New Waters: Making a Way, Finding a Way

As my family, friends, and colleagues know, I have been on a journey to find my "next thing." It's been a long road—or, since I'm a swimmer, let's call it a long swim. It started as a little paddle close to the shore, but eventually led me out into deeper, choppier waters, where I knew I could not touch down. It's been exhilarating, sometimes terrifying, definitely hard. And the best swim of my life.

It began a little over two years ago when I took that first call from a recruiter. I was about six years into my “dream job”—the one I’d moved my family across the country for and had imagined staying in until retirement—and it was hard for me to consider leaving. But I knew I couldn’t just keep on. I felt like I was treading water, getting nowhere, and constantly out of breath. Every ounce of my spirit went into just trying to stay afloat, and none of it was renewing. I was on the edge, at least, of burnout. 

COVID had certainly made every pain point worse, and the pandemic had prompted some big questions for me, as for many folks, but, mostly, I just realized that my current role was no longer the right fit. I simply wasn’t able to spend enough of my time, energy, and talent doing the things I’m best at, the things that most excited me about my job in the first place, or—most worrying of all—the things that felt most important to the success of my organization. I couldn’t see a way to shift this, and so I felt compelled to begin looking elsewhere. Eager to get “out of the weeds,” and to be let loose in what I’d come to think of as “the deep water,” I started looking at similar roles within larger units, opportunities to lead a bigger team, with more resources, elsewhere. 

Logically, this move is what made the most sense. After all, I still loved my job “in theory,” was still passionate about the mission, had spent my whole career in higher education, and knew I had the experience, skills, and gifts to be a strong candidate for such roles.  I also wasn’t excited about moving up in the higher ed org chart. Just get out of the pool, or pond, and into a bigger body of water, I thought. 

I grew up in a lake region and first learned to swim in the beautiful, turquoise waters of Kalamalka Lake as a young child, and I dream of them, still. But I learned to swim properly, to swim long distances, in a pool, during my first year in graduate school, and pools are where I’ve been swimming laps ever since. Why not just jump in a real lake? I asked myself. Okay, I thought, and I started taking those recruitment calls. 

But I also listened to a couple of trusted friends and colleagues who had been encouraging me to consider another option: why not consider a leadership role with a nonprofit organization? This possibility was eye-opening and paradigm-shifting for me. Could I actually leave higher education? Could I “abandon” the project I’d devoted my entire life and career to? Was I willing to give up tenure? Could I learn to swim in another kind of water entirely? This was a whole new direction, but a really intriguing and exciting one. 

Thus began my dual-directional career exploration. I began making outreach in both directions, and, over the course of a year and a half, landed a handful of interviews in both sectors. But not for the right thing, in the right place, at the right salary. 

None of this was a failure, though, and I learned some really important lessons along the way. One of them was that I couldn’t just keep treading water at work (or, an image that has more recently come to mind: trying to tow a stalled steamer to shore doing the breaststroke) while also maintaining the high level of energy, optimism, and vulnerability needed for my search. If I was truly ready to go, I needed to take a big leap. 

So, almost exactly a year ago today, I stepped out of my position as dean and stepped over to the edge of a cliff. I had left one thing, and I didn’t know where I was going. I was taking a high dive, and, though I couldn’t see through the mist below me, I was trusting—based on my maps, and trusted guides, and instincts—that the deep water would appear. 

But would it be saltwater or fresh? The deep ocean of the wholly new that excited and terrified me? Or the freshwater of academia that, like the lakes of my childhood, was so familiar, and that had once felt so expansive and life-giving? 

While this “leap” felt bold and brave, it wasn’t a total risk. When I left my administrative position, I had the right to retreat to the tenured faculty, and so, if I hadn’t found my next thing by the end of the summer, I had a full-time position of teaching and research waiting for me. While I have always loved teaching, this wasn’t what I thought I wanted to do full-time at this point, and I knew we couldn’t afford to live for long in the Bay Area on my reduced salary as a professor. So a faculty position didn’t feel like a long-term option, but a temporary fall-back. As a retreating dean, I also had the privilege of several months of paid sabbatical to recover, reflect, and begin searching in earnest. That opportunity was part of what kept me afloat those last few months in the role.

I made good use of my sabbatical. My very first day included a spa massage and a semi-finalist zoom interview for a ritzy dean position. I was serious about both searching and resting, as I aimed for the right balance between diving in and coming up for air. I also began my sabbatical by working with an executive coach for 3 months, one who helped me to identify what I wanted and needed in my next role, clarify what I had to offer, and develop a strategy for matching my talent with the right opportunity. 

The lynchpin of this strategy was networking: expanding my sphere of conversations and relationships in ways that were informative, enlightening, mutually supportive, and productive. I invested a lot of time and energy in this and found, despite my initial anxieties, that I really love net-weaving and am pretty good at it. The net of people I got to know, or to know better, through this process has been one of the very best gifts of this process. 

