00:00:00:13 - 00:00:11:05

Bryonna Sieck

The following is a Towson University podcast.

00:00:11:08

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

Changing careers is not uncommon. According to a recent flex jobs survey, about 43% of U.S. workers are actively looking to switch their career fields in 2026. That's almost half the workers in the country. Which kind of makes you think your doctor, your dry cleaner, your accountant, your car salesman, your favorite grocery cashier, odds are that at least one of those people has their eye on a different path.

But how does someone get from where they are to where they want to be? I'm your host, Steph Sundermann-Zinger, and you're listening to Three Degrees, a podcast for people who are curious about the grad school experience. In this episode, we chat with three students who changed their minds about their chosen career paths. Some of them more than once.

They share the challenges they've encountered, the joys they've experienced, and the lessons they've learned along the way. First, we spoke with Aaron, a student in the economic analytics program who's changed his mind about what he wants to do with his life. A lot.

00:01:05:08

Aaron

My first career was really the military graduated high school in 98, went to Florida State, actually on an ROTC scholarship, did my first year there, kind of went, and I don't know, enlisted in the National Guard, started a military career, realized I kind of liked being enlisted, wound up going on active duty in early 2001 and spent eight and a half years in the Army, which really sort of let me figure out what I liked, what I didn't like, and a lot of who I was. It was not my choice to separate. I was medically separated from the Army in 2007, and that that really sort of set me adrift of what am I going to do now? Kind of reverted back to high school thinking and wound up in retail management, which if you've ever done that, I don't wish it on most enemies, even especially during the Christmas season, because dear Lord, is that painful.

00:01:52:04 - 00:02:05:24

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

After five years in retail, Aaron decided it was time for a change. He found his way into a completely different field, analyzing search engine optimization. And six years later, when industry automation threatened that work, he changed direction again.

00:02:05:26

Aaron

And so that again sent me adrift. What am I going to do now? And there was a program that I'd learned about at the Community College of Baltimore County in aviation and since I could walk, I've wanted to know how to fly.

Right place, right time. Talk to the program director. And he brought me in on a part-time basis, because at that point, I'd used VA benefits through that program. And pretty shortly thereafter, the VA popped in to do an audit. I started really small, and then it sort of ballooned, and they had me helping behind the scenes.

And then all of a sudden, because I was helping behind the scenes, some of the senior leadership got to know who I was, and I was pulled in on a full-time basis. I became the operations manager there, and that lasted for about four years, along with some teaching. And as that was again looking like it was going to fall off.

The question became again, what am I going to do? So there is a program at the VA exclusively for disabled veterans, and it's called the Veterans Readiness and Employment Program. Checked in to just see, hey, do I qualify? Can I do this? Got a really great counselor who admitted me into that program and and approved me for it and said, hey, go finish your undergrad.

And so off we go. Finish my undergrad here at Towson. And while I was going through it, there was a professor, I think it was my second semester who pulled me aside and said, you know, you have some real experience and you have an ability to sort of grab people and make them pay attention. You should really consider grad school, and you should really consider becoming a true professor.

And I said, no, no, no, no, no. Like, I have no interest in doing grad school. Forget it. I'm going to do my undergrad finish that with my experience and a bachelor's degree. I'm fine. I'm set. I can go work wherever I want. And I'll be damned if she didn't inception me. And as time went on, the idea just grew and grew and grew and, well, maybe I could do that.

Maybe I could do that. And so I reached out to my VA counselor because I have to get approval for that and said, you know, I think I'd like to teach. And she was like, all right. Like, what do you want to teach? I was like, college, university, she said you're gonna need a master's for that, aren't you? And I said, yeah, I am.

And so sort of completely redid the calculus of, of my plan. So I applied to the program, got admitted, and here I am, full steam ahead, hoping that when I graduate, it'll go right into a teaching spot. But understanding also that life could take me somewhere else.

00:04:29:05 

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

Sure. I mean, it sounds like you're going to have a ton of options.

00:04:31:09 

Aaron

Yeah, that's the hope.

00:04:32:11 

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

You mentioned that you learned some things about yourself and who you were and what you liked, and what you didn't like in the Army. Sounds like you learned that you are a teacher. What else did you learn?

00:04:41:08 

Aaron

I have learned to try and not take myself too seriously, that there's always the possibility that the next situation that you face could be a whole lot more serious than the one that you're in now.

