Elina’s story: A diverse work history has provided valuable experience

Because my parents pressured me, I basically had to select my field of study from different fields of technology. First, I studied to become an electronics and telecommunications technician at a vocational school. I’m a part of the generation born with an eight-bit Nintendo controller in hand. When I was young, it inspired me to study electronics and programming. During my vocational studies, I did small coding projects, maintained my own game server and built all kinds of electronic gadgets.

I had been thinking about starting a business since I was in secondary school. When I studied at a vocational school, my plans started to become more concrete when I found a like-minded mate. We decided to set up an IT company as soon as we graduated, with a bank loan, under the age of 20. It was a jump into the deep end, as an owner of a limited liability company. Still, as I came from a family of entrepreneurs, it felt like a completely natural path.

Loan applications, operational plans, business space planning and preliminary negotiations on import contracts were all done before I even graduated as a professional in my field. The Trade Register entry was granted immediately after my graduation. It was the first time in my life when I sat on a paint bucket to think about what really had happened. In the middle of an empty business space with a six-digit debt, without any actual work experience, but with the title of a CEO. I still remember those moments when, in the dark morning hours, I fixed shelves and put products in place, and I spent my days on the phone with the bank, tax authorities, importers and potential partners. Finally, we had our grand opening on 13 July. Ironically, it was a Friday.

It marked the beginning of the most educational five-year period of my life. I managed to succeed with my selfish self-confidence, Finnish guts and Ostrobothnian stubbornness. At the same time, I was getting additional training in software development, server systems and other general IT work. Finally, I worked as a system expert. The situation forced me to learn new things.

Those years gave me a strong foundation for the future – the ability to apply, learn, adapt and steer my ship in the wonderful waters of life. The experience was also very difficult. Many years of dedication to one thing finally resulted in a burnout. I left the limited liability company and moved to completely new circles on the opposite edge of Finland and continued as an independent consultant as a sole trader for a few more years.

Work periods in the housing service and home care of mental health services were a lesson about the diversity of life

All this was surrounded by the attitudes given to me in childhood. They did not let Ellu be Ellu. Instead, I was forced into becoming a man. Going for the field of technology was, to an extent, a relevant, gender normative jump into a profession that I believed was expected from me. When I was young, I had thought about the health care sector, but it remained just a thought.

I was largely shrouded by my trans background during those times. I myself did not fully understand what I was, and I turned away from it by completely immersing myself in my work. Burnout eventually won and forced me to take a year’s break from everything. At that time, I terminated my proprietorship and swore that I would never become an entrepreneur again. At the same time, I started searching for myself and my identity as Elina.

A psychologist in career counselling at the TE Services caught onto it. I went to an open university to study psychology and was a nursing assistant in a health care services’ work try-out. I started working towards becoming a nurse, and I got a study place with full marks. Besides my studies, I did support work for LGBT+ youth through an organisation. As a nurse, I specialised in psychiatry, but I worked successfully in many other specialisations as well. Work periods in the housing service and home care of mental health services were a lesson about the diversity and the limits of life. Reaching the rock bottom could be just around the corner. Every one of us has our dark secrets. Working as a nurse was a review of humanity and being a human behind the mask of the normal everyday life.

Most interested in everything

Working as a nurse seemed like my thing, but I was also driven by a burning interest in the academic world. Soon after graduating, I started studying health sciences with the goal of becoming a researcher and graduating as a doctor of health sciences. That’s the path I’m still following. As my minor subjects, I have studied everything from computer science to economics and theoretical physics because I’m most interested in everything.

In other words, I was a nurse when I started studying for a master’s degree in nursing science with a major in caring science. I chose to specialise in preventive caring science and focused on the themes of health promotion. My goal is to continue the work I have already started at the university of applied sciences to promote the health of sexual and gender minorities by means of nursing. At the moment, I am about to finish my master’s thesis on minority stress theory and trying to find factors causing health differences in stigmatised minorities in my work. In addition to my studies, I worked as a teaching assistant at the University of Eastern Finland and in other academy projects.

I once swore that I would never become an entrepreneur again. Yet I am an entrepreneur again. My main operations include expert and educational services for encountering sexual orientation and gender diversity as well as health promotion in social welfare and health care services. As an entrepreneur, you are free to utilise your competence as you wish. As a result, I’ve got myself into projects where I can combine my IT expertise, my status as a health care professional and science. To keep in touch with the field, I continue to work part-time as a nurse in primary health care and specialised medical care.

I have never been able to stay in place. Instead, I have soon been at the interfaces of ten different fields. Many of my loved ones have called me Escalation Elina because when I throw myself at something, I give 100% and do it all the way. There are no other options. The most prominent fields have been health care, academia and IT. However, everything has been useful; if not in skills, at least in life experience.

On my path, I have faced exhaustion, loss of financial security and personal crises. There have been times when I have been sitting at the intersection wondering where to go. I have rebuilt my personal economy twice after making changes, but at the same time I have noticed that I am more satisfied when I just manage to get by on myself instead of chasing profits. Perhaps that is why I am now a “social entrepreneur”, which means that I turn my research work into entrepreneurship and use it to promote something that is valuable to me.

My work and study history can be summarised in a quotation by Nietzsche. “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star” (Nietzsche, 1885). I have never made plans that are too tight. At most, I make a more abstract goal and see what kinds of adventures the journey brings along.

In retrospect, I can say that my own best lessons about work have not been the successes but the failures

I spend my free time reading or at the gym. I also watch a lot of documentaries and films. The most refreshing things when working have been goal-oriented power lifting and reading philosophy. Combining entrepreneurship, the academia, nursing and continuing studies is almost impossible, but it has also forced me to teach myself how to slow down. Power lifting is the best way to do it, even though my work counsellor commented at the time that I had taken their advice on grounding myself too concretely when I told them that I had broken my personal squat record.

For those entering the world of work, I would suggest letting loose and trying something new. The word “trying” includes the possibility of going wrong. If something does not work out, it will be a learning opportunity, and the experience will be useful in the future. In retrospect, I can say that my own best lessons about work have not been the successes but the failures. None of them has been catastrophic, although sometimes I’ve had to spend some time picking up the pieces.

At one point, when I was wondering what I was doing with my life, I almost finished my vehicle mechanic’s degree without working in the field at all. In the hindsight, these lessons have also been great and have helped me to perceive technology and mechanics, which has been useful in health care. Knowledge only carries you up to a certain point; experiences bring wisdom.

Elina Partanen