I don’t have a story to contribute but I’m in my mid forties and from where I’m sitting 37 absolutely doesn’t seem to old to hit the reset button.
Also I want to remind Skald he promised to tell his story.
I’m 47 and if I could figure out what I wanted to do, I’d try to find a way to do it. In my current job, I do what amounts to a mix of accounting/auditing and social work. The pay is crap, which matters more as I get older, but I stay because I can’t think of anything else I’d like as well, nor any careers that let me combine these two things that I enjoy.
But I remember posts from you talking about how you’d like to do some other sort of work. And while I remember when I was 37 feeling like the old lady of the hills, I really wasn’t too old then, and neither are you. I guess the only advice I could give would be to think about what parts of your job you like, see if you can figure out why you like them, and then look at fields that include those particular types of tasks or projects.
Please keep us posted on what you’re thinking about; I’d like to hear how it turns out for you.
You want a story?
Picture it. 1979, Portland, Oregon. I have saved up all my money for about 18 months, because I am taking a sabbatical to live in Japan for an academic year. My first day in Japan was my 30th birthday.
10 months later I came back. I still had about $400, most of which was spent getting my small amount of stuff from Portland down to San Francisco. I did have someone to live with for the first year, but I paid my own way. Fortunately, I got a job right away at a good salary, at the newspaper (because I had experience). I intended that to just be a stop-gap until I decided what to do with my life.
29 years later, I’m still here at the newspaper. It looks like the paper may not be here much longer, but they’ll have to pry me out of here with a spatula.
Roddy
One of the things I find appealing about the idea of a law degree is that, at least from the outside, I have a number of diverse interests in the field: civil rights, intellectual property, tax law, etc. I think it all sounds interesting, though civil rights is the most appealing (though I think it’s also the toughest to break in to).
You would enjoy working in those fields and your job would be a reward unto itself. I would recommend that you go to a law school and hook up with lawyers in the field you’re interested in and ask questions. The school will probably have guest lecturers who would be willing to talk to you.
I imagine it’s a lot like consulting or investment banking. Those types of companies tend to grind through new associates right out of school and the assumption is you are going to stick around for ten years until your make partner or managing director (or quit after 2 years). I don’t know why it would be a big deal. It’s not like your hours decrease all that much as rise up in the organization. At least not until you make senior partner or something and can go golfing every weekend.
The only thing I would caution about being a lawyer is that a lot of people go into it because of the promise of big salaries and the way it is glamorized on TV. In reality it can be a fairly tedious and pedantic job and in my profession (litigation consulting / computer forensics) I meet a lot of attorneys who leave practice to sell software or become some sort of consultant. In fact, I promised this one girl I would call her monday to talk about non-lawyer career paths for lawyers.
I’ve reset a couple of times. Graduating from University, saved up $1500 and a one way ticket to China. 4 years later got an MBA and went to Japan with no job and about $1500 and a one way ticket. 7 years later, after clawing my way up from an entry level investment banking job in research onto the institutional derivatives sales desk, left after the 1997 asian flu and all my clients were bankrupt wrecks, I moved to Shanghai with no job and a wife that wasn’t ready to join me. 8 months later she did join me, I’ve had a pretty good run since then and we now have 3 kids.
I hope in this economy though that I’m not going to lose my job and have to reset again. I’ve got good savings but I don’t want to have to do that all over again. Especially since my youngest twin has special needs.
Jettboy, you gave me chills.
Here’s my story:
My father died October, 2003. On the day after Thanksgiving, I told my husband that our marriage was over. He was unemployed at the time, and I realized we had just started the holidays, but I told him that he had until January to figure out what he was going to do. I was 33.
He did nothing (shocker) so in January I literally threw a dart at a map of the United States and on February 13, 2004 (no way I was spending V-day with him!) I moved sight unseen to Denver, Colorado with only the items that would fit in to my little Toyota Carolla, an address of a roommate I had found on a website, and about $500 in my pocket - most of which was used to move out there. No job, no friends, no family, no furniture. I spent my first 3 months sleeping on a Coleman air mattress on a stone basement floor and I was happy, happy, happy.
I lived in Denver for 2 years - had my shares of highs and lows, but really found myself all over again. When I moved back to South Carolina, I was a much more confident person. Last year I met a wonderful man, relocated to North Carolina, found a wonderful roommate, and do not regret any of the changes I have made - only that I waited so long 
Note: When my ex-husband told his 2 re-married sister that we were getting a divorce so soon after my dad died, she suggested that I should see a doctor about maybe getting a prescription. I laughed in his face and said, “Okay, how ridiculous is the suggestion that I need to be on drugs to stay married to you? That’s a better solution?”
Tax law! Lemme know if you want to discuss what life is like for a big firm tax lawyer (short answer–pretty sweet).
I know a lot of people who have done the reset thing. I switched gears in mid-stream in my undergrad, which required taking introductory courses in my 3rd year, which resulted in a 5-year undergrad experience. A good friend of mine got her four-year BA in anthropology, then went back to the beginning to take some more introductory courses, and now (ten! years later) is about to graduate from midwifery school, and happier than ever.
