How many times have you heard someone ask a kid, “what do you want to be when you grow up”? Some kids give a straightforward response; “I want to be a firefighter!” “I want to be a teacher!” But children are funny in that they haven’t been bogged down to the idea of limited possibilities, so some will say something like, “ I want to be a doctor, a writer, and find dinosaur bones!” As adults, we laugh because we know that you can’t be all of those things–you pick something, and that’s it. That’s what you do with your life. And that’s how many of us approach the way we live.

But the truth is that we can always move and we can always change. We can always pivot and we can always grow. It’s never too late. We don’t need to map out and stick to a plan for our entire life. We can take our lives in seasons, and make an active pivot when we realize that that season no longer suits us. That is what I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember.

How it Started

I work in technology as a data scientist. That is a far cry from what I thought I’d be doing around college age. When I was in college, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer (this was after I thought I wanted to be an engineer and my first computer science class kicked my butt and changed my mind…pivot number 1, lol). I got a job at the American Bar Association (ABA) so that I could get some exposure to the legal industry before pulling the trigger on law school. However, that job made me realize that law school and the legal field were not for me. But I wasn’t sure what was. Although I enjoyed working at the ABA and loved my colleagues, I knew that the job would not fulfill me.

I don’t even remember how I was introduced to the idea, but some way or another I learned about a post-graduate program where you could live and work in London full time, usually at prestigious companies in banking, and go to school part time to get a certificate in international business. This was the opportunity to pivot that I needed. I applied to the program, ended up getting a job with an investment bank, and packed my bags for London. Sounds great, right? It was, but it definitely was not a long term plan for the future. The program was just a year, so at the end of that year my visa would be up and I’d have to return to the States. I had given up my job and my apartment. I would have to start from scratch to rebuild my life.

I had hoped that my role in London would land me a role at the same company, stateside. But the economy was tough and the company went into a hiring freeze. Friends let me crash in their basement while I hunted for a job. I couldn’t find anything in accounting/finance, the area I had worked in London, so eventually I started taking temp jobs. My old team at the ABA knew I was looking for work because we kept in touch, and eventually after more than half a year of flailing in my job search, my old team offered me a new role. This is testament to how important it is to build connections and real relationships with people. So I took the position. But I hadn’t given up on finding something else, a role more geared towards my analytical skill set.

The feedback that I had gotten as I interviewed for accounting/finance roles was that I didn’t have any formal accounting/finance education. So I decided I’d take some classes part time to fill those gaps. While researching classes, I ran across information for a Masters Program in Predictive Analytics (PA). I had never heard of PA, but it sounded cool and interesting to me; the idea of analyzing data and building models with that data to predict future outcomes was intriguing and seemed powerful. So I applied to the program and got in. Another pivot!

Pivot Ain’t Easy

My time working to break into the world of PA was hard! I was working full time at the ABA to pay the bills (I had finally got out of my friends’ basement and into a cozy studio apartment). And I had to take at least two courses a quarter in order to continue to be eligible for my federal student loan. At one point, trying to have the energy to do it all had reduced my schedule to something like this:

For two years I powered through until I was able to complete my degree. A few months after graduation, I got my first job in data as an Insights Analyst.

The Message

The rest is history when it comes to my data career. I’ve been thrown some curve balls, such as getting laid off not even a year into my first job. Or how participating in a Kaggle competition would be the trigger for me to be recruited for a job for which I would pick up and move to the south. But I’ve continued to learn and grow. I think the important thing is that my experiences have taught me that I can always make different moves that can catapult me into a new career, a new place, a new field, a new way of living.            

I’m a data scientist, and I enjoy the work that I do. However, I’m not just a data scientist and that’s not the only thing I can or will be moving forward. All that is necessary is to have the mindset and courage to get out of your comfort zone and pivot when things aren’t quite what you want them to be. After all, being in your comfort zone doesn’t mean that you are happy or content. It just means that you’re in a familiar place. Don’t let familiarity keep you from being all of the things that you can and want to be in your lifetime.

What is an instance where you pivoted, or a pivot that you’re considering right now? Leave a comment and if you enjoyed the post, please share.