Valerie Valcourt resides what some would possibly contemplate the dream life: The 34-year-old former govt assistant stop her tech job over a 12 months in the past and now makes pastries within the South of France.
She just lately went viral on TikTok for posting her expertise of adjusting careers in her 30s: “Do not let society attempt to trick you into pondering that it is too late to start out over or that it’s a must to select one set path,” she says within the video.
Valcourt lives by that mentality: Again in 2020, Valcourt was working her Large Tech company job in Seattle incomes simply over $100,000 after bonuses and fairness however feeling “at a extremely low place” and questioning: “What would I wish to be doing that might deliver me pleasure?”
She’d at all times needed to go to culinary college overseas and, after some on-line analysis, submitted her utility to a French college on a whim. She received accepted in October 2020 and resigned from her day job quickly after. However, she now admits, she wasn’t able to make such an enormous life change.
“I ended up sort of falling on my face,” Valcourt tells CNBC Make It. “I did not have sufficient saved, and I did not notice the psychological toll it could take to stop my job on the time.” So, she put culinary college on the backburner and rejoined the company world to kind issues out.
Extra analysis, financial savings and a second try
Valcourt realized she would want to double her financial savings to roughly $20,000 to reside off of whereas at school. To speed up her financial savings, she took on a brand new govt assistant job and moved from Seattle to New York and at last to Connecticut to reside along with her household.
By the spring of 2022, she was feeling renewed.
She spent extra time researching colleges that might assist her be taught French in addition to cooking methods by an internship placement. She landed on a faculty within the south of France known as Gastronomicom and reached out to a former pupil on Instagram to get a really feel for the expertise.
Tuition ranges from 4,300 euros ($4,666) for 2 months of simply cooking classes, or as much as 18,700 euros ($20,290) for a year-long program with cooking classes, pastry classes, French classes and an internship.
Valcourt says she did not want any prior culinary information to enroll — “they simply need people who find themselves enthusiastic.”
She formally moved to France in January 2023 and started her accelerated three-month program of intensive pastry programs and French classes, adopted by a four-month internship. All in, she paid about 10,000 euros ($10,850) for tuition and one other 1,800 euros ($1,953) for housing.
A future in France
Valcourt sailed by lessons. Her first internship received prolonged to 6 months, after which she received employed to work full time as a pastry assistant on the restaurant Maison Chabran in Pont-de-l’Isere, France.
She earns roughly 20,000 euros ($21,705) a 12 months, and her employer covers her seasonal housing (a minimum of till April, when a brand new intern class begins). When she ultimately finds her personal house, Valcourt expects to pay roughly 300 euros ($326) per thirty days for a studio or 500 euros ($543) per thirty days for a 1-bedroom house.
Valcourt says the perfect issues about her pastry job are studying new expertise and dealing along with her arms. Trying again, she’s grateful her first attempt at culinary college did not pan out. She wanted extra time to construct her psychological confidence, “as a result of being in a kitchen is not any joke.”
Whereas she and her French colleagues work onerous, Valcourt says she’s stunned by their mentality round relaxation.
“The French are very adamant about not working time beyond regulation,” she says. “When it is time to cease, it is time to cease. Go house and relaxation.”
Valcourt says she would not have a five-year plan however typically desires to be taught as many cooking and pastry methods as attainable, and see as a lot of France whereas she will. Her subsequent objective: saving up for a automobile to drive across the countryside.
She feels lucky her college and employers have helped her with the required visas to remain within the nation, and she or he at the moment has a everlasting employment contract along with her firm, which employs many overseas and seasonal staff.
Her recommendation to daydreaming career-changers
Lately, Valcourt usually hears from different company U.S. staff who wish to stop and begin a brand new profession. Her finest recommendation to them: Discover what you love to do day-to-day, and separate what you wish to do as a pastime versus working for your self or beneath another person as a occupation.
Take into account, what’s it you want about your present line of labor? What about your earlier work? What do you not like about work? Are you able to discover a new profession that does not embody that facet, or will it’s a must to work by incompatibilities?
Lastly, she provides, do not put an excessive amount of stress on your self to have every part found out. One huge assistance is having a superb help system of pals, household and colleagues when issues get powerful.
“When you’re in that sort of place the place you are attempting to determine what you wish to do, take it as a possibility to have the ability to discover,” Valcourt says. “Do not see it as one thing that is unfavourable. it with curiosity, being open to what excites you and specializing in that could be a actually good strategy to begin.”
Conversions from euros to USD had been performed utilizing the OANDA conversion fee of 1 euro to 1.09 USD on March 5, 2024. All quantities are rounded to the closest greenback.
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