It could be worse, it could be better. You don't really know. And that has has led me to develop sort of what my outlook on life is, which is don't fight the river's flow. Sometimes the river is a straight line. It's really easy. You want to go have Mexican food for dinner, you get in a car, you go to a Mexican restaurant.

But if you want to go and get a degree, or if you want to go and get a specific job, or you want to have a family or something like that, that river is not a straight line, right? And there's a lot between you and that destination. There are turns, there are rapids, there are forks. There's all kinds of stuff.

The key is don't fight the direction that the river is going. You can still steer and you can still navigate. But more than anything, take time to enjoy the scenery along the way because you may see things that you didn't expect to see. And that's what's gotten me to where I am now. If you would have asked me 20 years ago, would I be sitting here in graduate school for economics? I'd have laughed at you.

00:05:43:20 

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

Yeah, it does seem like so. You sort of came to realize who you were and what you wanted to be a little later in life than some people do.

00:05:49:12 

Aaron

Yeah.

00:05:49:23 

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

How do you feel about that? How do you feel about starting over?

00:05:52:05

Aaron

Why not? I think that's the easiest way to put it. There is nothing wrong with reinventing yourself. There's nothing wrong with changing careers. There's nothing wrong with not knowing who you are or what you want to do, especially in your 20s, right? In your 20s, you're, you're figuring out how to be a person, never mind who you are when it comes to changing careers. Be open to possibilities.

00:06:17:18

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

That's an idea that our next guest, Shaun really took to heart. Even though her path forward hasn't been as smooth as she'd hoped. Shaun is currently a student in Towson University's Human Resource Development Program, but that's not where she started.

00:06:31:01

Shaun

For me, like my upbringing and how my family was, the biggest thing was go to college, get your degree, get a job.

You know, the biggest thing was that when you graduate, you have a job that you're not just sitting. I really wanted to get in the environmental field, and I did right as I graduated, I ended up working for, environmental sustainability firm as an environmental specialist. I ended up doing a lot of field work and things like that.

So that was my first official career that aligned with my education. I stayed in that for about a year, almost two years, but unfortunately I just found that it just it wasn't for me. I also found that kind of like an organization whose values I didn't align with as well. So, you know, we are environmental space. And we were working with like hazardous materials, doing a lot of stuff that requires safety, a lot of compliance related things.

And, you know, we're constantly in these trainings. You know, you're learning all these things, what you need to do, what not to do, but, you know, you read between the lines and it's like they all they really care about is get the work done, which is very unfortunate, very unfortunate. And so while I was going through that, I just was I started to become like more and more miserable.

And at first I just thought push through it like, you know, you're making good money. But I was, you know, truthfully unhappy with the organization and I did not feel safe. I was like, okay, well, one of the benefits here is that they do tuition reimbursement. And I was like, I know I want to go to grad school, but I don't know what I want to go to go for.

And I was like, do I want to even stay in this field? And so I looked into the grad programs here, and I saw the HR program. And when I was like, really reading it, I just thought to myself, this feels useful. Like it feels useful for what I'm experiencing now because there were a lot of issues in the workplace.

I was having a bad experience. I was seeing others have a bad experience, and I figured, you know, if I go for this HR degree and maybe I could bring it back and try to make some type, some type of change.

00:08:30:29

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

Shaun decided to pursue a master's degree in human resource development. When she discussed it with her employers, they agreed to shift her out of her environmental specialist job and into a more operational role as a technical service representative, so she kept working for the same company for a while, and stories about her workplace came up in her classes a lot, mostly as examples of what not to do.

00:08:52:00

Shaun

I was learning so much from Towson about different things within the workplace that happened that are wrong. And I realized, you know, a lot of this was happening at my workplace. Like every time we had a paper or a project or something to write about, I had material I had I had endless, endless, endless material. So I ended up leaving that organization.

I was very fortunate to find a role in HR somewhere else, and kind of began my HR journey from there. I feel like I went through a lot with that organization. It definitely made me stronger. Like, I don't think I could do that again, but like from that, I guess I hate to say it, my tolerance, I guess, is maybe a little higher.

And it's funny because my professors, a lot of them from my first semester, first year, they're like, oh, we remember you in that job you had like, we hope you're like, I hope you're not still there.

00:09:44:03

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

No, that that makes sense. Um, does it feel worth it? All that work?

00:09:48:11

Shaun

I, you know, it's funny, I ask that question every day.

