National Spouse Day

You may be scratching your head right about now, wondering how National Spouse Day is related to college admission or career counseling. I get it, it sounds like a stretch. That is, unless you know my husband’s story. 

I met my husband a very long time ago, just before I was about to start my senior year of college. I was on a track- finish my BA in Psychology at LHU then go on to get my Master’s degree at PSU in Counselor Education to become the world’s best school counselor. Not only was I focused, I had a very supportive family who challenged me to do my best in school and to research to figure out what I wanted to do with my life (shout out mom, dad, Sue and all the rest!). With that support, I was on a clear path from very early on in my academic career. 

Wait, this story isn’t about me, it’s about my husband. True, but this little bit of background information will be helpful. See, I never realized that an adult (yes, he’s a couple of years older than me) may not be doing what he loved, because I was always encouraged to do what I liked and what would support me in the future. 

Shortly after I started my first professional job as a School Counselor, my husband and I had a very serious conversation about his career, his career frustrations, and his life’s ambitions and desires. It was clear that he didn’t want to continue on his current career trajectory and had something very different in mind. Over the course of several weeks, we had many deep and extended conversations about what he wanted out of life and ultimately some career options. The ones that lasted the longest were helicopter pilot (a childhood dream), nurse, and doctor. There were pros and cons to all of these. I encouraged my husband to do lots and lots of research into what each of these would take to achieve. Ultimately, we decided that nursing was not the best fit- if you know my husband, you know why! Still on the table were helicopter pilot and doctor. This debate took a long time, but in the end, neither was a perfect fit. As much as being a pilot sounded fun, it didn’t hit all of the career aspirations that my husband had at the time. My husband was quickly approaching 30 and we were concerned about the timeline to become a doctor, so this was not ideal either. I encouraged him to do even more research, which is when he stumbled upon the Physician Assistant career field. Honestly, it was perfect for him. It would allow him to do all of the things he wanted to do in medicine (yes, PAs can do just about everything that a doctor can- check out my infographic) but would not take 8 years of schooling plus residency. 

The next step was to plan out the educational portion of this. It took a lot of planning and some revisions, but my husband was a huge success in his academic career. He continues to be successful in his career, and fast forward 14 years, and he is not only a highly successful practicing PA, but he is also an Aerospace PA (which is code for a flight doctor). He gets to practice medicine and fly helicopters (childhood dream achieved- check!).

If you are still wondering what the connection is between National Spouse Day and career counseling, I'll put it this way- it is never too late to pursue your dreams, but you need to take the time to figure out what those dreams are. Life may hand you lemons or pre-made lemonade, we don’t get to pick it usually, life just serves it, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t change what you’ve got in your hands. My husband credits the conversations we had, with the appropriate career counseling feedback I provided, and the research that he completed to being able to finally choose the career path that was best for him. If you need help figuring out what career will make you happy, but also provide a steady income with which to support yourself, please seek the help of a career counselor (it doesn’t even have to be me!).

Career counselors specialize in all types of career assessments. These can be questions you answer on your phone or a computer or even information assessments where the counselor asks you a series of questions designed to facilitate the career exploration process in a more informal and conversational way. We have resources and references for you to use to do research or to research with you. 

I hope you’ve found this helpful. If you are looking for more information, please visit my website- Higher & Hire. If I can be of assistance to you, please reach out to me here.

Many Thanks!

Valerie Palmer