Midlife Career Change: A Roundup

The past several weeks have seen the launching of a notable new blog about the changing cocept of the "right" career path, several midlife career success stories, and an indication that changing paths at midlife isn't so odd after all.

Marci Alboher, author of "One Person, Multiple Careers," has been writing a New York Times column on how the notion of a career is changing, and now "Shifting Gears" is also a blog. Both forums cover far more than career change. One of Marci's interests is the "slash" career that many middle aged people either aspire to or have fallen into: writer/chef, lawyer/actor, mom/VP ... she's covering that and much more in both the column and the blog.

Three recent stories show that second careers are possible, although not without hardship:

The San Fernando Valley Business Journal has a roundup of five people who -- voluntarily or not -- switched careers in midlife. The takeaway: it's not easy, but it can be done.

The Miami Herald covered four people in South Florida who made midlife career changes as part of a feature on Marc Freedman's Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life (LifeTwo coverage here and here. The second careers include pastor, providing assisted living services, starting a value-added landscaping company, public health researcher, and doctor. The article is no longer on the Herald website but is copied here.

Another option -- act like you're in college an become an intern. Heather Taylor writes in the Washington Post that her radio internship was a great experience: "Working countless hours for no pay may not sound like a good midlife career move, but while I worked for free, the experience both enriched and freed me." She now has her own show on D.C.'s WMET.

Finally, in a sign of the mainstreaming of the idea of second careers, the think tank and program sponsor Civic Ventures announced grants to ten community colleges for the development of second career programs in teaching, gerontology, nursing instruction, or nonprofit work.