I wish I could say, you know, I changed fields, and I found, like, the perfect HR job. And, you know, I'm here now. But to be completely honest, my road was very bumpy. I. So, as I said, I left the environmental organization I was with. And then I ended up working for like a staffing type agency within HR operations.

And that was great. I only stayed there for about 3 to 4 months, because I ended up getting an internship with a federal agency. I was super excited because another thing I was taught growing up, I have a lot of family who work in government and things like that that, you know, that's the ticket. You know, you get a job and it's federal government.

You know, you stay there for 20 whatever years or do whatever, and they retire. You know, I was super optimistic. I started that role in September 2024, and then January 2025 hit, you know, administration switch and hiring freeze. I singlehandedly watched just my entire HR, the entire department, like just slowly disappeared. And for me as an intern, you know, I was like, where does this leave me?

But they told me we're in a hiring freeze. We cannot likely will not be hiring you for a full-time role.

00:11:06:08

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

Shaun was disappointed, but she rallied quickly, finding her way into an internship she liked even more. And when that group lost their federal funding shortly after she joined, she was pretty frustrated.

00:11:16:12

Shaun

Getting in there was very hard, and I went through numerous interviews and I made it.

I got the position they were paying so much better. They they valued their interns, they truly valued their employees. And by the end of my summer, all of them got notification like, hey, you guys have until September to either find a role internally or we're sorry. You know, we don't have a place for you. So unfortunately, that internship ended and so since then I've been, you know, applying, doing several interviews and things actually just received the offer, which was very good.

So, back to the main question of like, was it all worth it career-wise? I feel like it kind of. I wouldn't say I got the result that I truly wanted in terms of, you know, getting that job I wanted, being at the organization that I aligned with. I guess that didn't happen. But throughout everything with what I learned through my degree, I'll say, like I made a lot of connections.

It truly has helped me navigate the workplace properly, and I've also with my program, I think I learned how to just not like take everything with you because like what? I like everything pretty bad. It's pretty, pretty bumpy. It's pretty bad. Like, it's enough to honestly drive someone crazy. Just make them want it. Some days, you know, just want to, like, give up.

But like, I've learned to take everything as a learning lesson and apply it to what I'm doing next to make, you know, help me be successful in whatever the next thing is.

00:12:52:07

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

Um, what would you say to someone who's considering changing their career?

00:12:56:17 

Shaun

I would say definitely be realistic about it. Make sure you know what you're getting into and be prepared for change, because change is everywhere and you might go into it like me, I mapped it out.

I thought like, okay, I'll do this, this, this, this. And I just I didn't really consider all the curveballs that actually, really did come my way. I mean, there's no way to tell the future, but I think you definitely make sure to be realistic and consider, you know, what could happen and make sure you're okay with that.

00:13:36:02

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

A realistic outlook was one that our next guest, Martha, embraced as she searched for a more fulfilling path. She chose to lean into the parts of her work she truly enjoyed and let them guide her towards something new, which turned out to be TU&rsquo:s occupational therapy program. So tell me a little bit about what you were doing before you started your grad program here.

00:13:56:28

Martha

I've had so many ups and downs and kind of a long, winding way of trying to discover what I want to do.

00:14:04:21

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

Tell me about that. Where did you start?

00:14:06:00

Martha

Yeah. So I was born in Spain, in the Canary Islands, which I recommend everyone to come visit. Initially, my dad was very adamant that education was a really big part of my journey and like I always had the hope of coming to the States to study.

And I got accepted into a few universities to study engineering. So I went to upstate New York, Rochester Institute of Technology, and I started, I studied electrical engineering with a biomedical concentration. So like throughout the first three years, it was just like circuits and electronics and things that were not motivating for me at all. Eventually it got pretty tough towards the end, just kind of like having the motivation and the vision of what am I doing?

And financially expensive that I was like, you know, I don't think this is for me.

00:14:53:04

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

Martha was burned out. She was tired of studying things that didn't interest her, so she took some time to focus on other things.

00:14:59:29

Martha

I took a little break. I got married and as part of, you know, getting married, my my husband was like, you need to figure out what you're going to do.

And I started helping out as a receptionist in a clinic, you know, up and down. Like I said, I decided I was going to go back to school. I knew I was good at math, I knew I was good at sciences, and everyone kind of incentivizes you to do the hard thing, the thing that most people wouldn't do and hence that kind of engineering trajectory.

