Pitfalls in Career Changing

     When you think a career change is a good thing, it's unlikely you've thought it through enough!

     I went through a career change from age 41-43, and I now regard it as a nightmare.  I just didn't devote enough time to wife and the kids.  I let my family members meander and wonder about aimlessly, completely unable to cope with changes that were about to occur, while I, totally focused, on making the career transition, ran roughshod over their desires and needs.  I continued my daytime job as college instructor in philosophy at College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois.  Most of my free time was taken up traipsing hither and yon to one university in the Chicago area, then another in order to take courses that would qualify me as a financial computer programmer.

     It all started at my community college faculty senate meeting one fateful day.  The chairman of the senate, an English instructor, called the meeting to order, ran through the role of senators, including me, and then commented, "We know each other pretty well now; give us twenty years in these seats and we'll know not only each other's kids but grandkids and an array of our relatives!"  I don't know why that comment had such a motivating effect to change the direction of my life was headed.  I simply imagined myself in twenty years in that same seat; and I balked.  "Not on your life!  That's not me!  I won't be here!" I vowed to myself.

     I was forced to examine my professional commitments: who was I?  Today, we refer to this moment of self-revulsion as "a mid-life crisis."  Questioning my life's routines, I had to admit that I did not enter the teaching field honestly.  It was too confining.  "I'm a humanist in the tradition of Machiavelli (author of The Prince), of Petrarch, and of the Florentine thinkers of the 13th Century Italy; of the English humanist Robert Grossetastes (1175-1255).  Like the humanists of yore, I fashioned myself capable of absorbing vast amounts of knowledge in literature, art, and science, even making mad dashes into the realm of the occult occasionally to expand my knowledge horizon.  Was there some career that I could enter that would permit me to go beyond the confining world of academia, to delve into the depths of the human experience?  At that time, the computer field was burgeoning in all fields--technological and cultural.  I was drawn to the life of Englishman Bertrand Russell, living at the dawn of the computer revolution.  He, too, had a broad interest in the human dilemma.  He was also a leading force in the development of the digital logical code; and his background was philosophical.  I could become like him!

     I needed to elicit familial support for my career change--from teaching philosophy to computer programming (preferably in business computing, that would enable me to participate in industry and technology via programming).  I convinced my family members, who really were after me to seek employment in California, where my wife (at the time) and her two children were from, that as a computer programmer, I could be in better position to get them back to the West Coast, than I could remaining as a philosophy professor.  Of course, I did not understand nor did they that the wife would need a new job, the kids would be leaving their friends and a cozy environment in Illinois, but we all became entranced with the dream of CALIFORNIA, HERE WE COME!

     I enrolled first at DePaul University, then the University of Illinois--Chicago Circle in computer programming languages; and at my own community college I took Accounting 101.  It took every available hour I could spare to learn about the computer and programming languages in business in a busy life of teaching philosophy every weekday and handling teaching chores weekends.  But I made real progress in a short period of time; and thus I was soon ready to look for a starting job in computer programming at some corporate firm.  But I did not look for this job in the Chicago area; nor did I jump off the cliff by choosing the West Coast--too difficult to crack from the Midwest.  I chose Denver, Colorado!  It wasn't long before I got a nibble from an oil and petroleum company on Stout Street.  I was hired within a matter of a few weeks, sight unseen.  I hadn't even flown out for an interview! 

     So, the family saw me off at the O'Hare Airport, where I departed for Denver.  It was early September.  The wife really helped out a lot:  so as to make the move possible, she took a part-time teaching position as an English instructor at my college.  I was granted a sabbatical leave-of-absence.  We had to draw upon savings, because a neophyte programmer doesn't make much.  In Denver, I lived frugally, but nicely--good apartment, great working conditions, plenty of time to get more self-training in programming to improve my skills.  I did o.k.; and the move was working.

     At Thanksgiving the same year, the company flew out my family for a visit.  Renting a car, we looked the city over and its environs, including the wonderful Boulder.  We even touched base with real estate housing and noted several good options for a house. Great vacation, to be sure.  I showed them where I worked.  The company even was prepared to make suggestions where the wife might find a suitable teaching position.  When the wife got back to Glen Ellyn, however, I was emphatically informed that Denver wasn't good enough:  "You promised we'd get back to California!"

     I, somewhat stunned, put out feelers with employment agencies in the Bay Area, California without thinking what I was doing.  Believe it or not, I got inquiries as to my availability almost immediately.  To make a long story short, I was hired by an insurance company in San Rafael--again, after an interview at their home office using a rental Trans Am car they paid for and staying at a nice San Francisco hotel.  She wanted to live in Palo Alto, for some reason, and we wound up in Palo Alto--in a really spacious apartment, by tapping some of our retirement money that had been sent us once I resigned from DuPage College. 

      Wouldn't you know, within two short years of a seventeen-year marriage, I was divorced; never again to see the kids or the (former) wife.  I was back a bachelor; and my finances were on sandy, shaky ground.   Did it work out?  I think if Bertrand Russell had been alive, I would have had words with him!