Wow. Just wow. I've heard similiar stories before but this is amazing. It really is a case of tenacity. Do you think it prepared you for life in academia?
Wow, thanks for asking!
Ironically, PD, I was just about wrapping up my time teaching at a university at that time. I loved the teaching but hated the committee work and stupid politics. You think our politics are vicious? You ain't seen nuthin' till you've seen a bunch of ivory tower professors duking it out... really thorny. I just don't have the taste for it and resigned right before I was about to be given tenure. I thought if I stayed with tenure I'd probably never quit and would turn into another boring old professor stuck in one area... and I preferred to branch out on my own.
I've since taught as an adjunct for fun at a university in NYC, but that's really only because I like it, and they're intensive courses, like a whole weekend and a follow-up day a week later.
What it did teach me, which was very important to me at that time in my life, was that I had what it took to stick it out, stay determined, and make it work no matter what, which has served me well for the rest of my life so far.
When I had the Crohn's when I was younger, and a follow-up surgery to fix the scar a few years later, the one thing I was told (wrongly, thank goodness, as it turned out) was that stress could kill me, that I was very delicate, and should always be very careful and baby myself if I wanted to stay healthy at all. I had already put myself on a self-healing alternative medicine program and slowly rebuilt my health prior to starting the degree, and to my great relief I found out I was made of the stuff I had always hoped I was. Don't like to have to do that, but I can if I need to.
