Former Finnegan No. 1: The Ace Student

Before I start describing the transition I'm currently going through, I thought I would begin with a little recap of my life up until I lost my teaching job at a Midwestern university a few years back. If you haven't already read "Dumped off the merry-go-round," you should do that first. I say there that I'm currently reinventing myself for about the fifth time; here are my former identities:
 

The Phi Beta Kappa Kid

I started off as an ace student -- National Merit Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, double major, etc. Liberal arts the way. Very impressive to everyone but myself. I seemed to be the only one who realized I worked hard at being a good student because I had no idea how to do anything else. The problem is, the people who might have helped me find a direction in life either didn't bother (because I seemed to have it all together) or didn't know anything but academics themselves (faculty mentors), so they just encouraged me to go on to graduate school straight after college. (I fantasized about joining the Peace Corps, but I was afraid that might turn out to be too much "real life" experience.)

So I trusted my faculty advisers, took their advice, and three months after graduating from my tiny liberal arts college I was enrolled as a Ph. D. student in a comparative literature program at a humongous state university. As a Teaching Fellow I was instructing students just a little younger than myself but who completely lacked my zeal for learning, and I was taking courses in literary theory that managed to suck all the joy out of literature. I found grad school cold and competitive in an every-man-for-himself kind of way, so even though I was at a big university, I felt very lonely. I knew that I was there only because I didn't know what else to do. Pretty soon, I found that I was miserable, and this time I had no faculty mentors to turn to. After a couple of years, I simply fled back to my home state, looking to do anything except being an academic.

What did I learn from this experience? That you shouldn't keep at something just because you're good at it, if it's eroding your life in other ways. Unless you have faith in yourself, the praise of others will be cold comfort.