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Beware of hard-to-reverse career decisions

Sometimes when corresponding with readers I ask for suggestions for things to write about. One reader had this idea for me recently:

This is such a common experience. I know so many people who have invested themselves deeply in something—or the idea of something—only to realize it isn’t the right thing for them at all. It’s common when this happens to feel as if you’ve wasted your time.

And it’s not just PhD programs that can be a waste of time, there are many types of hard-to-reverse career decisions. Lets take a look at a few of them…

Harder-to-reverse work and education opportunities

• Scholarships with work requirements There are many programs and organizations that will offer to pay for your education in exchange for you completing some kind of work requirement later. Some examples include: ROTC, certain medical and teaching scholarships, certain fellowships (like Boren). If you don’t complete the work requirement you often have to pay back the scholarship.

• Graduate school Graduate school epitomizes that hard-to-reverse career decision, especially if you are spending a lot of money on tuition, or even worse going into debt. Granted you can always quit, but quitting can feel costly. You may have invested time, money and identity capital into being a graduate student.

• Fellowships Even fellowships that don’t have post facto work requirements are kind of hard to bail out of. If you’re in a foreign country doing Peace Corps or a Fulbright fellowship, you’re going to feel pretty emotionally and energetically invested in the program. You also will likely feel a sense of obligation to the organization you are placed with, or whoever you happen to be working with. You can quit (and people do!) but it’s not super easy.

• Jobs The simple act of accepting a job offer is rather hard to reverse, even in America where at-will employment means you can quit a job at any time. By the time you’ve accepted a job offer, though, you’re invested emotionally and energetically in the role. Most people won’t quit at the drop of a hat, even if the job turns out to be very different from what the expected.

• Vocational undergraduate programs You don’t have to go to graduate school to invest a lot of time and energy into a hard-to-reverse career path. Some undergraduate programs can be hard to get out of and involve a lot of sunk costs if you don’t follow through on the program. Nursing programs, engineering programs, and other vocational-type programs can end up feeling like a waste of time if you don’t pursue the career you were preparing for. I personally know a a number of people who struggled to make career changes in their late twenties after pursuing some kind of super-specific vocational program as an undergraduate.

On the other hand, not every step you take is hard-to-reverse…

Easy-to-reverse career opportunities

• Internships Internships are a fantastic way to test out a career path. They are usually very short (often between 3-6 months) and they give you a chance to experience a professional setting that you are interested in. More often than not, internships help you rule out professional paths that aren’t right for you. Because internships are intended to be short-term, you don’t usually have to overcome big emotional or social barriers to walk away from an intern role. The roles usually just end and you can go on to something else.

• Informational interviews The number one easiest to reverse career decision is an informational interview. Through informational interviewing you can try on a professional path in just 30-60 minutes. You can show up and tell your interlocutor that you’d like to do what they are doing. If by the end of the interview you’ve changed your mind, no worries! Mission accomplished. You can explore different terrain in your next informational interview.

How to avoid over-investing in a hard-to-reverse professional opportunities

Informational InterviewingPreventing future regret because you over-invested in the wrong career is easy. All you have to do is due diligence. Unsurprisingly this will involve a lot of informational interviewing. Talk to the people who have already gone down the path you are considering. It will quickly become clear whether or not this is the right path for you.

Be a quitterThe second way to avoid regret is to be a quitter. When you realize something is not right for you, quit. Don’t let shame or loss of status or parental expectations prevent you from walking away from the wrong program, the wrong job, the wrong career. This is your “one wild and precious life.” I don’t know anyone who regrets quitting something that was wrong for them. I do know a lot of people who regret sticking with something that was wrong for them.

What to if you’ve gone down the “wrong” path

It can be very discouraging to invest a lot of time and energy into something for the “wrong” reasons, and to wake up one day and realize you’ve gone down the “wrong” path.

Maybe you choose a practical-type career because your family insisted on the importance of a Good Stable Job™. Maybe you were overly fanciful in your vocational aspirations and you pursued a romantic-sounding career only to realize the realities were not what you expected.

Whatever the case, when you realize you’re in the wrong career, it can be easy to become regretful and self-punishing. You might feel frustrated. I know a lot of people feel angry towards their teachers and parents when this happens. Why didn’t someone intervene? Why didn’t someone help guide me? These are common questions that people have when they find themselves in the wrong corner of the economy and are pondering how they got there.

It's normal to experience negative feelings when you’re not where you want to be. But don’t be too hard on yourself or your guides/mentors. This is a very common experience and it’s never too late to course correct. Some people find that the training they received for a career that doesn’t suit them is actually transferable. I’ve heard of medical professionals who went on to become accomplished scientific journalists, and journalists who went on to become electricians. 

Use your informational interviewing skills to course correct. Cut your losses and move on. It’s never too late to find the right path. In time, as things improve, you may come to view your early forays into an unsuitable career with a more charitable lens. You may come to appreciate things about that graduate degree you didn’t end up using. Or not… Maybe this will be one of those bitter life lessons. There may be a high cost to the path you choose. You may need to mourn the lost opportunities, time, money or energy. You may need to forgive yourself for the mistakes you made when you didn’t know any better. Even if that’s the case, don’t lose heart. It’s never too late. There is always a chance to find something fulfilling, life-affirming and nourishing to do with yourself on this planet.

What I’m reading this week

America’s Student Loans Were Never Going to Be Repaid ~ Laura Beamer and Marshall Steinbaum for The New York TimesFascinating! Don’t yell at me, but I’m actually not a fan of student loan forgiveness as a policy (despite the fact that I would benefit from forgiveness). I might share more about my thoughts on this later. In the meantime, though, the status quo is obviously predatory and unacceptable, as well. This article neatly articulates some of my thinking. ”Personal Renewal” ~ a speech given by John Gardner to McKinsey & Company in 1990Gardner says, “Life is an endless unfolding, and if we wish it to be, an endless process of self-discovery, an endless and unpredictable dialogue between our own potentialities and the life situations in which we find ourselves. By potentialities I mean not just intellectual gifts but the full range of one's capacities for learning, sensing, wondering, understanding, loving and aspiring.”The Resourceful Life ~ Venkatesh Rao for RibbonfarmInformational interviewing is a profound expression of resourcefulness. It is so much more beautiful and soulful than the worst careerist interpretation would suggest. As Rao says, “In a curious way, the superpower of the resourceful person is simply the ability to care deeply and unquestioningly about their own life.”

The Unforgiven ~ Trevor Jackson for The New York Review of Books”The crimes of the rich are more readily forgiven than the debts of the poor.” Indeed. This essay unpacks the extreme hypocrisy of the Supreme Courts decision to strike down Biden’s first student loan forgiveness program. I know I said I’m not a fan of student loan forgiveness, but that’s not because I think its in any way okay that our society has burdened so many people with these predatory loans. More on this later.