Two years into a deeply personal chapter, I started questioning everything. The decisions that shaped me, the relationships I carried, the habits I built, and the career I thought I had mapped out.
On paper, it looked right. A freelance writing life split between New York and Adelaide. Stimulating, mobile, creative. The kind of career many people say they want. But moments that unsettle your sense of self have a way of cutting through the noise. They force a harder question. Not what are you doing, but why.
That question is no longer confined to mid career professionals. It is already forming in lecture theatres, tutorials and student accommodation across the country. Domestic and international students alike are starting to wonder what kind of working life they are actually building toward.
Because the old idea of a career is quietly breaking apart.
For decades, the promise was simple. Choose wisely early, work hard, climb steadily. Increasingly, that promise feels out of step with reality. Recent data from Seek suggests more than half of Australians wish they had chosen a different career. That sense of regret is most visible among those already established, but it is being noticed by those just starting out.
Students can see what is happening ahead of them. Layoffs in the tech sector, including high profile cuts at Atlassian. The growing presence of AI reshaping entire job categories. Burnout no longer as a late career issue but something graduates talk about within a few years of finishing. Add to that the cost of living pressures and the picture becomes clearer.
Work is no longer a straight line. It is something closer to a series of reinventions.
What is emerging in response is what many are calling the encore career. Not a backup plan, but a second or third act that is often more aligned with who someone has become rather than who they thought they should be.
There is a pattern to these shifts. People are not simply abandoning their past. They are reworking it.
Take Jackie Davalos, who reached a high point as a journalist before stepping away to train as a pastry chef in France. Or Dean Talbot, who moved from a long career in finance into running a golf course, reconnecting with a much earlier version of himself. For Cain Cooke, the shift was less dramatic on the surface but just as significant. From real estate leadership into building an electric mobility business, driven by a gap he could see in the market.
What stands out is not the change itself, but how much carries over. Cooke describes it as mostly redeployment rather than reinvention. The ability to build a market, lead people, manage risk and think commercially did not disappear when he changed industries. It simply found a new context.
That is the part students should pay attention to.
The degree you are studying is not a fixed pathway into a single job for life. It is a foundation layer. The skills you are building, whether technical, analytical or interpersonal, are far more portable than they might appear. The real risk is not choosing the wrong career at the start. It is believing that your first choice has to define you forever.
Career transition specialists are seeing this mindset shift in real time. What used to be a mid life reassessment is now happening earlier, and more quietly. Not dramatic exits, but a low level questioning. A sense that something might need to change, even if the next step is not yet clear.
The most effective transitions are not abrupt. They are built gradually. Experimentation alongside stability. Testing ideas before fully committing. Creating a bridge rather than making a leap.
For students, this might mean pairing a degree with side projects, internships that stretch beyond your field, or simply staying open to opportunities that do not fit neatly into your original plan.
It also means understanding that identity is tied up in work more than most people expect. Changing direction is not just a professional decision. It can feel like letting go of a version of yourself. That is often the harder part.
At the same time, the drivers behind this shift are not going away. AI will continue to reshape roles. Job security will remain uncertain. Working lives are getting longer, not shorter. The idea of one career lasting forty years is becoming increasingly unrealistic.
In that context, the most useful way to think about work is not as a single trajectory, but as a series of chapters.
This is already reflected in education trends. Institutions like the Australian Institute of Business report steady enrolments from professionals in their thirties, forties and beyond. The average graduate age sits in the early forties. Many are not starting over, but recalibrating. Some move up within their field. Others change direction entirely.
The common thread is not escape, but intention. People are not running away from their careers. They are moving toward something that fits better.
For those currently at university, this is both confronting and freeing.
Confronting, because there is no longer a guaranteed script to follow. Freeing, because you are not locked into a single outcome based on the choices you make in your early twenties.
The idea of an encore career suggests that what you choose now is not final. It is the beginning of something that will evolve. The pressure to get it exactly right the first time starts to ease when you realise there will be multiple opportunities to reshape your direction.
That shift changes how you approach the future.
It becomes less about finding the perfect job, and more about building adaptable skills. Less about certainty, and more about curiosity. Less about a fixed identity, and more about allowing it to develop over time.
For me, that has meant letting go of the idea that a career has to be one thing. Writing remains central, but it no longer has to carry everything. It can sit alongside something else. An extension, not a replacement.
That may end up being the most important lesson for students now. Your career does not have to be a single, definitive answer. It can be a combination. A progression. A series of decisions that make more sense as you move through them.
Not a ladder to climb, but a story you keep rewriting.
Amanda Smith is a freelance journalist who reports on culture, technology, and women’s health. Her ability to hold up a mirror to society, to see both the malaise and majesty, has led to assignments with highly respected titles such as The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Business Insider, and National Geographic.
