Went Back to School

Everyone who worked with Claire Joubert knew she led a healthy life. She would jog during her lunch break and then dig into a healthy brown-bag lunch. Yet when she announced she was leaving her job as arts and entertainment editor of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine to pursue a career in medicine so she could “help others live happier, healthier lives,” it took everyone by surprise.

“Anybody who knows me was like—‘You want to do what?’ ” Joubert says with a laugh, adding that she had started as a premed student at St. Olaf, though she graduated with a degree in English. “They are two very different careers.”

Joubert first started questioning her career path about six years ago, when she and her husband, Aaron Morrison, backpacked through Asia. “I saw how little much of the world has in comparison with what we have in America,” Joubert says. “It turned my heart toward seeking ways to help those in need.”

She started a long process of soul-searching. Did she really want to change careers or was she just suffering from “the grass-is-greener syndrome.” Morrison was also cautious, but supported her decision. “I put my two cents in,” he says. “She loved parts of her job, and there were things she didn’t like so much. I told her no job is perfect and you have to take the good with the bad.”

But after deciding that she had “given journalism a fair shake,” Joubert, the self-proclaimed science nerd, was again drawn to medicine. When a friend suggested she look into being a physician assistant, it struck a chord. Soon she was taking psychology and science courses, making sure she still had the desire—and the chops—to become a thirty-two-year-old student.

“I told myself I had to get Bs or better in my science classes,” Joubert says. “I wanted to make sure I was being realistic.” To make sure she would enjoy the daily interaction with patients, she also started volunteering at Hennepin County Medical Center.

When it came time to leave the magazine, Joubert says there was no shortage of nerves, nerves that didn’t completely go away until she was accepted into Des Moines University’s physician assistant program. Now in her first year of the two-year program, she is hoping to specialize in surgery or emergency medicine.

When Joubert talks about a future in medicine, she can’t help but beam. Though she says she misses aspects of her job at Mpls.St.Paul, she doesn’t regret her decision. “It was a huge leap,” says Joubert. “It was like walking off a cliff, and I just had to know my parachute would open.”