I recently met a woman in the coffee shop I normally frequent. Her story touched my imagination and I thought it might inspire others as well, especially millennials and Gen Xers.

Bernadette Hannegan was born on Scotland’s Shetland Islands, growing up with two brothers, a sister, and a crowd of good friends. There she attended both primary school and home school, moving on to a French international school from ages 12-14. She finished her upper school education at a Scots boarding school. 

Her father was a lawyer, “a man of integrity,” Bernadette said, “and seeing how he applied his work to his life, to family life, the good he did in the community around him, was very impressive to me, although he always discouraged me from studying law. I think he could see that the profession was becoming wrapped up in a lot of red tape.”

Despite her father’s warnings, Bernadette earned her undergraduate degree in French law. “It was relevant then because Britain was still a part of the EU so there was just a huge variety in our studies.”

She then underwent a two-year traineeship at a law firm. “I had a good group of people around me, and I was kind of getting to the point that I wasn’t really sure what to do, so let’s just give corporate law a go. I applied for jobs, got a lot of job offers, and I went into it that way.”

As a 25-year-old, Bernadette succeeded in her new job – “I had a nice team” – but she quickly realized the work left her unfulfilled. “I wasn’t really getting anything out of it other than great dinners and a decent salary.”

The Francophile and the Faith

Both the international school and her legal studies had inculcated a love for French language and literature in Bernadette.

I always had French niggling in the back of my head, that was always, I would say, my main passion. But I didn’t pursue it because I had an idea that if I studied French, I would probably have to be a French teacher, which, ironically, is what I ended up being. And I didn’t think I would be a good teacher so I just pushed that aside. But I think the more I realized that law wasn’t really fulfilling anything in my life, I thought, well, French is something I wanted to do. Maybe that’s something I should pursue.

Though faith meant a lot to her family, very few Catholics lived where Bernadette grew up. “I felt there was a huge lack in my life in terms of the faith. We didn’t have any kind of faith community whatsoever.”

She was searching for such a community when in November 2021 she visited the United States to see her brother and his wife. “It was my eureka moment. I realized that over here there’s a lot of young Catholic people, and that’s what I had been craving.”

Breaking Away and a New Life and Career

Bernadette’s doubts about devoting her life to the law, her desire to study French, and her deep-hearted desire to live among likeminded fellow Catholics brought her to a moment of decision. In 2022, she resigned from her law firm, packed her bags, and headed off to earn a master’s degree at St. Louis University in Missouri.

“St. Louis was a complete wildcard,” she said.

I just started looking into grad schools and where I could study, and the program at St. Louis University was a good combination of French literature but with options to do translations or more practical things like interpreting. Then when I started looking into St Louis, I discovered that it actually had a huge French influence in the past, historically. And then I heard that it had a very good young Catholic community, a lot of young people there, and that it would be a good place to go.

Bernadette found the faith community she had so long desired, her core reason for selecting St. Louis as her destination. Here she indulged her passion for French, graduated with a degree, and taught in a boys’ school, where she discovered she was in fact a good teacher. Here, too, she fell in love with William Hannegan, a doctoral candidate in philosophy, who took a teaching position with Christendom College in Virginia. The two married in summer 2025, and Bernadette today teaches and tutors French while also working at a local winery.

Takeaways From a Bold Career Change

Multitudes of people ages 20 to 40 are considering switching jobs this year. Some will stay in the field of work they’ve chosen, but will look for higher pay or greater career opportunities. Others, like Bernadette, realize they have chosen a wrong path and are looking to change course altogether, which is more unusual but hardly rare. One man I know, for instance, trained to be an accountant, found employment at a good firm, and then gave it all up to become an emergency medical technician riding shotgun in an ambulance.

Contemplating that sort of radical career change can bring a tempest of emotions and thoughts, with doubts and fears crashing into hope. The strength to weather such a storm rests on making a clean break with the past while entertaining positive and specific goals for the future.

If you’re looking to make a big change in your life, you must calculate the odds and then match inspiration to your aspirations. Led by her passion for her faith, and inspired by her zeal for French, Bernadette found gold at the end of her quest.

Not all dreams come true, but dreams never attempted never come true.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

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