Unemployed and Overwhelmed

Well, I am officially unemployed. I have incredibly mixed feelings about the event. I got to a point Friday where I literally could not take any more, I was so overwhelmed, I was on the brink of tears almost all day. I managed to keep from crying, but that is how stressed I was feeling yesterday. I had a lot to get done at work, comments to disposition, drawings and calculations that needed to be updated to conform to a new plumbing code. Not a whole lot of that got done, there was just not enough time in the day. I got the comments dispositioned, and although it was hard to remain professional, I did a good job of being diplomatic. Sometimes you get comments that don’t make a lot of sense or just say something like “delete” with no explanation as to why you should delete said equipment. I resisted the urge to say “No” or “Why?”. I thought it was a pretty good last day; most everyone left before me so there was no hoopla as I carried the last of my belongings out to my car.

My last week at work was hard because I am no longer confident about my decision to change careers. I know that I could go back to work at my former employer even if I did not want to work on the same project that I was working on when I left. The managers made me baked goods on Monday, so there was a constant stream of people in my cube eating and asking about my plans and telling me that they thought I would be a good medical provider. It was touching. On Wednesday the piping group and a bunch of other people from other disciplines went out to lunch to celebrate my leaving. A lot of people showed up to eat some Chinese and they had all signed a card. The card had a bunch of dogs on it because John knew that I liked dogs, and everyone had signed it. I have never liked signing these cards, I don’t know what to say and I am self conscious that other people will make fun of what I wrote. I really appreciated the gesture, most of the comments said something short like good luck it was really touching. Wednesday was the last day that I saw most people because Friday is not a standard working day. I work Fridays, so I said bye to most people Wednesday, but I said bye to the other piping engineers Friday.

I don’t know exactly why I am so unsure of this career change now that I am done with work. I think I spent too much time on the Student Doctor Network last weekend. SDN is a forum for pre-meds and there is a forum for non-traditional students. There were several posts on there about people who switched careers to be MDs and regretted it. I think this can be attributed in part to the fact that med school is four very difficult years followed by at least 3 years where you get paid peanuts and have to work 80 hour weeks. As of today I have decided to continue with my pursuit of PA school (instead of med school) because I feel like it is the best path for me overall. Obviously, though, reading about other peoples’ regrets has had an effect on me and now I am less certain that I am ready to ditch engineering completely. I worry that I am going to invest a lot of my time into PA and then decide that I don’t really like that either. I wonder sometimes if there is an area of engineering that I would have enjoyed and found fulfilling. I enjoy volunteering and I love learning about the human body, but I have still lost some confidence. I think another part of this is that I am really sad about leaving my friends at work. I don’t really have any friends outside of work, and while I do not need to have a large group of friends I do need some. One step at a time, that is all I can tell myself. I have quit my job, so now I just have to focus on my classes, friends will come and hopefully the feelings of unease about my career change will go away with time.