Ask HN: If you had to make a career change

I’m currently in the midst of a career change. I currently work as an anaesthetic assistant. But in 2022 after doing an MBA out of sheer boredom, I decided I was more interested in humans, and what drives their behaviour/choices etc at a fundamental level. I was also interested in how human behaviour and choices can be manipulated by external influences.

I decided I wanted to become a psychologist, and now more recently, I’ve refined that further and decided I’d like to become an organisational psychologist/behaviour analyst, though I’ve kept my options open, and dabbled in clinical psych as well. However, my goal is to be able to influence human behaviour en masse (in pro-social ways).

How the path to change has looked for me: I already had a health science degree from before I did my anaesthetic assisting training. In my health science degree, I had done all the 100-level and some of the 200-level psych courses so I chose to go back to the university for ease of transferring, and getting some prior recognition. This saved me 2 years of study. I then completed a graduate diploma in psych, and I’m now in the midst of a 2 part masters which is made up of 8 post-graduate courses and one 12-18 month research project/thesis. Where I live, that’s not enough to be a psychologist. After the masters, you have to then do further study, since I’ve decided I don’t want to be a clinical psychologist, I’ve decided to do a Master of Organisational psychology after my general psychology masters. Then, in addition to that, I’ve also found a Master of behaviour analysis that I’m looking in to doing if I think it will actually add value. Part of me suspects not, I think if you already hold two Masters degree’s in psychology, then at a certain point extra formal study becomes a waste of both time and money - but I keep an open mind, as I’ve seen a really interesting job once advertised by my countries tax department, they were looking for a behaviour analyst to work on a project that was aimed to encourage business people to be more honest and reliable in paying their taxes.

Changing career is tedious. The number of years of dedication and consistency it requires is definitely off putting. If I did not love my chosen subject and chosen career change I’d not do it. As I already have a career where I earn 6 figures and have a fair amount of job certainty. I’d even go as far as to say for the most part, I actually like my current career, it’s just boring and under stimulating on a day to day basis. Sometimes I wish my anaesthetic assisting could extend to other animals. I’d love to help anaesthetise a bird or a lizard. Something that isn’t a mammal.

I imagine it would depend a bit on the proportion and intensity of the reasons for the change. Ex: Financial pressures, worries about long-term career viability, or psychological/burnout.

  > Doctor

At this point even though you are a doctor, you are also over 60.