I even started seeking out a Ph.D. program, and there was just something that didn't quite fit. You know, I can do the work, but it's not something that I wake up excited about. Through having helped my husband at that little clinic, I knew that I could do more direct patient engagement. I instead applied to become a occupational therapist, and that's what I'm studying here at Towson.

00:15:57:11

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

That's a really interesting path. I do think it's true that, you know, people do encourage you to, you know, to do the hardest thing. And sometimes the thing that's perceived as the hardest might not be the hardest for you, but it also might not be what what makes your heart happy. Like, I get that for sure.

00:16:11:27

Martha

And it's interesting that you say that because I may not be the hardest for me was definitely that interpersonal aspect, you know, like having been kind of not caged in but pushed into the more hard sciences path.

I didn't develop a lot of the social skills growing up. You know, it's like just study. But through work and through life, I've been exposed to dealing with strangers and kind of making them feel comfortable. And I realize that I'm not particularly bad at it. Especially compared to my peers and fellow engineers. And I actually enjoy it.

I can handle that one on one and work with people and actually connect with them to the point that I've been told that I'm a particularly good therapist. Right? Like they mentioned that they have other therapists and they particularly enjoy working with me. So yeah, the more and more I find out and learn about the depths of the profession, the more I think that this final phase, hopefully of my educational path is, is the right one for me.

00:17:13:09

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

You talked about your your family and particularly your father finding education to be a very important component of your life. How does he feel about your decision to switch out of the hard sciences?

00:17:22:09

Martha

Oh, that's a great question. I think my dad has always been proud of me, but the way that he shows it is by, like, asking me to do more, you know?

So when I told him, hey, I'm actually going to do this other thing, I think he took it kind of like, okay, hold on. But with time he's understood that it is a good fit for me, but I'm still helping people and I think that pride is still there, right? That I'm kind of living my life and growing and keeping pushing forward.

So it's an interesting question.

00:17:54:28

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

Was that hard for you to make that that shift in your family?

00:17:58:11 

Martha

It has been hard. And it continues to be hard because you never really get to figure out who you are. It's a process that never ends.

00:18:05:01 

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

So do you know what's next?

00:18:06:22 

Martha

Well, there's always a plan and then life happens, right?

So the plan coming into this was, well, I'm my husband's a vision therapist. I would become an occupational therapist. And we have a mutual friend who is in optometry school. We have like, this goal of starting our own clinic. I want to be as multidisciplinary and holistic in a way that matters to the patient. While that is the goal, I understand that it can be financially burdensome and like logistically burdensome.

My practical thought is to start working somewhere hospital, clinic, school, wherever I end up and use that towards funds and then starting maybe like one day a week or two days a week and kind of building it up from there. But that would be the goal and the clinic wouldn't just serve patients. I am very ambitious in that way.

I want to do, like I said, like clinical studies, right? I want research to be a core part of it. And I also want to have a nonprofit part of it, because there are so many people who just cannot afford it. And I would not want insurance, finances, life to get in the way of what people need to be healthy.

00:19:18:09 

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

What would you say to someone thinking about moving from one profession to another?

00:19:22:11 

Martha

If there is one thing that I would say, you know, I can be one data point, that you don't have to get it right the first time. And sometimes pushing, pushing, pushing makes it worse. Like that's kind of what happened to me. I knew by year two or so that I wasn't really cut for electrical engineering at right, and I push through almost five years.

Right. And that's a long time of stubbornness, a lot of money. I feel that if people give themselves a little bit more grace and kindness and time not to laze around and wait for things to find you, but to experience other things that may not be whatever you think is traditional or whatever you think is correct can sometimes open new perspectives and give you ideas of things that will work out for you.

It's all different for, for everybody, and you'll find your path.

00:20:20:04

Steph Sundermann-Zinger

The guests on today's show all came from different industries, but they all had one thing in common—the courage to make a change in their career paths and work towards something new. If you've been feeling like your current career isn't quite the right fit, I hope this stories inspired you to take a chance on yourself and do something new.

You've been listening to Three Degrees, a podcast produced out of Towson University by myself and my co-producer and sound engineer, Bryonna Sieck.

00:20:50:20

Bryonna Sieck

Founded in 1866, Towson University is a top rate, comprehensive public research university recognized as Maryland's number one public institution by The Wall Street Journal. As Greater Baltimore's largest university, TU proudly serves as an engine of opportunity for nearly 20,000 students, the state of Maryland, and beyond. Explore more than 190 top-ranked undergraduate and graduate degree programs and make our momentum yours at Towson.edu