Decoding the Myth: If You Choose a Stable Field, You'll have a Secure Future

After only three years on the job, a 30-year-old accountant was bored out of his mind. Since he'd entered accounting because his father, a CPA, had said it was a "good field," he decided to ask his dad how he could've recommended such a dull occupation. To his amazement, his father replied: "I never said it was interesting. When I said it was a good field, I only meant that it was stable and you could make good money. But interesting? I never thought it was interesting." Too late, he discovered that he and his father had different visions of what a "good field" is. A 35-year-old banker in Chicago had a similar experience when she consulted her father for career advice. She remembers a little too clearly the day she relinquished her dream of becoming a fashion designer because her father thought banking was a better profession. By "better" he meant that it was stable and that there were more opportunities opening up in the industry for women. In that regard, he was right. At the time, banking was wide open to women and, as result, his daughter was able to parlay her MBA into an enviable series of raises and promotions that kept her moving steadily upward for several years.

What he didn't anticipate was how banking would change and how those changes would affect his ambitious daughter. Her string of successes ended rather abruptly when the field became more competitive and unstable. Without fantasies of fast-track success to sustain her, she quickly became bored with the work. Often, she found herself doodling cocktail dresses in the margins of yellow legal pads during office meetings.

This kernel of discontent is the first mental step toward a career change. As the seeds of disillusionment with her progress have grown, she's continued to flirt with the idea of changing careers. In fact, she's moved to New York and is taking classes at a prominent fashion design school at night and on weekends, testing her creativity and developing her skills. Nor is she alone. Some schools estimate that nearly half of all college students are now adults over 25, seeking credentials to switch or advance careers.



"They're returning to the dream they had 10 years ago, with a more realistic perception of what's really possible," says Maureen Brennan, a Loyola University career counselor who advises returning adult students on career options. "They now have their own life experiences to use as a yardstick to measure their own needs and potential. They no longer have to rely on someone else's judgment or perceptions."

Experts such as Harvard sociologist David Riesman believe that the urge to return to school may be a symptom of a more pervasive yearning for greater independence and individualism. Certainly those motivations were uppermost in the mind of one Chicago nurse, whose quest for greater autonomy motivated her to pursue a law degree. Now a medical malpractice attorney, she's part of a growing spectrum of dual-career professionals who are carving out unique niches by combining disciplines. The days of choosing one career for life are gone. Perhaps they should never have existed at all. Isn't it unrealistic to think that the career choice you made at 20 should automatically suit your needs at 30, 40, 50 or 60? It can (and occasionally does) happen. But should you find that your present career no longer suits your needs (and maybe never did), it's not too late to choose again. My oldest career-change client was age 70 when she decided to retire from medicine and pursue a law degree. Somewhere along the line, you may have picked up a distorted idea that the need for growth stops in adulthood. But only people with very limited ambitions learn all they need to know in kindergarten.