Professional Disappointments: things you can’t learn from a book

On Tuesday I am going to be on a panel giving a talk about professional disappointments and how those experiences build resilience to the soon to be graduating internship class. Although this doesn’t really require a lot of preparation (because I can tell that story like no other!!), it has prompted me to think about resurrecting this old blog. I read back through some of those original posts, and I was immediately carried back to the feelings I had at that time. Excitement, fear, anticipation, fear, pride, fear, relief, fear... you get the picture. I made that leap 11 years ago, which is really hard to believe, and I’ve come such a long way since then; yet, those feelings are seared into my memory and reading those words can take me back there with such ease. Anyway, not to get too far off topic... professional disappointments: when things don’t go the way we planned... let’s see where this goes.

For me, this probably started the year after I graduated from undergrad. With my bachelor’s degree in hand, my plan was to take a year off and then start grad school. I remember a conversation I had with one of my professors who said, “you should take some time and experience life before you start grad school. Have some life experience under your belt.” Well, that sounded like a stupid idea. Who needs life experience?? I’ve got to get right back to the grindstone and get that master’s degree! I’m not really sure exactly where that plan got derailed, but it took 10 years and a divorce to get back on that track. Life experience happened... a lot of it. When I entered grad school, I was terrified that I was not going to be able to do it. As a single parent of two commuting to the closest school I could get into, I looked around the room and saw all these young faces. I felt incredibly intimidated and like I wanted to disappear; be invisible. Fast forward several months, and I figured out that the professor from undergrad was right... life experience is worth so much more than what can be learned in a book. I found my grove in connecting what I was learning to what I had learned, and I was grateful for those ten years of life.

The next great disappointment came with internship interviews. I had proven myself to be a rockstar at my grad school, and I expected that I’d be well received out in the big wide world of internship programs. I’d worked really, really hard and had made A LOT of sacrifices of time and money. I applied to 10 or 15 programs, had good letters of recommendation, and what I thought to be well-written essays. I poured my heart out through that process, and I was disappointed to discover that I was only invited to three interviews. In hindsight I see a thousand different reasons why this happened, but at the time I knew myself to be a rock star.... a stand out amongst my peers. I was “going places” (with the eventual plan to land back in my hometown where my kids had to remain because of a divorce agreement I had made years before). As I write this and think back to that grad student I was then, I just want to give her a hug and tell her that she really didn’t get the kind of mentoring and advice she deserved. Anyway, that’s another blog... onward with the greatest professional disappointment!!

The big day finally came... my future would be laid before me... where I would be for the next year... the moment I’d been waiting for... the... wait...what?.. how could this happen?... but I’m a rock star?!?!? No!!! This is was not part of the plan!! No internship site wanted me. Well, actually one probably did, but I had decided not to rank it because I didn’t want to go there (the school’s consortium that had several sites in the southwest Missouri and north Arkansas areas). I’d had big plans for myself to be in an APA accredited internship program that was within a 5-6 hour radius of my hometown (where my kids would have to remain), but those plans came crumbling down. Panic and fear and disappointment and fear and shame and fear and self-loathing and... well, you get the picture. Fear. I’d worked so hard. Fear... was it all for naught? Self-doubt and fear... was I not the rock star I’d thought myself to be? Was I going to have to settle with the consortium and some small clinic in southern Missouri that wasn’t APA accredited? Was all this grad school thing really worth it? Not just disappointment... total professional devastation. Annihilation.

In the days and weeks to follow, I would discover that opportunity can be born of the greatest disappointment; that the best laid plans don’t always hold the best possible outcomes; and that it can take a complete loss to show us that there is more out there in the world for us. I vividly remember my friend Brandie saying, “Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio... it’s APA accredited” and my reply, “that’s the Air Force.” Her response: “let’s apply!” My next thought, which I didn’t even have time to express before she was sending off my application materials, was “that won’t happen.” But, it did.

In preparation for writing this and considering the panel discussion, I read a couple of articles supplied by a colleague. One article addressed the advantage one has if she is expected to be a high performer, and the other discussed the underdog effect, essentially that when you have nothing to lose you are willing to take more risks. I reflected on my own situation as I walked a few miles. I had so much to lose, but it wasn’t pride or a need to “save face.” I made that leap to the Air Force because it was the next logical step for me on the career journey. It was also something I would have never considered had I not been in the predicament of not matching for internship. The Air Force provided everything I was looking for in an internship as well as the job security, healthcare coverage, and salary that I needed in order to make it all work when having to leave my kids behind. It came with a lot of risks too... and fear and sacrifice and fear and unknowns and fear.... And, I learned some very valuable lessons by leaping into that fear. In the words of my former therapist: “it will all be bigger and better than you could ever imagine.”

Eleven years later, it is. This life I live now is bigger and better than I’d ever imagined. I sometimes wonder what life would have looked like had I taken the other path, the easy road. I had that choice and turned it down. I could have ended up in a small clinic in Missouri then back in my hometown, which was the ultimate plan at the time. I’m so grateful for the biggest professional disappointment (so far). Life has a way of teaching us so much more than we can learn from a book.