After he missed out on his dream engineering course by just one point, Gordon Dalton trained as a dentist. Years later, he returned to college to make his life-long ambition to become an engineer a reality
MAKING the decision to leave a well-paid profession to return to college and spend years retraining in a completely different area is a luxury that few of us can afford and one that actually takes a lot of courage to embark upon.
But that’s exactly what Gordon Dalton did when he sold his dental surgery practice, moved nearly 10,000 miles and went back to university to study engineering.
While, not surprisingly, his family were none too pleased at his decision to leave a lucrative, prestigious career in dentistry for which he had trained for many years, the stress of the profession had become too much for Dalton.
“I was uncommitted at the time so there were no barriers stopping me from changing career. I was fortunate in that respect. If I had a family, I couldn’t have done it. I was in my 30s and I knew if I left it any later, I’d never do it so I sold my practice and applied to study engineering in Trinity College.”
A native of Douglas in Cork, Dalton had originally intended to study electronic engineering but when he left school in the 1980s, the points for the subject were higher than medicine and dentistry and he missed out by one point. In the haste of youth, he decided to take the next option on his list which was dentistry.
After five years of study, he, along with 36 members of his class of 40, caught the plane to England as there were no jobs for dentists in Ireland. He spent the next two years working for the NHS in Portsmouth.
Deciding that he wanted more sunshine and excitement in his life, Dalton applied for a holiday visa to Australia in 1988 at the peak of emigration from Ireland. Australia did not need any dentists or doctors at the time, but against the odds, he managed to get a dentist to sponsor him and secured permanent residency.
He worked for two years with his sponsor in private practice while also indulging his love of the outdoors and surfing.
“I found the work much more satisfying than the NHS, the emphasis was very much on quality and customer service. The stress of the job was so enormous though, it was always in the back of my mind. I found it difficult to cope with people’s nervousness and provide good care to them. I took half their stress on board and on top of that, there was the stress of performing 20 procedures a day as close to excellence as possible.”
Being young and admittedly immature, Dalton decided to buy his own practice in Sydney at the age of 26. Shortly after this, Australia went into recession and he spent the next eight years “learning the hard way” about how to operate a business. At this stage however, he was burnt out with the stress of running his own business on top of the stress and isolation of dentistry.
He began thinking about leaving dentistry and going back to study engineering. He spent a very fulfilling six months volunteering as a dentist in Papua New Guinea before returning to Sydney where he sold his practice. Then it was back to Ireland where he embarked on a four-year general engineering degree at Trinity College Dublin.
Being out of the education system for so long meant he got no credits for his original degree and had to start again from scratch.
“The finance was a bit of a shock. One of the reasons I chose Ireland was because I was under the impression that education was free here, but the university neglected to tell me until I arrived on registration day that full fees applied to second degrees.
“The practice and equipment I had sold were not worth that much, dentists make their income mostly from their gross earnings.”
By the time he had put enough aside to pay for his college fees, Dalton had to take on a part-time job one day a week in a private dental practice to survive for the next four years. He finished his degree in electronic engineering in 2002 and accepted an offer from the University of Queensland in Brisbane to do a four-year PhD on renewable energy there.
“My age was against me at this stage, but my chances of getting employment with just a degree were minimal. Everybody thought I was slightly mad spending so long studying but when they saw that I had to do it for my own mental health and quality of life, they supported me.”
At the end of his PhD, Dalton was looking for a job back home in Ireland that would combine his interests in electronic and environmental engineering with economics. As fate would have it, the perfect job became available at his old alma mater, University College Cork, on a project examining the viability of wave energy.
He was awarded a Charles Parson postdoctorate award and he took up his position as a senior research fellow at the Hydraulics and Maritime Research Centre, UCC last May.
“I never thought I would end up in Cork but when the position became available, I realised I had never worked in Cork and thought it might be an interesting experience. Almost all my family lived here and it has given me the opportunity to get closer to them. I am enjoying the work which has a vast scope and the experience of living in Cork.”
While there are times when he does miss being his own boss and the prestige attached with being a dentist, Dalton is thoroughly enjoying being part of an intellectually demanding and exciting field that is constantly evolving.
“I think the field of wave energy is one of the most exciting areas I could have had the luck to get into, it’s at the forefront of renewable energy research and the HMRC is one of the major partners in the EU wave energy programme.
“Now when I go out at night, instead of hearing tales of woe from people about bad experiences with their dentists, we debate renewable energy as a lot of people have an interest in the area.”
Although as with any job there is a certain element of stress involved with his new career, Dalton explains that it’s on a totally different scale from the constant stress of dentistry. He is not ready to fully hang up the drill for another couple of years yet though.
He has been offered a permanent part-time job in dentistry in Cork on consecutive Saturday and Tuesday evenings. He says this will allow him to keep his hand in dentistry as well as provide some valuable funds.
