Time For A Fresh Start

Are you feeling down about your job or want to be a valued part of a team? Here are four people who decided to make a change.

- Peter Woolrich

FOR 20 YEARS OF STACKING SHELVES and manning the tills at his family’s supermarket in Pollença on the Spanish island of Mallorca, José Luis-Reig, known as Pep, never gave a thought to the world of academia. It was only when visiting the classrooms and corridors of mainland universities with his two teenage daughters that he suddenly felt himself at home among the books and atmosphere of learning.

After school Pep had intended to do a degree in biology at Barcelona University but had been called on to help run the family business instead.

Even now it didn’t occur to him that he might study. But still a question kept coming back to him: “What’s my role in life? Where am I going?” It was another year before the answer suddenly struck him. When he was at school, other children used to come to him with their problems. He developed a reputation and was invited on to local radio, where the interviewer said, “You’re like a young psychologist.”

Pep was no stranger to change. The family business had originally been a sawmill, but when Pep, then 27, was asked if he wanted to take over, he decided to convert the mill into the town’s first supermarket. Now, in the shop one day, the radio presenter’s comment came back to him. After running the idea past his wife and family, he applied to university in Palma to study psychology and, aged 46, was accepted.