Introduction
You re not a fit for our department, my new boss informed me during our second conversation. He had voted against me, but enough of the other faculty had voted yes that I got what I thought was my dream job as a professor of family psychology. Now it felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. My new department chair was dead set on making sure that I wouldn t be staying there for long now that he had the power. My job was in jeopardy.
I was never good at having a boss, but from day one, this guy seemed to have decided that sabotaging my career was his top priority. We butted heads constantly, and no matter how well I taught or how many journal articles I published, it was never about that. It was about him winning. It had all culminated in this moment.
It had been a tough journey to become a professor. I had spent nine years of my life getting my PhD, and during that time, my family lived on a $14,000 a year salary, far below the poverty level. We even had to get food stamps. Once I got my dream job, I spent countless hours researching, writing, and publishing journal articles. In just my third year as a professor, I had publishedseventy-twopeer-reviewed journal articles, which is almost unheard of and which was more than most of the professors in my department who had been around forthirty-plus years. But my family was still struggling financially. My wife was afull-time mom, and I was supporting our young family of five boys with a small salary and only one car.
Now I was at a crossroads. Would I put it all on the line to fight for my career as a professor? Or would I risk it all to recreate myself, going in a completely different direction to pursue my newfound passion in real estate? Did I have the courage to put my loved ones at risk to cut off the golden handcuffs? It would require that I walk into the darkness into a 100 percentcommission-based career with no past evidence of success.
It was terrifying, but I took those first steps into the darkness. Five years later, my life had completely transformed. No longer is my family struggling to get by. We have a second car now my dream car, a Tesla Model S as well as