I also did a lot of yoga, meditation, reading, and journaling. I took a hard look at my strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, my dreams and aspirations. In short, I got to know myself better, too. Another gift. 

Oddly, with the exception of a couple of months this summer, I stopped swimming regularly during my sabbatical for the first time (except during the COVID shutdown) in 30 years. And I haven’t gone back since. I  just couldn’t bring myself to visit campus. And I think I just needed to turn things upside down and really get out of the pool. This has felt weird, but it’s helped me to think about my relationship to habits—both healthy and unhealthy—and what is really important to me, in new ways. After a year’s hiatus, I am preparing to start swimming again this week, to reclaim the pool as my own. The fins and goggles are back in my car. 

What was most new to me about this process of exploration, though, was the radical work of opening, investigating, networking, and self-discovery that it led me through. I never imagined what would unfold, or what the timeline would actually be. It tested my patience and resolve. And I swallowed a lot of metaphorical water, and had a few mental and emotional cramps, along the way. Sometimes I just had to pause for a while and do the “dead-man’s float”: look up at the sky, regulate my breathing, and take a break. And this journey has totally been worth every minute, every stroke.

What has ultimately emerged is a new career trajectory that is not at all what I imagined. I am not making a “big move” into a whole “new thing” and there is no grand unveiling to make, no “TA DA!” 

And instead of making a “big splash,” I’ve somehow found that I’ve actually been in the water all along. That “stepping out” and “jumping off” were just metaphors grasping at a story I didn’t yet know. One that is still revealing itself to me. 

Today, I find myself swimming in brackish water—that mix of salt and fresh water found in estuaries that mark the zone between river and sea. I have not had to choose, at least for now, between higher education and nonprofit leadership. Instead, I have somehow found myself in an evolving, hybrid scenario. And it has been so full of joy, delight, and wonder, that I can hardly describe it. 

Teaching, which I returned to last fall, has been the most refreshing experience of my career: every class has been full of joy, generosity, and discovery. I’ve never felt more full or free in the classroom. It’s been like swimming in the freshest, cleanest, coolest lake I can remember or imagine. And I can see my students embracing and responding to my teaching, and learning along with me, in lovely new ways. It’s given me the kind of delight that I felt snorkeling in Hawaii for the first time, when I was astounded at the color, variety, and multitude of tropical fish just feet below me. I used to say I hit “swimming nirvana” at 40 laps: feeling like I could go on forever after that. That’s how teaching feels right now. I feel so incredibly buoyant, like I could do this forever.  It’s hard to imagine that, just a year ago, all I really wanted to do was retire. 

And my nonprofit work has been utterly exciting, enlightening, and challenging. I’ve been involved with a nonprofit research and education organization for a few years now, since the founder first approached me about sponsoring some research at my college. I was immediately intrigued but also quite skeptical about the disruptive idea at the heart of their work, and only very slowly, after much reading, research, conversation, and reflection, have I become convinced of its reality and deep relevance. I am now truly passionate about helping to advance their vision and have become thoroughly enmeshed in the organization’s work. 

I began formally consulting for this nonprofit organization on a part-time basis about a year ago, and my work went into high gear last fall when I agreed to help conceive, co-chair, and orchestrate a new conference. Teaching a full load as well, I was working longer hours than ever before in my life, yet feeling full of energy and excitement. I was working really hard, collaborating deeply, and feeling truly seen. And I was making an impact as part of an international team of brilliant researchers and practitioners in fields that were totally beyond my expertise but that also spoke to my lifelong intellectual interests. 

If my return to teaching has been like snorkeling with tropical fish—giant schools of yellow tang and butterfly—then my growing nonprofit role has felt more like snorkeling among the manta rays at night. We did just that on our first trip to Hawaii, as well, and as the giant, gentle creatures dove and danced within an inch of my face and torso, they stunned me with their strange beauty, grace, and intimate proximity. And they revealed to me just how small my own imagination has been, and how little there is to fear about the unknown.

This month, I have begun a new leadership role with this same nonprofit, some of it tied to a sponsored research and administrative project, while I teach a reduced load at the college. We are taking it step-by-step, seeing how my role might evolve as the organization grows. And in the meantime, I get to be mentored closely by a seasoned entrepreneur, inventor, and corporate leader with whom I share deep mutual respect and true affection. It is the best of both worlds—of both waters—and I feel content about my career and the entirety of my life in a way I have never experienced before. I am truly at peace about where I am and what is unfolding both in and around me. 

So there is no big splash, no grand TA-DA. But I am swimming in new waters. They are brackish, for sure, and very, very fine. Who knows what beauties might reveal themselves next.