Mairead Bagley is a 22-year-old recent graduate of the University of Maryland-College Park with a B.S. in Community Health. Previously, she interned at AARP and also served as a home health aide for several seniors. Currently, she is in her final month as a summer intern in the communications department at LeadingAge and spends her weekends as an aide to an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease. She would like to get her master’s degree in public health with a focus in gerontology, and hopes to pursue a life-long career in the aging field.

As my summer internship at LeadingAge comes to a close and I look toward the next step in my career, I can’t help but to think about what got me into the field of aging in the first place. 

Over the last few years I’ve wanted to be a lot of different things; a therapist, a neuropsychologist, a physician’s assistant, but nothing ever quite stuck. Like so many young people today I felt pressured to pick a career that “looked good.” Yet, as cheesy and cliche as it may sound, trying to follow that path left me feeling devoid of purpose. 

So I  asked myself: what I am actually good at? What do I really care about? The answer was right in front of me all along.

When I was 17, my dad was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer and passed away 9 months later at 56 years old. During that time, I watched as he went through treatment and care in many settings: from the hospital, to a rehab facility, to home, and, finally, to being under hospice care. 

I observed as my family attempted to navigate the complex, unfamiliar system of end of life care and make decisions we had never imagined we would face. I saw as my dad’s doctors struggled to instill in us a balance of both realism and hope. This all left a profound affect on me and gave me a thorough understanding of how, where, and when our system of care does and doesn’t work. 

Later, when I worked as an aide in the homes of the elderly, I watched them deal with many of the same issues, except in the context of old age instead of terminal illness. I knew there had to be a better way to care for people.

Then, last year, I read Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. I started to understand that what I had seen was not unique, millions of people deal with the same problems as they try to care for someone who is aging, sick, or dying. I learned that despite the best intentions, our predecessors had created a system that works against what we really want for ourselves and our loved ones. I became set on being part of the solution to improve the ways we handle aging and dying in this country. 

Aging services is, as I see it, one of the most important and relevant fields anyone could want to work in. By 2020, 20% of the population will be over the age of 65. The baby boom has lead to an impending elder boom. Those elders have to be cared for. 

Many argue that it is the most significant public health challenge of our time – and it will be. But it will also be a great source of opportunity. Not just for technological innovation, policy decisions, housing reform, or improvements in health, but for something much more meaningful. 

Those of us in aging services have an enormous yet humbling responsibility to serve one of the most vulnerable populations of our time. The decisions we make as we try to better our system of care will directly affect the lives of every single American in deeply personal and profound ways. 

I’m still just starting out, but I can’t think of a place I would rather be.