Yesterday I shared how Elise had been working on her nursing prerequisites when she was still married even though her husband was not supportive of her career change. At the end of this month, she has an interview at Regis University and hopes to join their nursing program in May 2010. Here’s Elise talking about what her career change means to her.
I’ve been working towards this since 2002. I did some research and found a program at Regis University that was basically 12 months start to finish if you had a bachelor’s degree in anything else. It’s a full-time course but other programs I looked at were full-time for two years so in those programs, I would be out of the work force for a longer period and I wouldn’t necessarily come out with a bachelor of science in nursing. This is going to get me where I need to be.
Eventually, I think I would like to get my master’s in nursing so I would be back up in my current salary range and possibly even higher but I’ll have to see where it goes.
All the classes I’ve taken so far have mostly been online. Going full-time will mean physically going to school, meeting people, interacting with professors face-to-face. That’s really exciting for me because for the last 10 years or so my job has been work at home. It’s worked out great with the kids – whenever they were sick it was just a non-issue and whenever they weren’t in school, I was around. But you are very secluded.
I do worry about being a non-traditional student. But I’m hoping that because you have to have a bachelor’s degree to get into the program that maybe my fellow students would be in their late twenties or early thirties and it won’t be such a big age gap. But I want to be with people. I’m excited to feel part of life again, can’t wait.
The Divorce Coach Says
I meet many women who’ve changed careers later in life and I love that we can do that. I love that we are no longer excepted to stay with one company for our careers and no longer even expected to stay in the same industry or field of expertise. Evvy was another lady who went back to school after her divorce and loved the experience. What about you? Are you thinking about a different career? Is there something about getting divorced that gives us the impetus to make a career change? Does a career change seem easier after you’ve survived divorce?