u/Resident-Sherbert-63

Hey friends,

I’ve been working as an exploration geo since 2019 - all FIFO/DIDO work. For a long time it suited me well: good pay, interesting work and lots of time to travel. However over the past year I’ve just felt a bit more jaded by it all. My mom died while I was in the field and it took me almost an entire day to fly across country, and now I’m finding building any kind of community back home is just really difficult when you’re away for 2-4 weeks constantly.

I’ve worked as a core logger, and project geo and at least for where I live, any kind of local job would be difficult to find/require MSc/PhD which I’m not interested in doing.

(Not to mention I’ve heard from many other female friends and have experienced it myself that upward movement is just much more difficult as they all expect us to have babies and quit in our 30s - literally a friend had her boss tell her she had no chance to move further up because if she wants kids she should quit — love that for us 🙃)

I know this is kind of the opposite of the theme of this subreddit but I’m just wondering if anyone’s made the career change out of geology? Not sure if there’s something that has some transferable knowledge that would make sense for a career change? Thinking about going back and getting an undergrad economics degree for the pure interest in it but I’m not sure if there’s any career there for me.

Okay, title is a bit dramatic but I am hoping for your inspirational stories to give me a bit of a kick. Or maybe you deeply regret it, I don’t know. But would love to hear your stories.

My situation: 32, single, renter, LCOL, no dependents. I am 7 years into my well paying career with a healthy nest egg for a lean fire/coast and I am burnt out from my career. It requires rotational work, so time changes, along with the type of work (might be developing silicosis, have to wait months for a CT) is both harming my physical health and mental health since it’s so hard to build a community back home when I have to regularly leave for 3-4 weeks at a time.

Plus, I’ve lost a lot of the passion I once had for it. (And there are almost no WFH jobs or something that wouldn’t require me to relocate to some very small town to avoid FIFO in my field)

Ive been considering for the past year or so going back to school in the fall and maybe get an economics degree? Or try and become an insolvency trustee? Personal finance is obviously a huge interest of mine and I feel like helping people in some way would be meaningful.

But of course, the unknown is scary and I’m 32 and the idea of “blowing up” my career as I know it and going back to school after ten years and getting another degree, for a job that almost certainly pays less, terrifies me a bit.

The fact that I am semi- FIRE ready thankfully allows me to even consider this but I still would like to hear your success stories please!