newb checking in, thinking about a career change
Hello all,
I'm 33. Thinking about changing career paths.
I've been a welder for about a decade, but am starting to suffer from "repetitive stress injury" to my off hand from feeding many miles of aluminum wire through my fingers while fighting the resistance of heavy gloves.
I'm not a good surgical candidate as it's basically all inflammation from the rapid, repetitive hand movements. But that's good, everyone (myself, docs, therapists) think we can get my hand back into working shape with PT. And everyone agrees that if I stop doing this specific job, my hand would be up to doing just about anything else that isn't similarly intensively repetitive.
But how long it lasts doing what I do now is anyone's guess, so I'd like to take advantage of my company's tuition reimbursement program while I am working.
I've always been interested in medicine. So here I am, looking to learn as much as I can about the field.
I can read books and take the classes, but what I really want to know are what people already in the field think about their job, the directions things are going (good/bad), the roles each specialties plays, pay, and how satisfied are you with your own career choice. Forums are perfect for this.
My plan is to go to community college and begin amassing general math and science credits that I can transfer to a four year school while concurrently taking the EMT-B short course to "test the waters" in medicine.
Then I can either go full on into a RN or RPA track, or slink back into my mechanical role and go the engineering route.
I have no kids, my parents are retiring and told me to go to med school, and they'll help. But I think I'm a bit too old to begin that level of schooling. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to. I just don't know if I'm too old to start down that road.
I have some college credits from years ago, probably expired. But I am not shy of math, science, or hard work.
...
And just because everyone in the medical field is always interested to know, I build MRIs. We're currently working on the first prototype live, MRI guided LINAC for targeting cancer in moving tissue.