My wife quit her job and signed-up for medical school to fulfill a childhood dream of being a doctor. We moved to a new town in the UK with 6 weeks’ notice and not knowing anything about it, just a couple of weeks after we got married.
I was on two months notice at work, so I had to resign without anything definite lined up and hope that something turned up before we had to move.
Wife is now in her final year and will graduate next May; we have a little house with a big mortgage, a beautiful 2y/old daughter and I’m in a job I enjoy, so it’s worked out really well.
I quit my job as an academic psychologist to go back to graduate school to retrain as a clinical psychologist. Went from a decent income to no income. Haven’t regretted it at all.
Moved countries and continents without anything more secure lined up than a room to rent, and moved in with my new-minted partner about a month after that.
That was five years ago. I’m still here and we’re still together, so something went right.
I suppose I’ve done some things like that, in a minor way. I’ve certainly quit jobs with no prospects.
But I’ve known three women with the same story. They don’t know each other in any way, and are of varying ages. In each case, when they were 17-18 years old, their parents dropped them off at Wood’s Hole in Massachusetts, bought them a ferry ticket to Martha’s Vineyard, gave then maybe $100 in cash, and said “See you in September.” They had to find lodging and jobs immediately. And they all described it as the best summer of their lives.
In fact, every year I meet any number of young people there (and in Boston) with more or less the same story, but they’re usually from Ireland, Poland, Czecho, or the Ukraine.
First one: Right smack-dab in the middle of the sub-prime crisis I quit a very good-paying job because of the Boss From Hell (I’ve written about him here before). Ended up working out in the end when the BFH got canned, and they hired me back to take over his position.
Second one was letting a co-worker know that I was very much into her. I’ve dated co-workers in high school and all, but in 10-15 years of being a manager, it was the first and only time I’d done anything that potentially stupid (not only was I a manager, she was a direct subordinate).
Worked out for the very much better. We’re still married.
#1:
Back in college, I dumped my longtime (3-yr.) emotional drama-llama of a boyfriend. Dumped him for one of his closest friends. Right before the two of them were supposed to move in together, and had already signed a one-year lease. Literally, a couple of weeks before they moved in together.
That year was Pure Hell. My newly minted ex was never all that rational (did I mention that he was an emotional drama-llama? yes?) but having to live with the guy who “stole my woman!1!!” :dubious: while under his very nose our relationship was blossoming brought out the very worst in him. No surprise there.
The timing was awful. But getting together with My Other Shoe was the best thing that ever happened to me in my whole entire life. Getting rid of that sleazy ex of mine was easily in the top five, too. (Guy was an asshole under the best of circumstances. But I was young and stupid and thought he was hawt. Until I got to know Mr. Horseshoe better and learned what true quality in a human really meant.) #2:
Telling my mother I never wanted to see her again seemed risky and crazy at the time.
Turned eighteen and moved to another country to attend university on a full academic scholarship without knowing a single soul within 1000 km. I brought my clothes and a quilt and I built a new life.
It worked. I graduated four years later with highest honours, a translator’s certificate in Russian, and an offer of another full academic scholarship, including stipend, to graduate school two provinces away. Where, again, I don’t know anyone within another 700km, or so.
To be fair, it was incredibly difficult and painful, the absolute hardest thing I ever had to do. I lost many friends and a lot of family support and it took a long time to recover just from the experience of feeling so utterly alone. It was a real kind of shock, and I sacrificed a lot for it, including all that fun stuff most seniors get to do. At the time I was deeply bitter and cried every day. I still don’t regret it, I’m just saying it wasn’t like achieving freedom was as simple as moving out. It didn’t get better right away – it got worse. A lot worse. It took a long time, as in years, for me to work through all that stuff. I still have to deal with it on some level. But you could argue I would have been equally as messed up, or worse, if I’d stayed.
One thing though… regarding that full-ride scholarship, I would have never received it unless I had run away from home, because the scholarship was for people living in the town I moved to. I had already got my financial aid package which included grants and scholarships but not full funding by any means, and then I changed my address to my new location, and only a few weeks before school started I got a revised financial aid award notice with a four-year fully funded scholarship. I never applied for the scholarship… I’m beginning to wonder if someone on the faculty of my school applied on my behalf.
I’m not a superstitious person, but I always had a sense of guardianship at my university… when I had to reduce my courseload and then withdraw due to depression and then apply for re-admission two years later, the director of Financial Aid himself made sure I was still fully-funded even though I no long applied for the original scholarship. I didn’t realize it until later, but he made sure I got what amounted to $70k in free education. And the only thing he kept telling me was, ‘‘You don’t need to be worrying about money at a time like this.’’ When I got into Penn for graduate school, and realized I could actually afford it because of how little debt I had from undergrad, I wrote him the most gushing thank you letter I could come up with. I think I ended up by saying that I would never forget the name Doug Fletcher.
