How Bipolar II Disorder Led Me to The Top of My Career Yet to the Bottom of Despair

I started my career at a small, private, and fairly prominent school. Naturally, my thoughts were on getting tenure. I was told that, while you could technically go up for tenure in four years, it was not advisable until your sixth year. I decided to go up in four years and got it, along with being promoted to associate professor.

The one rule where I could not find a loophole was in being granted full-professor. You had to have 12 full years of experience under your belt, and there was no way around that. Unfortunately, I never learned how to make time disappear. Twelve years seemed like forever, which was really only eight at that point, since I was promoted to associate professor after my fourth year. But, I worked to exceed all expectations in teaching, research and service. So, when it was my time, I was unanimously voted in as full-professor.

I had spent the past 15 years jumping through hoops to get the Ph.D., a job, tenure, and my promotions; and now there was nowhere else to go, unless I chose the administrative route. As an administrator, you can work your way up from department chair, to dean, to vice president, and eventually president of a university. But, that is not me. Nothing about that route is appealing. It would mean, no more teaching, much less to do with research and writing, and much more to do with people problems and networking, all of which would lead to my ever-increasing social anxiety and take away from my much-needed alone time. Ultimately, this led me to a state of complete despair.



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