers for the past three years, mostly going online to read descriptions, and sometimes talking to people I know who are actually in those careers. It’s a mind-boggling experience, and very exhausting or exhaustive as I scour the Internet for clues as to what I would enjoy doing, while making a decent living doing it.

My decision to switch careers evolved because of many reasons, which I’ll explain more in-depth in a future post. But mainly, I’ve grown disinterested in what I do for a living and want to try something very different. For a decade, I’ve worked in different forms of media as a writer, reporter, editor, web producer, and account manager, to name the most prominent roles. And although I’ve learned a ton, and enjoyed some of the work I engaged in, I want to try my hand at a health career. After much laborious research, I’m looking at Occupational Therapy as a possible new career path. There are many reasons for this choice, and again, I’ll explain more in-depth in a future post.