Ask a Decision Coach

I write an advice column for Chegg Life, helping people make important decisions. If you have a decision to make, you can write in HERE, and I might answer your question on the site!

“Should I abandon my writing career to become a nurse?

Dear Decision Coach,

I am debating whether to totally switch up my career. I’ve been pursuing a career as a professional writer and enjoy things like literature and criticism. For a long time, I've talked about goals like getting an MFA or a Ph.D. in comparative literature. But the writing jobs I’ve had are mostly in technical writing or marketing, and lately, I’ve been feeling uninspired by putting words on the internet. I don’t really feel like me being a writer is changing the world or helping people that much.

I had an experience recently that gave me a radical idea. I visited Planned Parenthood a couple times to resolve a medical issue and felt so cared for that it occurred to me that maybe I would want the job of the person helping me. I asked the person who was helping me about their job as a medical assistant, and they said good things about it and that when they started, they had no background in health care. Then this person mentioned the Planned Parenthood clinic was hiring! It was like a lightbulb went off.

I think I would love to talk to people about sexual and reproductive health. It’s something I’ve always been passionate about but never thought to form a career around! And I’ve worked housekeeping and done basic livestock vet work, so I am reasonably confident I won’t faint when I draw someone’s blood. But I can’t tell if I’m being spontaneous and rash. Writing has become lucrative for me, and I’d take a huge pay cut to start over in an entry-level position in a totally new career where I have a lot to learn. I also grew up thinking that I should have an elite, white-collar job that uses my liberal arts education. I never viewed nursing as inside that sphere. My pretentious ideas of what counts as a skilled, college-grad or “intellectual” job is something I am totally unlearning, as I learn more about the profession.

I am also afraid people will think I am giving up on writing because I’m not good enough or scared. Maybe I just need to work harder at my writing job to find a way to feel like I am directly helping people? Should I stick it out, or should I switch?

Best,

Google Docs to Nasal Swabs

Hi Google Docs!

Thanks for writing. I think a LOT of people are feeling the same way right now. The pandemic has made inequalities so much more obvious to many of us, and now we’re feeling angry and ready to take action….and we’re also feeling impotent because it seems like what we’re good at doing, or what we’ve been trained to do, is not going to make the world better in any way. You’re not alone here!

You’ve already started disentangling yourself from the idea that an “intellectual” job is more valuable than a hands-on job. This is a great start! When you’re raised with a certain amount of privilege (including the assumption that you’ll go to college), that’s often a very difficult lesson to unlearn.

Let me share with you two phrases that, when I’m coaching someone through a big decision, send up circus-tent-size red flags for me. “Maybe I just need to work harder?” And “Should I stick it out?” Those questions — and many similar ones — are always a sign that a big change is necessary. You never have to “stick it out” just because you’ve started something and had success at it. What, I encourage you to ask yourself, for?

That said, let’s take a beat before signing you up for nursing school. You’ve got great skills already. Could you use them to further your goal of helping people? Our sexual and reproductive health is under threat more now than it has been in a long time, and helping to educate people about what they can and should do for themselves is a truly worthwhile aim. Can you use your writing ability and marketing experience to do that? Could you volunteer your time and skills at a reproductive health organization? That, in itself, might help give you an outlet for your passion around this idea.

Sometimes starting at the bottom in a new career is tempting because there’s a very clear path to the goal. 1. Take entry tests. 2. Take classes. 3. Pass classes. 4. Get job. Boom, you’re helping people, and you didn’t have to make any more decisions along the way. But you can occasionally come in at a higher level — helping organizations write clear reproductive health explainers is just one idea that occurred to me — and deliver assistance where it’s needed without going back to square one.

When I read your question, I immediately thought of Lori Gottlieb. She was also a writer, a very successful one, who then decided to train as a clinical psychologist. Now she practices as a therapist, but she also writes about therapy (including a best-selling book and a column in the Atlantic). She managed to blend the two things she was interested in — and good at — and make a huge success of it.

I’m using her as an example to point out that doing good in the world, educating people about sexual and reproductive health and writing can all be part of the same job. Or, your technical and marketing work can subsidize your do-gooding work. There are lots of ways to play around with what you’re good at and what you care about that don’t mean a 180-degree career change.

If, however, you still feel called to do nursing, let me make two suggestions. Shadow a nurse for a few days, and take one anatomy and physiology class. Those two things can take less than four months, and at the end, you’ll have so much tangible data about whether nursing is for you. Then you can make an informed decision about whether or not to pursue becoming a nurse. Testing something out is always more helpful than sitting at home and wondering if you’ll like it. I encourage everyone to do this if they can!

If you do those two things and then think, “Yes, nursing is my dream job!” I still have one more safeguard question for you, one that will make sure you’re making a shift for the right reason: Do you have a history of jumping ship? Of being lured by shiny new things? Of making big changes at the drop of a hat? From your letter, I doubt it, but it’s good to reflect a little and make sure you haven’t got a pattern of leaping at the thing in front of you just because you like change.

If you don’t — and again, from your letter, it sounds like you make careful, considered choices — then I encourage you to go forth and explore this! Writing’s not a skill you can lose, and you have a big enough portfolio that if you decide you want to go back to what you’re doing now, it’s easy enough. You can keep that option in your back pocket. So, why not experiment and start thinking about how you can satisfy your ambition to do some good in the world?

Best, 

The Decision Coach