netazar, it’s not as strange as you might think. I was actually in this exact same situation 30 years ago. I wanted to be a pediatrician. It’s all I talked about when I was a kid. I took every science class that I could take. I even thought about taking German just to be “prepared” for things in college. I was planning to major in biology/pre-med in a good university and go from there. I thought though that it might be a good idea to get a little experience working in a doctor’s office first before I put myself in a position where I was going to be in school/training for a minimum of 10 years before I would have a real job. It was a huge investment. Now I obviously had no previous experience in a medical office since I was only 17, but I did now how to type. Obviously it was immature and unrealistic to think that I would get “experience” in medicine by working as a secretary, but I had no other great ideas at the time.
Well, I got a job working as a transcriptionist in an office and actually continued to work in that capacity there for more than 10 years. It was pretty easy work for me and I made a decent salary. I realized that too much blood was not going to be a good idea for me, so the office management side was more practical. I went from working part-time to full-time even after I graduated from a different university with a completely different degree than I had originally envisioned myself getting. This turned out to be a pretty good choice for me at the time, boring but paid well.
Well, fast forward about 15 years after I stopped working in that medical practice due to the fact that I came to EY, studied in a BT girls school for 2 years, got married, had 6 kids and worked a different job from my house for 10 years. I got a call 1 day that my “job” was over. The company was closing the next day.
It became obvious in the next few weeks that HKBH was the one who was makdim the refuah to the makah. I was soon back working in my same medical transcription work, but now in my home in EY. My salary increased at least double over the next two years from what I had been making in my previous job and my husband and I were finally able to buy an apartment in EY. All this happened only because I had so much experience from my previous work 20 years before.
So yes, I think that getting experience in any field is a good idea. It can lead a person into a field they had no idea existed because it was more hidden than the obvious up front occupations that they saw before.