At age fifty-four, Pam Mitchell  —  married in her twenties, now a mother of a young adult daughter and a son in high school, and caregiver for her aging parents  —  finds herself reexamining choices she has made, including her profession and what she wants to do with the second half of her life.

You don’t spend nearly thirty years on the working-mom track, balancing a busy career as educator and raising two children, without learning carefully how to navigate your next move. But sometimes, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

Pam Mitchell, 54, Inverness, Illinois

Act I: High school and college biology teacher; mother of two children, Will, 16, and Susan, 24; wife to Bill.

Act II: In process.

New Script

“I would like to use my educational and biological backgrounds in new ways, as a volunteer tutor or as a degreed and certified genetics counselor. I am looking into volunteering for the Jesuit volunteer corp and beginning graduate programs in genetic counseling.”

Life before the Leap

Pam was an accomplished college and high school biology teacher with a daughter about to graduate from college and