That’s not even counting the Board of Admissions in my program who re-admitted me not once, but twice… seriously, I got crazy lucky, on levels that I maybe wouldn’t even call luck. I’m not talking about some tiny liberal arts college, I’m talking about the University of Michigan where there are 50,000 students. Somehow they took care of me. Now people maybe understand why I am so obsessed with the awesomeness that is my alma mater.
So I guess when you put it all in context, being bitter over the hard times doesn’t make as much sense. It all worked out. But it would take me a long time to see that.
I sold all my things except what fit in two suitcases and a box, took my son and moved to Australia to marry a guy I’d known online for about 10 years, on and off, been to visit once, and been in an LDR with for about a year.
That was seven years ago, and life is fantastic, best decision ever. Better for my son, better for me, better for my husband.
But so very, very scary. I honestly have no idea (and didn’t then) what I’d have done if it hadn’t worked out. First time in my life I’ve risked it all with no backup plan. I don’t know if I can do it again.
Other than that, I started law school this year at the age of 41, and this is a pretty big adventure, too.
Did anyone ever take a huge risk and have it turn out badly? Why are the responses here so universally positive? Do people not report when it turns out awfully or is taking risks the secret to being happy?
torie, I suppose it’s because even if things didn’t work out the way you wanted them, good things happened along the way.
When I was 22, I lit out from California because my life was in a rut and I had gotten a harebrained scheme about how I was going to do a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. So I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I’d never been in my life, didn’t know anyone, and didn’t have a job.
I met people, got a job, did okay.
And then I didn’t get accepted into the program. So that failed.
Sort of adrift, my friend (whom I’d never met in person) and I were chatting online one day and we had the following conversation, which I swear I am not summarizing at ALL, it really went just like this:
Me: You want to move to New York?
Her: I don’t know, that’s really far away*.
Me: How about Chicago?
Her: Okay!
So we moved to Chicago and were roommates for a year. She got married and still lives there. I went into the Peace Corps.
And now? I’m finishing up my master’s degree at the University of Michigan. (NOT in Middle Eastern Studies.)
So it all worked out in the end. Or something. Lessons were learned, experiences were had, even though it didn’t go the way I had imagined it.
Yes and no? My first marriage was a huge risk - I wrote an Any Servicemember letter during Desert Storm 1, he wrote me back, we had an LDR, we got married.
Obviously, that didn’t turn out so well, but it took at decade for us to divorce. I regret it NOW, sure - but I didn’t then. I have my son, which makes up for everything. I mean, yeah, in hindsight it was a huge failure almost from the word go.
But Kyla is right, things happened along the way. Even if this relationship goes awry at some future date, I moved here, I live here, I’ve done things and seen things I wouldn’t have seen or done if I hadn’t taken the risk. Same with my first marriage. The point of the journey is not to arrive, as my favorite band says.
People are notoriously poor at assessing risk, so maybe most of us can’t really tell the difference!
For me, I was trying to pick something in my life that was more out of the ordinary from most people’s experiences. And, of course, it hasn’t happened yet, so it could still blow up in my face.
I graduated college 5 years ago and have a job in IT that really just isn’t for me (IT as a whole a bit, but it’s specifically this job in this department where I’m at). My husband is in IT and it’s a good fit for him, but he understood that I’ve been unhappy.
So I applied for grad school and was accepted into the Masters of Historic Preservation program at Eastern Michigan (they were the founding HP program back in the 70s). I’m quitting my job and going full time. I’ll have a part time job and we have my husband’s income, but it’s scary. It’s also scary being contrary to what my mom wants me to do (even though I’m 28), because it’s almost like I’m letting her down.
And I feel bad that I’m just dumping crazyjoe, whom I met here and actually was the one who told me about a job where he worked (which is where I’m at now); now he doesn’t have a “work girlfriend” he can talk to his wife about.
Well, in my case, it was because I misread the original post as asking specifically for positive outcomes, which on closer examination of the text isn’t strictly true.
I took a huge risk once and hitchiked to California. Well, I didn’t start out hitching and that’s part of the “turned out badly”. My truck seized up in Beaumont, TX and my then-boyfriend persuaded me to just leave it on the side of the road and continue on to Cali. What a stupid thing to do! Not to mention he ditched me a week after we got there so I spent two years in California and got into a mess of trouble.
