There’s probably a better way to ask this, but when I say calling here, I’m trying to describe a line of work that you find tolerable and maybe even proud of yet perhaps somewhat separate from other interests/hobbies/passions.
Separate from those only because anyone that’s turned a hobby or interest into work (or tried to) can tell you how that can spoil them if not careful. To put it another way, some type of activity you’ve found you can live off of and keeps your interest/clicks with you?
Bonus if it’s also led you to organizations that seem to regard you as a person.
I got called by a military recruiter right before I graduated high school. I had nothing better to do so I signed up to take the entrance exam. After a music festival and somewhat still drunk I took it and actually did very well. The recruiter told me I should go into the nuclear field. I said “ok”. Then they split us up into our rates and I became a mechanic after learning they spend the least amount of time sitting still (that was my only criteria). I thought the work was interesting and the nuclear power plant was fascinating to me, so I went to university after my stint was up and became a mechanical engineer. Now my specialty is project management in a manufacturing plant. I get to run around and climb on things and nerd out whenever I want and I love it.
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Make the change. I went from field, to desk, to lab, to field, to desk…right now I am a desk worker 4 days out of 5 and the other in the field or factory floor. This is a good fit for me.
The successful nuke, love to see it. MMN?
Yes, though I did end up as ELT. I left it out for clarity above.
This is a long story, but one that fits this question perfectly, and one that I’ve been longing to tell. I really hope you read it.
I went to college without any idea of what career I was building towards. All I knew was that I liked science. While I originally thought I wanted to study chemistry, my chem 101 professor was horrible and I failed the class. Meanwhile I LOVED my bio 101 class, so I changed my major to biology. I still didn’t know what to do with the degree, I just took the classes that sounded interesting and honestly really half assed my effort in them.
Every summer I would come home to my parents and work delivering pizzas because it’s what would hire me. But after my junior year I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore, so I went home for the summer with no job planned, and still no idea what I would do when I graduated the following year. My mom put her foot down and said that no adult son of hers would live under her roof without a job, so she reached out to people she knew and got me one.
I was put on a factory line for a cash register repair company. I was second in line. The first person would get a returned cash register and run some diagnostics to figure out if it had anything wrong electronically. Then he gave it to me. I would take out 8 screws, remove the plastic covering, and blow dust off with an air hose. Then I’d give it to the next person and the first guy would give me another cash register. Rinse and repeat. Eight hours a day, five days a week. That’s it. That’s the whole job. I’ve never been more miserable than when I held that job and it made made truly reflect on why I was in college and what I wanted out of life.
After about a month and a half working there, my cat came down with a bout of bloody diarrhea and I told my dad, saying he should take him to the vet. He told me that I was a grown man and needed to handle my own problems, so that Saturday I begrudgingly took my cat to the vet like the responsible adult I should have been. I arrived and was asked to wait as the doctor was behind on appointments, and I immediately noticed that the place seemed to be working on a skeleton crew. In the past I had thought briefly about applying to vet school after undergrad, but had written it off early in my college career because it seemed really hard and, at the time, I was content on coasting through school with minimal effort. But my factory job had put the fear of God into me over what would happen if I just kept coasting.
After a two hour wait I was finally seen by the doctor, and during the appointment I told him that I noticed they seemed under staffed and asked if they were hiring. It turns out they had just had someone quit unexpectedly the day before. I told them that I was most of the way through a biology degree and they asked if I could come in Monday for an interview, so I called out of work that next Monday. Even though I had no experience in veterinary medicine at all, they said they were willing to train me, so long as I was willing to put the effort in to learn. I went back to work at the factory on Tuesday and told them it was my last day, and I started my new job as a vet tech on Wednesday.
Immediately, I fell completely in love with the job. I worked the rest of the summer and they asked me to come back during my winter break. That job gave me a goal to strive for that I’d never had before, and with that motivation I went from a 2.4 cumulative GPA up to a 3.7 for both of my last two semesters. Unfortunately that effort was only enough to bring my overall GPA up to a 3.05, which is too low to really consider applying to vet school, so I went and completed a master’s in biology the bridge the gap. I continued to work at that same clinic part time through grad school, where I graduated with a 4.2 GPA, and then full time for a few years more while I applied several cycles in a row. Ultimately, I worked there for 6 years before I finally got accepted, not just to veterinary school, but to my #1 choice at that.
Fast forward four more years to today where I’m now in my final year of veterinary school. I’m on clinical rotations actually getting to work hands on with real patients, applying everything that I’ve learned over the past three years of education, and I couldn’t be happier. I’m only a few months away from internship applications opening up, and I’m already asking around for letters of recommendation so I can keep moving forward towards my even more recently found goal of becoming an orthopedic surgeon. And all this happened to me because one summer I decided I didn’t want to deliver pizza.
Replying mostly to let ya know I read this. Stories like these fascinate me with how eventually things seem to fall together.
Looking back it really does feel like things just happened to fall in place for me. I feel extremely lucky and thankful for it every day.
Congrats! Animal Ortho or human? I keep looking at the animal PT program but i think i want it as a hobby rather than a job.
Small animal Ortho! PT is super important but I’m not sure how you’d do it as just a hobby?
That sounds awesome. I do humans for a job. I’d like to learn animal and donate my time to shelters.
I had an injury that sent me to therapy. It looked cool so i went to school and now i work with kids with disabilities.
Coding just remained more interesting than most other things. The rare moments in “the zone” were like crack, back when I still got them.
Wouldn’t recommend doing it professionally though, it sure manages to suck every last bit of joy out of everything and turn it into something about as fun as dragging your balls across fifty miles of glass shards.
The ringing.
Have you gotten tested for tinnitus yet?
I got a master’s degree in the field and then applied to a company in a closely related field.
Two big events. I was about 6 years old and watching “helping” my dad attempt to fix his truck. He left and I looked inside. Saw the complexity of it. Walked away, laid down in the grass and looked at the power lines. I just understood that all these really complicated things existed in the world because someone made them.
The other was getting to uni. I wasn’t sure what was out there so I went to the department of labor guides. Made a list of the highest paying jobs with a 98% employment rate in order. Started crossing off ones I knew I didn’t want. Engineer was the top of the remaining so I choose that.
