Thread: late in life career change - have you considered it?

After 30+ years in the medical field I decided to start a fitter and turner apprenticeship.
I have already finished the First year of Tafe.
It is amazing the number of people I have spoken to have said they wished that they could do something similar but have all kinds of reasons not too.
I am lucky to have a supportive wife, and alot of things lined up allowing me to make the change.

Originally Posted by Tombie

Yikes!

I won't be working for anyone when I'm 60, let alone post 60?

Well, as you said, it's not work if you like doing it and it wouldn't be the 60 to 90 hour weeks I've been working for the last 25 years. I'll probably do a PhD with it as well and some consulting with my current career and I'll likely start doing volunteer work again. And quite a few of my friends are the same - their career arcs mean that they'll probably be working into their 70s, even if that's not doing what they started out doing. My surgeon must be mid-70s now and the work he did on me was apparently cited at an international conference as an exemplar of how these operations should be done. The other thing is that I have a very long-lived family - my parents lived in their own home until their early 90s - and most people pick me as being maybe early 40s and not 60, so I'm wary of "retiring" too early.