Oprah Daily’s series The Pivot highlights the stories of people who chose to walk away from their career field or job and step into more meaningful work. Have a great pivot story? Email OprahDailyStoryIdeas@hearst.com and we may feature it in an upcoming column.
The early months of the COVID-19 pandemic were a frightening time. Some lost friends and loved ones. Some found themselves in unwilling solitude while others thought they’d never have a moment alone again. People lost their jobs, while still a great number were forced to work at the risk of getting sick. In New York City, the din of ambulance sirens would not let up, a constant reminder of untold suffering. Amid all this darkness and uncertainty, a small window of hope opened every day at 5 PM, when, in many cities, people banged on pots and pans to give thanks for the superheroes of our new reality: healthcare workers.
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In our first story for The Pivot column, we celebrate a crop of recent nursing school graduates–newly anointed heroes for the COVID-19 era. Though we are experiencing an ongoing nursing shortage—with a recent report showing that 30% of nurses are still considering leaving the profession—the pandemic has been a catalyst for some to pick up a stethoscope. Cue Columbia University’s nursing program, which has seen an uptick in admissions since the pandemic began. “Within the first six months of the pandemic, we were astounded to receive a 30% increase in applications. The phones were ringing off the hook,” says Judy Wolfe, Senior Associate Dean of Student Affairs at Columbia School of Nursing.
Founded in 1892, the Columbia School of Nursing was actually designed with second-career hopefuls in mind; in 1990, nearly 100 years later, the school introduced its innovative accelerated program guaranteeing a master of science in 15 months. To promote diversity, the program has adopted a new "holistic" admissions process: This means focusing less on academic records and more on who potential students are, where they come from, and what they value, as well as evidence that they care passionately about vulnerable populations. According to Wolfe, the idea of nurses just being for bedside or bedtime care is long expired: "In recent years, you'll see that nursing has exploded in local areas, government, education, corporate—it's everywhere. That's why we need people with different skill sets and life experiences."
Here, two recent grads and a current student of Columbia’s nursing program, talk about finding the courage to become a newbie in a totally new career field and what they learned along the way.
Pivot Lesson: Your answer to "What would you be doing if not this?" Do it!
From the time she was 16 years old, Avra Messe knew she wanted to be a ceramic artist. At 17, she went to one of the country’s best undergrad programs for ceramics, followed by a top-tier grad school. By the time she was 23 years old, she was a professor in her field. But after more than 25 years of working in the art world, she decided it was time to pursue the road not taken. She currently works as a nurse in an oncology unit and is in school full-time getting her doctorate to become a nurse practitioner.
"I will just say this about the art world: it's very misogynistic. I experienced it my entire career. In undergrad, one of my professors would have polls about which girls were the best looking. When I became a professor, my school always supported the male grads over the women. The galleries were more likely to show male work. I also found it very hard to get back into the art world after I had children. I finally took a job at a lamp company, where I made all the glazes and surfaces for the product. When it was time for me to get promoted, they gave it to a 23-year-old guy with no experience. Every day I would come home so miserable from that job.
That summer my wife and I took a road trip to Maine, which turned out to be a long drive with no cell service. So we started playing games. She asked me, "What would you do if you couldn’t be an artist?" I’ve always been interested in medicine. Most of my sculptures reference internal organs and medical devices. I said, "I'd love to be a nurse." By September 1, I was taking prereqs. I graduated from the Columbia nursing program in 2020.
Three days after Columbia got its first COVID case, the university shut down and went remote. Columbia worked out a system with New York Presbyterian for students to work as nurse techs. I learned to wrap bodies immediately. It was just devastating. A death every single day. But I got to feel like I was part of the solution during this global pandemic. I know it’s not the voice that you usually hear but I found it very exciting: I absolutely hit the ground running.
I think everyone should do a midlife career change. It's invigorating. I'm excited about my future in this field, and so grateful to be a part of it. I really love it. I know there’s a lot of burnout in this profession because there's short staffing up the wazoo, but I’m still untouched by it. My batteries are fully charged.
Pivot Lesson: The skills you've honed for years in one field could be what makes you great in another.
By the time Tristen Kim had left college in Korea, where he studied French, Japanese, and theater, he had already been cast in many short films, commercials, and TV shows. Kim's work took him to Thailand where he was part of a K-POP group, which led to an offer to host MTV Thailand. Kim rejected the offer and moved to Hollywood to pursue acting. When the pandemic hit and everything, including the entertainment industry, was put on pause, Kim went from being a performing actor to enrolling at Columbia for nursing.
During the pandemic, I was working at a Japanese restaurant, [where the staff] were like my second family. When the restaurant shut down, there was a sense that we were going through the devastation together. And, of course, there was government help. I decided that I needed some financial stability in my life. My dad is an ophthalmologist and my grandma used to be a pediatrician; I grew up watching them. I think their dedication to helping people really affected me.
I had never thought I would get into Columbia Nursing School; I didn’t know English up until pretty recently. I worked really, really hard. I remember being very emotional when I got the acceptance letter.
My training as an actor has helped me a lot with the nursing program. As actors, we are taught to go deep into our own psychology, understand ourselves, which translates well into understanding others. The more I know myself the more I can help you. One example is my ability to read nonverbal cues. A patient might say their pain is a three out of 10. I look for other cues—grimaces on the face, or maybe the patient is trembling; that kind of indicates that this patient is in much more pain than they are saying.
I love nursing but I am not trying to get away from acting. I just don't know when my break is going to come. When I have an acting hiatus, I want to focus on nursing. If I do book something, maybe I can take a leave of absence for a little bit. I want to hold on to both professions because I think both are very beautiful.
Pivot Lesson: "Nothing about life is linear. You have to just go where your heart takes you. Like we say in acting, go before you're ready."
Danny Burgos was on tour with a Broadway musical called The Band's Visit when the pandemic hit and his whole life changed. When the show had to shut down in Pittsburgh, Burgos moved back in with his family in Miami. Before getting swept up in the bright lights of musical theater, he had wanted to be a nurse, so he made the leap. In May 2022, he gave the commencement speech at his graduation from the Columbia nursing program and now plans on working in community medicine with an emphasis on LGBTQ+ inclusive care.
"My story starts in 2009 when I graduated high school. I wanted to be a nurse, but I took one anatomy and physiology class in college and it just killed my spirits. I switched my major to musical theater, which had always been really easy for me. Straight out of college, I booked a national tour of Beauty and the Beast, then regional productions of In the Heights. In 2016, I booked On Your Feet, my first Broadway show. Then I got The Band's Visit.
If you look at my résumé, I'm always the understudy to the lead. I became very negative. I kept getting so close to Broadway—they always went with the other guy. I kept telling my friends, I think this is my last show. And then we got to Pittsburgh at the peak of the pandemic. Pretty soon we were all out of a job. I ended up moving back to Miami at 30 years old, living in my childhood bedroom.
Remember how back in the beginning, people were banging pots and pans outside their windows for healthcare workers? That was what first got me thinking. I woke up one morning and decided I was going to finish what I started and take prereqs for nursing. I got to anatomy and physiology, the classes that had broken me—and I got through them. It was really fantastic. So I started applying to schools.
Nothing about life is linear. You have to just go where your heart takes you. Like we say in acting, go before you're ready. You're never going to be ready to make a huge life change. You just slowly but surely do it. And then you look back, and it's a year and a half later, and you're a nurse."