Aside from those, ironically, most of the resetters of my acquaintance have been lawyers - they bled and sweated and cried their way through law school, assuming that the reward of practicing would make it all worthwhile, only to find that it wasn’t. (My dad was the most impressive one of these, he was a lawyer for ten years before realizing he’d really rather be a writer; he hung up his tie and has never looked back.)
However, the ones who remain lawyers are the best freakin’ lawyers around, because they knew what they wanted to achieve and were good enough to be able to achieve it.
The world of environmentalism contains a lot of people who have done it. I know a lot of people who started out in the industry they’re “supposed” to (often, achieving a lot of success), and then become environmentalists and switch gears completely, taking much lower paid jobs in non-profit industries or government, or becoming green entrepreneurs. It helps when they can transfer their skills over directly (e.g. going from working for a record company to working as a PR consultant for environmental non-profits) but in many cases it’s something completely unrelated.
This sort of cross-pollination is not only good for the person making the career change, but it’s good for the field in general. Everybody wins!
I don’t know anyone who’s regretted resetting, and I agree with those who say that mature students tend to get a lot more out of it than folks straight out of undergrad.
Sure! I don’t think I’d want to work for a big firm, but I’d be delighted to hear whatever you want to tell.
Well one of the things that you mentioned was being a librarian, could you maybe think about opening a bookstore ?
Declan
Good God, why not suggest she open a typewriter store? Bookstores are taking a beating along with newspapers and other print media.
Bookstores will always be around, if you want to try and go head to head with amazon on the digital side and borders on the brick and mortar side ,hey you might have a point. However she is looking at something new, librarians mean librarys which means books, it was a logical extension to think bookstore.
Even with the digital book format charging ahead, there is no garuntee that a chain like borders will survive anyways and people will look to a hardcopy bookstore just for the visceral feeling of holding a book, or browsing the self helps, book stores will find a niche somewhere in the food chain.
Declan
I’m a librarian, and I’d say go for your MLS, if it’s what you want to do. You don’t have to work in a library; what you’ll learn in library school will help you track down and organize information on just about everything, program computers and websites, manage small to medium organizations, and teach people everything from card catalogs to high-tech. Library school opens a lot of doors.
My starting over story. I grew up in tiny farm and coal towns in rural PA. I kind of thought that everyone in the world was just sort of miserable and bored, and that was just the way it was. That lasted into college. I studied something I didn’t really care for and dated a girl who I thought was “The One.” The girl turned out to be a cheating manipulative flake, and I wound up breaking it off, and the breakup was not quick or pretty. It was actually kind of traumatic on us both, and to make matters worse, I wound up with my diploma and living at home in the same shitty farm town I’d spent the past few years in before college.
As it turned out, however, this was a good thing. The shock and depression of breaking off a long-term relationship with a girl I’d almost proposed to combined with the boredom of busting suds in a hick diner (which was the only job available in that place) kind of forced me to step out of myself and take a look at the situation with disinterest. I realized that the life I’d been living in and planning for myself since the 8th grade had pretty much run its course and turned into an empty meaningless routine. I didn’t want to do what I thought I did, I didn’t want to date who I thought I did, and I finally recognized it. Three months later, I was in basic training, and the army TOTALLY changed my life. I mean, my old life and ties and background were pretty much annihilated. In Korea, I met the girl who did turn out to be “The One,” served my time, and had some fucking beautiful and some fucking awful experiences, all of which helped me forget the old life. A month after ETS’g, I married that woman, and that’s going on 13 years ago. I have yet to regret a single moment with her.
I can’t even really remember what life was like before the army. I don’t keep in touch with anyone other than family–and even my family’s been scattered over the years–and I haven’t been back to visit either my high school towns or my college since before basic. I just don’t have the desire; it was a totally different person who attended those schools and hung out in those towns. Just a stupid teenager. That’s not me anymore, and it hasn’t been me for a long, long time.
The funny thing is that on the few occasions I look back to those times, the person who stands out as the most influential is still that girl from college. I honestly believe that I have her to thank for shocking me out of my complacency and forcing me to take a hard look at the shitty boring life I was preparing for myself. I hope never to run into her again (and really, the odds of that happening by accident are more or less zero), but part of me will always be grateful to her for being such a psycho hosebeast. I’m quite sure she feels the same way about me.
i’m thinking of hitting the reset button myself. thankfully, i have more options than some as i am single with cats, in an area the house bubble is holding in.
just a few thoughts as i read through the thread.
a. it seems that you are leaning law/library.
b. if you are interested in civil liberties… there is a lot you can do now with out law school. one thing i was looking at before i got the work i’m doing now, was volunteering with the aclu.
see if there is a chapter of the aclu or league of women voters near you. so a bit of volunteering and you get your toe in the civil liberty pool.
c. you could also go to libraries and volunteer, see if that is your spot. check to see if there is a law library in your area. that would help you with 2 items on your list.
i’m figuring on knowing whether to restart or not by the end of march. i hope if i make the jump it works out as well as the stories above.
msmith537 and others are correct that accounting, law and consulting firms all like to hire younger graduates. One reason is that younger workers are, to put it bluntly, more easily exploitable. When a person is starting their first job, they are often filled with enthusiasm and naiveté. Everyone is convinced they will be the one in a hundred who will make it to partner, and are willing (and able) to work 80 hour weeks to prove themselves. If you are a little older, you probably have more demands on your time, and are probably a little too wise to work long hours with a low probability of payoff. So, the trade-off for the employer is someone who is more mature and with better life and work experience versus someone less experienced who can be tapped for many extra hours of work.
