Yevgenia Shaffert, a teacher, journalist and book reviewer, talks about her decision to change her profession at a mature age and its consequences.
Every year at the end of December I make plans for the next year. I think about how much I will work and how much I will study. Will I spend a couple of months improving my English, or will I go to Pilates twice a week. I will go with my mother to Altai or with my son to St. Petersburg.
Over the years, these New Year’s plans have been very stimulating for me: it was nice to open the file at the end of the year and tick off most of the items. Then I looked at those points that did not come true, and realized that some things no longer seemed important to me, so I did not make enough efforts to bring them to life.
My 2020 ended in much the same way: I made a good list, which reflected “work”, “self-development”, “family” and other important things. But when I opened this list at the end of 2021, I realized two unexpected and important things. First: I did not implement any of the items on the last list. Second: for the first time in many years, I feel not just well and calm, but much better — I feel inspired and happy! How did it happen?
It was this year that, at almost forty years old, I dramatically changed my life, at the same time fulfilling a childhood dream: I became a student at a medical college
Looking back, I am diligently trying to reconstruct the chain of events and reasoning that eventually led me to the Department of General Medicine of the Berdsk branch of the Novosibirsk Medical College. What did I have by my 37 years? I graduated from university and graduate school. For several years after university, I worked at a specialized research institute, and then they called me to teach.
Working with students turned out to be quite entertaining, while at the same time I worked as a book reviewer: I wrote reviews and reviews of children’s books for the media. All life was centered around texts and their discussions. Sometimes I thought: “This is so interesting, what else can you dream of?” From time to time: “Well, where should I go next?” And then I suddenly realized that the work does not please me.
Why did it happen? I still don’t have a clear and definitive answer. There are three versions, each of which seems to be partly correct. Maybe it’s all about burnout. It is strange, of course, to burn out after working as a teacher for less than ten years, but after all, everyone has their own margin of safety. Once I even found a test on the Internet on the topic “Are you burned out?” and answered «yes» to almost all questions, including the question: «Don’t you think that you are doing unnecessary nonsense?»
However, I had some doubts about the test results. I never thought that my work was so important for humanity, but this did not prevent me from enjoying it. It’s just that at some point this pleasure shrank to a small lump — and I couldn’t help it.
Maybe the burnout had nothing to do with it, just at the very beginning, in my early youth, I made the wrong choice.
There’s a lot of talk these days about how choosing a life’s work right out of high school is a near-impossible task. Children enter wherever they can, receive a diploma “for mom”, and then do not work in their chosen specialty. And absolutely everyone is afraid of “losing a year” (how can you “lose” it if you are not in a coma?). Here I am: instead of immediately going to medical school, as I dreamed of as a child, I entered the Faculty of Humanities. And then there was no time for a change of professions: marriage, a small child who needs to be taken to the pool, to the circle and to the first class, other household chores.
Now the volume of these troubles has decreased, why not finally correct the “mistake of youth”? But here, as in the previous case, it is worth making a reservation. After school, my family supported me in any choice, and no one convinced me not to go to the doctor. I myself chose a different specialty, a different university, it was incredibly interesting for me to study, and I still love to learn new things in this area!
Maybe it’s not about me at all. The world has just changed!
None of us have to choose one single thing for the rest of our lives anymore. Today, a person can remain efficient and strong for a long time, start something new even at 40, even at 60 years old. No one is surprised by grandmothers in driving schools and Japanese language courses. Yes, and I myself, at 37 years old, was not even the oldest student in the medical college group.
This probably means that you can try several professions and realize yourself in several different qualities. Although there are «buts» and «ifs» here. After all, it is so easy to confuse courage with infantilism, and readiness for novelty with the inability to live a boring adult life. In other words: it is much easier for me to plunge back into the understandable and romantic “student life” than to try to figure out why I suddenly became so unhappy in my daily routine with its obligations and restrictions.
Honestly, it seems to me that each of these answers is a little about me. Perhaps a good psychologist would understand better. Perhaps I should have gone to a specialist from the very beginning, and not rushed to change my life so drastically, reset my career and a little the rest of my life. But so far, I don’t regret my choice at all.
Six months of training changed me a lot.
New knowledge and skills help to develop new qualities, and I like to become more determined, agile and fast. After all, the work of nursing staff is largely work with the body and hands, very dynamic and multitasking. Finally, I have a reason to practice all this. Medical knowledge blends surprisingly well with my liberal arts education, and all the speculative meanings gleaned from numerous texts are complemented by an understanding of the body and its mechanisms.
The new business inspired me a lot, and I am finally sure that this new profession of mine is one of the best ways to be useful to other people. As it turns out, this is very important to me.