If you could go back in time, would you choose the same career?

Question

I truly enjoyed all of your answers. Every one was filled with insight, I am happy that you all found a rewarding career.
As for me, I really wanted to go to nursing school, my dad said that he didn't want his daughter emptying bed pans. I became an accountant and computer programmer for main frames. After 16 years, I just hated it, it was a challenge just getting out of bed to go to work, so I went to nursing school and became a pediatric nurse, which I loved. I just wish I would have done what I really wanted to do in the first place.

Answer 1

Yes.

Absolutely. Im a nurse, and I stumbled into my profession. I am soo glad I did.

I feel blessed and lucky that I love the work I do.

It helps me get up in the morning!

I hope you are equally blessed!

Answer 2

Funny you should ask that.

I've always loved to read, and heaven knows, you can't get a job reading, now can you? I learned to be proficient on office machines, and I went to work in the news typing pool at the local newspaper when I was 35.

It was supposed to be a temporary job, until the company switched to computers. Well, two years turned into eight before they went to computers, and by then I'd proved that my talents went far beyond typing.

By the time I retired, I was downloading the daily stocks pages, writing a weekly column in the business news weekly magazine and proofreading the entire weekly, in addition to maintaining the files for the entire department.

Who says you can't wind up in a job doing what you love?

To answer your real question, though, if I could go back in time and do it over, and if a woman had the choices she has now, I'd know I didn't have to be a secretary, teacher or nurse. I could study journalism and be a reporter and eventually an editor.

I really think editing would have been my calling.

Answer 3

I didnt make a choice, it was financial circumstance, and finding out I was pregnant with my son. I was working on my commerical pilots license when I found out, because I so darn sick everytime I went flying. Which was very unusual for me. I wanted to be a flight instructor. But that was already a second choice, not my first choice.

My original choice was and would be to be a doctor. I wanted to work with burn patients, but never had the money needed to get through medical school. If I could do it all over again I would borrow borrow borrow -

I ended up trying a lot of different careers on for size, settled into media advertising after a lot of other things.

Answer 4

I might. When I went into Nursing, there weren't a lot of choices for women and it was one of the better ones available. If I could go back but have today's choices, I would have to say I would choose differently. Health care has changed a lot from being a service and a calling to being a business. Necessarily so, because of costs, insurances, government reimbursements etc, but not conducive to the reasons I chose to be a nurse.

Answer 5

I CHOSE the right career the first time around...practising medicine in the Armed Forces.

The bad decision was getting married to a man I didn't actually love, and allowing my then husband to talk me into leaving the Armed Forces.

Knowing what I know now, I would choose to stay in and follow through on making it my life's career, which was my intention in the beginning.

Answer 6

NO!
There are lots what made me be in this situation caused by my stubborness, lazyness, and my spoiled rotten being.

I am not poor now, I may not have as much as I have now, but I think I would be devoted more to my career if I sticked to what I wanted to do since I was really little.

Answer 7

Yes, I STILL would have joined the Navy and spent 20 years + in it. I was on 5 ships, 8 oceans/seas, 32 countries (some more than once)(stationed in 3), on 6 continents (which included Antarctica for 13 months), as far east as Pakistan, as far west as Thailand, as far north as Nova Scotia and as far south as the South Pole. I have 3 friends I made in different countries that I keep in touch with...and one I met in Sicily since I've retired. Only one I don't hear from anymore. When I was in Israel, I met a young soldier and we wrote for years. All of a sudden in 1997 the letters from him stopped. I wasn't until 3 years ago I got a letter from his sister (she had found my letters among some of his things) telling me that he had been killed in a fire fight with some radical Palestinians. Last year my mother-in-law went on a trip to Israel and I gave her my friend's family's address in Haifa and she went and met them. My wife still writes/sends birthday cards & Christmas cards to a Sardinian lady she met while we were stationed there.
Back in '79, we were in the process of selling 4 mine sweepers to the Saudi navy. I got to know a lot of the crew because I had 2 Saudi Navy chiefs living near me. When we (Flag Ship for the Middle East Forces) pulled into the Saudi Navy base in Jubail, Sauid Arabia, there were the 4 minesweepers across the pier from us. I went over and spent some time with one of the sailors...went to his town out in the desert, then to a soccer game in his cousin's town. We went out for dinner when we got back and he asked me if I wanted a Pepsi (no Cokes in S.A.) or a beer. I played along and said I'd have a beer. Sure enough..one can...SCHLITZ...brewed and bottled in Milwaukee...'non alocholic'.
My son joined the Navy in 91 and got stationed in Japan (where he was conceived) and was able to meet 3 friends of ours we knew when we were there 69 - 72.
Yes, I'd do it all again in a heart beat. I truly DID join to SEE THE WORLD...and to GET OUT OF DELAWARE!

Answer 8

Absolutely.

Answer 9

If my career was as exciting again as it was the first time around.... Yes! Nurse

Answer 10

No, I would go to college, get a terrific education and have a great career. Something that did not require me to be on my feet for fifty years.