So, for those Dopers who have been passed over in favor of their younger classmates, bear in mind that it does not necessarily mean you are less qualified. Rather, it is because you are more mature and saavy. 
A word of warning: my dad was a civil rights lawyer for years, and eventually quit in frustration after dealing with one too many client who actually deserved their firing/eviction/whatever, and that it wasn’t because of whatever minority status they held. One guy in particular drove him nuts for several years in pursuit of fabled American justice, turning down settlements because he wanted to see the guy who’d wronged him imprisoned, which was never going to happen anyway.
Now he’s a legal editor and doesn’t have to wear a suit or go to court, which he much prefers.
I decided to reset my life when I was 25, but it took a couple of years to get it going. I went to college out of high school because it seemed like the thing to do, graduated with no idea of what I wanted to do, and spent five years working in the mortgage industry (HATE), depressed because I knew that this wasn’t the life I wanted to lead but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. It took awhile for the changes I needed to make to gather momentum, but I’m 30 now and working on my masters in public policy.
I went to college and completed a two-year law clerk program when I was finished high school, while most of the people I grew up with went straight to university. I got a job with a well-respected litigation firm right after I completed the program, was eventually promoted to senior law clerk after a few years, and was making pretty good money by the time I was in my mid-20s (when many of my peers were still in school still accumlating debt). It was great for a while, but then the stresses of the job began to catch up with me and the money didn’t seem to make up for the damage to my mental health. Even though I did exceptionally well in college, I was a total slacker in high school so I never thought of myself as “university material.” But when I was about 26 I decided to apply to the University of Toronto on a whim, and much to my surprise they actually accepted me! So I quit my job and became a full-time university student and haven’t regretted it for a second.
Whether or not it leads to a different/better career remains to be seen (I’m currently finishing up my third year), but the experience itself has been worth it. I sometimes cringe when I think about how much money I could be making if I didn’t quit my job (and how much it’s costing me to go to school, ugh), but at least I’ll never have to wonder if I can do it - now I have proof!
I guess my other point is that I was never really cut out for the legal world - you need to have a very specific personality to maintain that special passion for it, and after a few years it was obvious I didn’t have it. I played the game while I was there, but I always hated it. The hours are long, the clients are emotional and demanding, and the work can often consume you. I always tell people I know who are thinking of going to law school to think long and hard about what they are getting themselves into. It can be very rewarding, but at the same time the legal world can feel like a clique full of people who might as well be living on a completely different planet.
Good luck with whatever you decide!
I feel an obligation to share my experiences with hitting the reset button. Many people will give a “go for it, dude!” kind of answer when you ask about this topic, or tell stories about how they considered starting over, but didn’t, and encourage you to do so. Ignore them. They are not fully considering your situation. As I read the OP, I am struck by a couple of things:
- The OP doesn’t hate his job
- There is no clear plan about what to do instead, its Law / Pharmacy / Other
- The option of staying put and rejuvenating where you are has not been discussed.
I hit the reset button 10 years ago and left a cushy, somewhat boring job as a professor, and went back to medicine. It was a mistake, because I wound up working like a dog, spending more time away from my family, my friends and my outside interests and throwing away most of the seniority, respect, and useful knowledge that I had accrued in my first career. And I must point out that I’ve been extremely lucky - I’ve landed in one of the most interesting subspecialties within medicine - but many many times I have regretted the decision to hit the button.
If I had my time back, I would have stayed in career one, accepted that it was cushy, and slightly boring, and made something more interesting of it. I should have reinvented the job, and become one of those legendary professors that people talk about the rest of their lives. I could even have coasted in the job department, and developed extensive outside compensatory interests - something I have not been able to do for the last decade.
I caution you that starting over really is that - you throw away all that you have accomplished to date, and revert to “what have you done for me lately” status. The OP should seriously consider whether he wants to trade in the bird in the hand for the unknown birds in the bush. You may not like law, and if you find you don’t, clawing your way back to where you were may not be possible.
You need to find someone who can act as a serious devil’s advocate for why you should NOT switch careers, and only consider it if you’ve covered all the bases. There should be an overwhelming preponderance of causes for you TO reset - don’t do it if it’s a tie. I wish someone had sat down with me and made me really think about it - and argue about it - before I did it.