When “following your passion” leads you to the wrong career
Lessons learned on my journey from midwifery to software development
I was one of those kids who always knew my answer to the perennial query, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. My response varied over the years — from writer to psychologist to entrepreneur to magician — but I felt confident that with enough hard work, my interest would lead me down the correct professional path, and that following my passion would manifest a rewarding, lifelong career. I was privileged to come from a family that gave me this freedom of exploration, both from a financial and psychological perspective.
By the time I reached my early 20s, I had a pretty good idea that I wanted to go into women’s health. I loved my college courses on gender and healthcare disparities and enjoyed learning about human physiology, too. I became passionate about childbirth and reproductive care, and how these interactions with the healthcare system serve as an opportunity to empower (or disempower) women during a profound, vulnerable life experience. I spent time shadowing healthcare providers and completed a birth doula training. I felt confident that I wanted to become a nurse midwife, and went straight from college to my top-choice nursing graduate program.
Midwifery is an intense, high-stakes career. It requires you to hold space for people in pain, people who are scared, people who are grieving life’s most momentous losses. You must be prepared for all manner of life-threatening emergencies, and balance a massive, breakneck daily workflow with the need to be present and empathetic with the patient sitting across from you at the given moment. Oh, and you work nights, weekends and holidays. None of this concerned me as a midwifery student, though, because I felt passionate about what I was doing and was surrounded by classmates and mentors who felt the same way. It wasn’t until I landed my first job that I realized how miserable I felt.
A couple months into my first job as a midwife, my head and back were hurting, my face was breaking out, and I harbored a constant churn of dread and fear in the pit of my stomach. I thought the stress was just related to being new on the job, and from adjusting to the dynamics of the work environment. I pushed myself, week after week, to build up my confidence and fortitude. I clung to the many moments of the job I loved, like when I connected with my patients or witnessed parents meeting their babies for the first time. I flung myself into the world of “self-care”, doing yoga, drinking more tea, getting acupuncture, and doing face masks to try to relieve the anxiety. It soon became clear, though, that my mind and body were in distress and I needed to make a change. I quit my job after less than a year, with no backup plan in place.
It took some time to figure out what I wanted to do next. I was very lucky to have a supportive husband who was able to pick up the financial slack, so I met with career coaches, took continuing education courses, talked with therapists, and spent endless hours scouring job sites for something that felt right. I applied for a few other midwifery and nursing jobs but my heart wasn’t in it, and I got rejected. It was as though the world had shifted under me: I had lost the image of myself as a capable, confident person with a clear purpose in life. Like many young women, I had based my sense of self-worth off of my exterior achievements, but when I took the time to reflect on my true inner state, everything came crashing down. I felt disappointed in myself for not trying harder to build my career as a midwife, ashamed to admit to family, friends, and mentors that I had “failed”, and most of all, confused about what I actually wanted to do. If following my passions had led me astray, how was I supposed to know what would make me happy?
In the end, it was random luck of the universe, combined with some trial and error, that led me to my next career path. I was skimming through some online education resources, trying to figure out what sounded appealing, and impulsively got started on a free online computer programming course. I knew a friend from college who had pivoted from studying English into software engineering, and had always been intrigued hearing about her career path. I suddenly found myself spending the precious minutes of my toddler’s nap time going above and beyond on the Intro to JavaScript challenges, excited to learn more, and I suddenly knew I had stumbled upon something that felt right. From there, I enrolled in an immersive software engineering program, and I am now in the process of becoming a full-stack developer.
I do not regret becoming a midwife. I formed wonderful, lifelong bonds with many of my nursing school classmates, including my future husband. I had the honor of delivering dozens of babies into the world. I felt great joy working alongside women during their journeys into motherhood, helping them to feel empowered towards their bodies and well-being, and for the opportunity to be present during some of their lives’ most intimate, intense, and miraculous moments. I honed skills that will serve me in any future career, such as research, communication, teamwork, organization, teaching, and creativity.
If I were advising my younger career-seeking self, here are some of the lessons I would try to impart:
Let go of rigid expectations. Some labor and delivery providers believe in the existence of a cruel irony: that the more strict and detailed a woman’s birth plan is, the less things go according to that plan. While I disagree with aspects of that assumption, I do think there is a kernel of truth to it: sometimes, the tighter we hold onto our idea of how things “should” go, the more we struggle when life inevitably throws turmoil our way. When you come to terms with how little control you truly have over your life, you feel a lot more freedom. Nowadays, the concept of finding your “one true career” is pretty unusual, and the sooner you can release yourself from that expectation, the more open you will be to whatever opportunities and interests present themselves as life unfolds.
Think about what you want your day-to-day job to look like. My unhappiness as a midwife didn’t stem from a lack of passion — I loved the meaning behind what I was doing. Rather, my stress and dissatisfaction stemmed from an incompatibility between my personality and the job environment. I am someone who thrives in structured settings, where expectations and responsibilities are clearly defined. I am introverted: though I do enjoy a good amount of social interaction during my workday, I also relish the opportunity to spend time in quiet, solitary focus. I enjoy having some control over my day-to-day schedule, and having freedom to devote more time on a single project if needed. These traits are all at least somewhat at odds with my previous career path. In my experience, being passionate about a topic isn’t enough to build a satisfying career off of it: you should think about how you want to spend your days, and what kind of environment will be a good fit for your personality traits.
Try to ignore the sunk-cost fallacy. When you’ve spent years of your life pursuing a certain path (and perhaps, gone into student debt to do so), it makes it much harder to switch to a different career. The sunk-cost fallacy, the idea that you should keep working towards something because you’ve already invested resources into it, is a common error of human judgment. Those years and dollars are already spent, and continuing something that makes you unhappy won’t change that. I got caught up for many months on the idea that I needed to keep using my nurse practitioner license somehow because of all the blood, sweat, tears, and dollars I spent to get it. Once I was finally able to let go of that burden and guilt, I felt my possibilities open up.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by your career, revolutionize your self-care. Feeling constantly unhappy at work won’t be solved by yoga or face masks. Expand your concept of self-care so that you are proactively seeking out the career (and life) experiences that will nourish you rather than deplete you. Be brutally honest with yourself, and if something isn’t feeling right, don’t be afraid to implement big changes. Consistently treat yourself as someone who is worthy of happiness and true fulfillment.
I’m not sure if there has been another person on earth who has been both a midwife and a software engineer (hey, if you’re out there, let’s be friends!) My career trajectory has been unusual and, at times, rough around the edges. Yet I would not change the way it played out: over the past couple of years, I have proven to myself that my inner well-being is more important than my external image of achievement, and I have greatly loosened my rigid image of success.
Being in the middle of a career change can feel isolating, endless, and even shameful. The sooner you can process these feelings and move forward with a sense of gratitude and curiosity, the sooner you will find a satisfying career, and the closer you will feel to your authentic self.
