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PSA: A guy at my gym said I was crazy for quitting my $52k job to become a physical therapy assistant
I was talking to a guy named Dave at the gym in Phoenix last Tuesday, and when I said I was leaving my $52k office job to go back to school for physical therapy assisting, he told me I was making a huge mistake. He said the pay is lower and the schooling is a waste of time, but another trainer there said she did the exact same switch in 2021 and has zero regrets because she actually likes going to work now. I think Dave might be right about the money part, since the starting pay here is around $38k, but I keep coming back to how miserable I was sitting at a desk for 9 hours a day. So which one matters more, the paycheck or actually liking your job? I want to hear from people who took a pay cut to switch, did it work out or do you wish you had stayed put?
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phoenixb664d ago
I read a survey last year from Pew that said people who quit for better work-life balance were way happier six months later even when they lost money. A guy I know in Tempe did the same thing you're thinking about, left a $60k sales job for massage therapy school and took a $20k hit his first year. Two years in he says he'd do it again because he stopped dreading Mondays. Dave is only looking at the math and ignoring the part where you were miserable at that desk. $38k with a job you don't hate beats $52k that slowly kills you, and the pay in PT assisting usually goes up once you get experience.
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