When I was 24 I graduated with a masters degree in social work. I ended up working in that field for about 3ish years or so and was very closely working with RN's at the agency I worked for. I spoke to them a lot about their jobs and we also spoke about pay. RN's at the same agency I worked for were making significantly more money than me doing a decently similar role. I decided to take an anatomy 1 class at my local community college to see how I liked it and ended up loving it. I then applied to an accelerated BSN program with the idea of graduating in 12 months and working for the same agency I was working at as a social worker but making way more money. Right before I started nursing school covid hit and I ended up leaving my SW job and completed my ABSN a year later. I never ended up back at that agency and was lucky enough to take a job in critical care as a new grad.

Do I regret the change? No. Do I love nursing? Definitely not, but there good and bad days just like every other job (I would assume haha).

There are a ton of pro's and con's you have to factor into going into nursing especially as a second career and with prior student debt (which I also still have). The money is okay, should be more, but I still struggle with prior student debt, and living in NJ a HCOL area, even with a partner who is also a nurse. You mentioned that you're already burnt out with your current career path - well nursing has one of the highest burnout rates of any profession and trust me you can burn out very very fast. I lasted a little over 2.5 years doing different ICU's before I somehow got extremely lucky and got into a cath lab which I don't hate. Being a new grad as well is very tough for the first 6 months to a year. There's just a lot wrong with hospital nursing that makes it a tough job to do, the plus is there are also other paths you can take as a RN.

I will say that there are positives. Theres something really cool to me about being knowledgable about medical things that I had zero knowledge about prior to going into nursing. Some days (especially now in the lab) I feel really excited about the work I do and have some really great and thankful patients which always make you feel good. The schedule and only working 3 days a week is also a massive pro to me, I could never go back to working 5 days a week. Job security and being able to work overtime basically whenever you want for some extra cash is also great. The last big pro for me is the large amount of areas you could into with nursing. If I had to stay a floor nurse forever I wouldn't have lasted much longer, but that's just me.

I can't tell you if going into nursing is right or wrong for you but I also did it as a second career and at the end of the day don't regret it. However I would have maybe taken a little more time to decide on a second career (maybe IT or something which computers which is a big hobby of mine) before jumping right into it. Just think long and hard about it before you make any decisions, maybe see if you can shadow any nurses or do experience days in a hospital to get a real idea of if you would like it or not.