My dream job was a nightmare
We don’t always want what we get
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Burnt Out? Stuck? You're Not Broken – Find Your Discernment – Click Here To Work With Me –
This is going to be a rough post to write. For two reasons: first, it’s going to force me to publicly, vulnerably excavate a somewhat difficult period, and second because I want to write this post in a way that reflects the complicated, but ultimately positive, nature of how I feel about the people who worked at one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had.
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Deep breath…Here we go…
Back in the late 2010s, I’d been feeling very… meh about my career trajectory. The early years had gone great. I’d had the luck to be at the right place and right time to publish some very impactful research in the nascent field of global surgery. That research cemented my reputation in the field.
So far, so good.
But, I’m also a doctor. And at the time, I was employed by a major university medical center. The world of American academic medicine is byzantine and political, a hyper-capitalist enterprise where you “eat what you kill.”
For everyday academic physicians at my institution, that translated to an obligation to generate clinical dollars, from which the institution takes a hefty cut for privilege of using their name. From what’s left, the doctor paid their overhead, their staff’s salary, their malpractice, and then finally themselves.
If a physician wanted to do research, they had to “buy out” their clinical obligation by bringing in external money.
Which is what I did.
I quickly learned, however, that not all money is equivalent. A million dollar grant from a philanthropic foundation was not equivalent to a million dollars from the National Institutes of Health.
In fact, the only research money that counted for advancement and promotions came from the NIH—which is famously uninterested in either surgical or global health research.
And that, my friends, is how I got to feeling meh…
I’d hit a ceiling. To keep working in global surgery, I couldn’t stay where I was. On the other hand, to stay meant I’d have to stop doing global surgery.
And then the email came.
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
In the middle of a fall night in 2019, a completely unexpected email landed in my inbox. A well-regarded, overseas academic institution had gotten a huge grant to start an institute dedicated specifically to global surgery. The first institute of its kind, in fact.
And! They were looking for someone to lead it!
It could not have been more perfect had I designed it myself! Academic advancement, funding, global surgery—all the things I’d been saying I wanted for the entirety of my freaking career!
To quote The Devil Wears Prada, “a million girls would kill” for that job.
And I got it. At the salary I wanted. With the PTO I wanted. At the start date I wanted.
And it was a nightmare.
I had said I wanted academic advancement, but I despised the politicking, the administrative burden that came with it.
I had said I wanted to be funded, but I didn’t love the fund-raising and the donor strings that came with it.
I had said I wanted to grow a department, but I despised (more than anything!) the HR management, especially the times it felt like nobody cared about bad behavior.
It turns out that running a department requires all of those things, and I wanted nothing to do with a single one of them.
Needless to say, I didn’t make it to my two-year work anniversary.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever taken a job that was everything you said you’d wanted, only to realize it was nothing that you actually wanted? Have you ever told yourself, “If I could finally get this, I’d be happy,” only to get this and not be happy?
If so, you (and I) aren’t alone.
There’s a very common, under-appreciated misery that can come with getting your dream job. And it’s not limited to jobs, either. The dream boyfriend can become the nightmare husband. The dream city turns your hair whiter than a seal cub.
Dreams turn into nightmares, sadly more often than we think.
Why?
Well, it turns out—good news—you’re not broken.
There’s some very cool science that explains this phenomenon. Science that, when I learned it, finally got me to understand what happened in that job—and helped me better align what I said I wanted with what I actually did.
Stick around. Next week, the science of revealed preferences and the arrival fallacy.
And then, the week after that, how to discover—and articulate—what it is you really want to build your life around.
Consequential decisions aren’t easy.
If they were, you wouldn’t struggle with them! The good news is, you don’t have to navigate them alone.
Work with a discernment coach who knows how to guide you to a life you’re madly in love with again.
→ Check out my packages here. They range from 4 weeks to a year, and they take you from “what the heck do I do next?” all the way to clarity and a step-by-step plan that honors both your calling and your right to thrive. Click here to apply!
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