- I spent years becoming a psychologist and then trying to achieve tenure.
- When I finally got tenure, I should have felt accomplished, but something was missing.
- I had to slow down, and then I realized I wanted to be a mother.
Becoming a psychologist is a long and grueling process. After four years of college, it’s another six years or so to earn your master’s and doctoral degrees. You then work full time for at least one year, accruing supervised hours before you’re even eligible to take the licensing exam.
After that, if you are in a tenure-track academic position, like I was, then there are additional hurdles before you are considered for tenure. If you are granted tenure, the rewards are significant: Your job security increases dramatically, and you have more academic freedom in how you study and teach.
For years, that’s what I was working towards: job security and freedom. But when I finally achieved it all, something felt off.
Receiving tenure first felt like winning the lottery
When I was granted tenure after a months-long application review process, I was euphoric. I truly felt like I had won the lottery and that I had finally “made it.”
But, like for many who have actually won the lottery, the high subsided after a few months.
This alone was not unexpected. I knew the feeling would fade, as all feelings eventually do. What I could not make sense of was the experience of looking at my life and wondering, “Is this it? Is this everything?”
I followed the formula: Study hard, get good grades, work hard, get promoted, keep working hard, get tenure, and live happily ever after. I had a stable career, a loving husband, and a full life by any measure.
What was still missing?
When the euphoria faded, I thought something was wrong with me
I had experienced periods of depression in my life before, and so that was my first hypothesis, but I wasn’t actually depressed. I still derived meaning and enjoyment from my role as a professor, so I wasn’t disillusioned with the job.
It took months of exploration in therapy and honest self-reflection for me to acknowledge that for most of my adult life, I had been on one track or another, striving toward the next stop and barely pausing before moving to the next.
The tenure track was no different from any other track in the sense that it was predetermined and clearly demarcated. My particular gender and cultural conditioning had primed me to choose tracks over off-roading, and so I believed that if I just stayed the course and completed it well, fulfillment and contentment would be my rewards.
Except, when I finally got there, I still had a nagging sense of incompleteness.
I was so focused on my career that I didn’t realize what I really wanted
All those years of striving overshadowed the parts of me that have no interest in tracks, achievements, or successes. My capacity to enjoy being for the sake of being and not having to earn or prove anything, was diminishing as I accrued more accomplishments and accolades.
Once I decided to pay more attention to my need to just “be” and not “do,” I opened myself to other realizations — the most shocking of which was my growing desire to have a child.
The younger me would have shuddered at a future in which I finally earned tenure, voluntarily closed my private practice, and stepped down from a dean-level position so that I could spend more time with my child. But that’s just what I did.
Parenting is meaningful, yes, but it’s not a strategy for fulfillment. Indeed, I still have some unresolved dissonance about my trajectory, and becoming a parent has involved a whole lot of “doing” at the expense of “being,” especially as a working mom.
On the other hand, despite the challenges, I do feel a greater sense of completeness in our family. I’m glad I eventually paid attention to the voice inside me that led me here, and I wish I had tuned in sooner.
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