My Story, In Brief (How Did I Get Here?)
/I suppose there could be a number of reasons someone may want to make a career change. Maybe you want to make more money? Maybe you decide to move and realize that your industry or line of work isn’t possible in the new location…I’m sure the list could go on. I decided to make a change for reasons that are intangible…Simply put: I want to enjoy what I do. For me, this comes down to combining two things: I want to explore my interests and I want to utilize my strengths.
I graduated college with a B.S. in Plant Biology (yes, plants as in botany plants). At the time, I enjoyed my choice of study. After graduation, I immediately landed a job at a leading biotech company that took me from Athens, Georgia to San Francisco. I enjoyed the work that I did, but the social aspect of my life was not what I wanted it to be. I wasn’t happy. I determined that it was far more important for me to have a fulfilling personal life than completely trade that off for a job. I left my job in California and moved to New York where I was certain I would be socially fulfilled. Having good friends in New York and having visited many times before, I was certain that this was the city for me. New York City is a special place – If you want to make it happen, you can get to where you want to be if you work at it. New York rewards curiosity.
I landed several jobs in New York, ultimately spending a few years at a major pharmaceutical company. I was (and am) very content socially but I was very unhappy with my job. It turned out that as a stroke of good fortune, said company decided to perform a serious of major layoffs and as fortune would have it, I was “impacted.” Now I have a new job: Transforming my career.
With all of this being said, I don’t regret my studies and degree - I’m actually proud of them. As time went on, I just realized that I needed to explore other avenues. My past experience has set me up nicely to get to where I want to be professionally and to be successful where I land.