Now Is the Time

I want my hands in the soil – about studying in midlife and discovering that it feels even better than it did twenty years ago

I waited impatiently throughout June for the university admission results.

When, late in the evening after my child’s ninth birthday party in October 2024, I googled possible study programmes and career paths for myself – a new (working) life – I came across the entire field of environmental science for the first time. (What is this? Is it actually possible to study exactly the subjects I already read about for fun, carrying armfuls of books home from the library?)

I’m Janina from Finland, and you are reading Nest Regards, a publication about small wonders in nature, seen through the eyes of a middle-aged humanist studying biology and environmental science.

This letter is about the present moment and the future – an illusion we nevertheless need in order to make choices today.

A little over a year and a half ago, I did not know what I would do with these studies, if anything. I did not know whether it would even be possible for me to apply for another degree, since I already have one. I did not know whether I would want to. Or whether, even if I wanted to, I would be able to.

There were six places available in environmental science through the Open University route, which sounds like quite a lot to me. If applicants had to be ranked, selection would be based on grades achieved in the Open University basic and intermediate studies (60 credits in total). I have known this from the very beginning. Even though, in late 2024, I had no idea what I would eventually do with my studies, one thing was clear from the start: if I ever decided I wanted a study place in the future, I did not want my grades to be the reason I failed to get one.

Very soon after beginning my studies, however, I realised that if I wanted to work in the environmental sector in the future, I would most likely need an actual degree rather than a collection of individual study modules. My existing degree is from a completely different field, and a handful of studies completed afterwards would not change the fact that I am not formally qualified – no matter how sincerely I want to work in the field, or how many books on the subject I have read simply for the joy of it.

Alongside bureaucratic uncertainties related to full-time student status and very real questions of time management and earning a living, my first year of environmental science studies at the Open University was also, and perhaps above all, coloured by a wandering sense of identity. (Sometimes I envy people who simply carry on and seem able to make even major decisions and life changes without turning everything into an identity crisis. As a sensitive person, however, decisions and choices always represent something larger than themselves. Beyond their practical consequences, they primarily reflect values – is this new direction one whose values I truly want to commit myself to?)

I have always identified as a humanist, someone who thrives in multilingual environments among literature and other cultural subjects. I do remember struggling briefly in upper secondary school with the question of what to study, because so many things interested me and I thought I was reasonably good at many of them too. A positive problem, admittedly. It led me to consider geology and geography, to apply for the fine arts programme at an art academy (I was not accepted), to a creative writing programme at a folk high school (I did not realise how expensive studying there would be, so I could not accept the place), to comparative literature at university (I was not accepted), to vocational training as a clothing artisan (I was accepted but did not take the place), and finally to the University of Turku to study German translation and interpreting.

I was accepted there, and the rest is the history of my professional identity. I studied other languages as minors and eventually comparative literature as well. I was more interested in art history than in anything offered outside the humanities faculty. I studied like a madwoman – and with enormous enthusiasm. I remember thinking: this is so wonderful that I never want to graduate.

Well. Eventually I wanted to do the work I had trained for instead of all the odd jobs that had financed my studies and my life for years. My transcript contained more than 460 credits instead of the required 300. It was time to graduate, and I wanted to. I wanted to work in my field. I wanted a family.

It has now been almost exactly fifteen years since I graduated.

I have had the privilege of working in my field. I sometimes think of it as having played this profession through to the end. Of course I have not explored every possible career path available within it, but as an independent professional working in international markets, I feel I have seen the field from many different perspectives and levels.

I have worked as a translator, proofreader and third-party reviewer. I have created glossaries and developed new terminology for fields where no established Finnish terms yet existed. I have worked as a consultant and team leader – and I have edited machine translations and trained artificial intelligence.

I have witnessed the industry’s transformation and stood on the front line like a breakwater facing the first foaming crest of a storm. I attended my first training course on AI-assisted translation editing as early as 2019. That was seven years ago already. Imagine that.

And now I am ready to say goodbye to all of it. (Am I really?) At least to the extent that while five years ago I imagined myself doing this work until retirement, I no longer believe in these jobs, in their permanence, or even particularly in retirement itself.

I am forty-two years old. If I want my work to contribute to the wellbeing of this planet, now is the time.

Of course, that would not be impossible as a translator or language consultant either – but it no longer interests me very much. I want something more concrete. I want my hands in the soil, so to speak.

So when, on a Thursday afternoon just before Midsummer, I received an email informing me that I had been offered a study place, I felt confused and happy and slightly disoriented.

This may sound self-satisfied, but I was not enormously surprised. I knew the selection criteria, and I was well aware that my transcript consists rather pedantically of rows and rows of top grades.

Still, a strange cocktail of emotions swept over me, and my analytical mind could not quite make sense of them. I accepted them exactly as I felt them in my body: a peculiar hollowness in my stomach, a feeling of nausea in my throat, chills running through my arms, and at the same time an absurd sweat breaking out as though a sudden heatwave had arrived in the middle of the coldest Scandinavian June.

I had been expecting the admission decision, and yet my mind was shaken. My emotions sloshed everywhere like water in the watering can of a hurried gardener.

I consciously stopped and allowed myself to receive everything – both the emotions and the study place itself. I let tears rise to my eyes. The stronger the feeling, the more clearly it tells me that something truly important is at stake.

That same Thursday evening – or early Friday morning, if I am being honest – after the rest of the family had long since gone to bed, I browsed the university’s course catalogue. For some time now I have known that I want to study biology as a minor – or perhaps even as my major subject – and now that I finally have permission to do so, I dared to look at what the department offers.

Evolutionary biology. Vertebrate species identification. A field course in terrestrial invertebrates. It makes me dizzy. I am also fascinated by the evolutionary psychology programme, and I notice that I have already read some of the books on its reading lists.

I am so excited by all these possibilities opening before me that I place several library reservations immediately and very nearly begin filling in my personal study plan as well. I click from one course description to another, and the joy barely fits inside me because there is simply so much of it.

And suddenly I remember what studying felt like at its very best when I was in my early twenties. What energy. What flow.

Except that I am not twenty anymore. I am forty. And that makes all of this at least twice as wonderful.

I still do not know where these studies will lead me, or whether they will lead anywhere at all. For now, however, they are leading me back to university and towards a Bachelor of Science degree.

The best thing right now is simply learning more about the countless subjects that fascinate me. The best thing is being able to do what interests me most right now. Never mind what the future may bring. The future is an illusion we humans need in order to make the right choices in the present.

And this is my choice. This is my choice now.

Nest regards,
Janina

Thank you for joining me on this journey. There will be more stories about nature, environmental science, biology and evolutionary psychology to come.

Somewhere in the Turku Archipelago at 5 a.m. on Midsummer Sunday. In a moment, it would be time to raise the sail and head home before the stronger gusts arrived. For now, though, there were only barnacle geese (valkoposkihanhi in Finnish), soft morning light, and the feeling that the whole world was holding its breath.

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