It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down
I had the radio on, I was drivin’
Trees went by, me and Del were singin’ little Runaway
I was flyin’
Yeah runnin’ down a dream
That never would come to me
Workin’ on a mystery, goin’ wherever it leads
Runnin’ down a dream
–Runnin’ down a dream, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
I love Tom Petty’s music. He was an excellent musician who did his job really well without a lot of fanfare or bs. I had always intended to see Petty in concert and when he died last year, it became one of those life’s missed opportunities.
A few weeks after Petty’s death last year, I traveled to Palm Springs with Patrick to give a keynote talk at a psychiatry conference. Waiting for a connecting flight I ran into someone who had been a mentor to me when I was a resident. As we sat in the small dated airport waiting area, she urged me to think about using my time and talents for leadership, particularly given the dearth of women in those roles in Psychiatry. She noted that while I was achieving a lot in my research area and with my mentees, I was not using what she felt were my talents to create a shared vision, motivating and leading others forward on a large enough scale.
During that trip, Patrick and I traversed the gorgeous desert landscapes in our rented convertible. We blasted the stereo and sang at the top of our lungs with the sun and wind in our faces. One song we played was Petty’s “Running Down a Dream”. I found myself thinking more about my life and career and whether I would indeed ever “run down the dream” of leadership or whether I would stay in my lane within my current comfortable life and research career. No doubt I work very hard, but the idea of stagnation began to haunt me. Being in the desert, the vision of a wild horse running contrasted with a pony on a child’s carousel ride, going in a familiar circle over and over.
Returning back to Michigan, it was easy to settle back into my routine. I put the Palm Springs conversations aside and “rode in my familiar circle”.
Then in January, I got an intriguing email.
It was about the Chair of Psychiatry position at University of California Davis. As I read the description, I was intrigued. I thought of something my father and greatest mentor (Dr Anthony Kales) said to me a couple of years ago. My Dad was the founding Chair of Psychiatry at Pennsylvania State University at the unbelievably early age of 38. He was a wunderkind and someone whose accomplishments in sleep research as well as vision and mentorship as a Chair cannot be overstated. My father said “I can see you becoming a Chair someday, but you should only do it with the right Department”. I had received a lot of feelers about Chair positions over the years. This one stood out. This Department seemed special. I needed to know more.
My Dad as a young Chair.
I had my first interview (vis Skype) for the job in February which had the potential to start in ignominy. Shortly before the interview, I realized the desktop computer in my office did not have a camera. Panic set in and I ran down the hall to one of my staff’s offices to grab a laptop (and of course, I couldn’t tell her why I needed it). I had a bit of a flop sweat going by the time I connected to the interview.
How I felt at the beginning of the interview.
But I rose to the occasion, facing the entire search committee as I was peppered by a myriad of different questions.
I managed to pull myself together like Elastagirl after being worked over by Edna Mode in the Incredibles.
Overall, I thought it went well but a week later when I debriefed with someone from the search firm, I became concerned by what seemed like a fast timeline. With a family of five including a husband with his own career, one daughter in college, another graduating from high school and a son in middle school, there was no way I could contemplate moving within a few months.
Luckily, I connected with one of the leads on the search committee a few weeks later. I have since come to know her as an amazing person and researcher who also manages to be warm and down to earth. She called me from an airport back East where she had been visiting a family member (that immediately won points with me too). She reassured me that the process could take up to a year which would give me time to get my familial “ducks in a row”. She also urged me to come out to campus and see what they had to offer.
I went out on the first visit to Davis in the late spring, in my mind 75/25 (staying/going). I spent 2 intense days on the medical campus. Meeting a jillion people. And yet as I went back to my hotel room, I felt exhilarated by the possibilities of this position. A much more diverse area and patient population. Really interesting clinical settings in public psychiatry. Huge opportunities for research growth and collaboration. I called my husband from the hotel. “I really like it here”.
UC Davis Medical Campus (located in Sacramento)
Still, I struggled. My husband. My kids. My parents. My comfortable life. I thought of something one of the nursing faculty (a transplant from the Midwest) said to me about her own decision to come to Davis “We woke up to the ice and snow one morning and my husband and I said to each other ‘Are we really going to live here the rest of our lives?’”. That statement kept ringing in my ears. I could keep doing what I was doing for the next 10-15 years. But what if I did something different?
I came back for a second visit in July with my family. My husband liked the area and was undaunted by the over 100 degree heat during the day saying “It’s just like in Idaho” where he lived as a kid and where much of his extended family lives now. He also loved that he would be closer to his family and felt ready for a change job-wise. The proximity to Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, Napa and Yosemite didn’t hurt. The family took a side trip to Lake Tahoe while I was interviewing and loved it. As for me, the 2nd visit only reinforced the idea that this was the “right department”, a Department I could see myself leading and loving. My son Theo announced that he was “fine” with moving “as long as we get a pool”.
Not Theo, but the spirit of exuberance would be the same.
The girls were initially more equivocal but came around to seeing a move as having potential merits.
As for me, I resolved the concern about leaving my sole focus on geriatric mental health and positive aging by concluding that I could make growing positive aging at Davis a part of my vision for the Department.
Fast forward 7 months and we are going for it. The family will be moving to California in June and I will be starting my new job in July. Running down the dream indeed. We will definitely be working on the mystery of our new futures and going where it leads like those wild horses. Please wish us luck!
The picture I sent to the Dean with my signed offer letter. I reasoned they might as well see the kind of gal they are getting.
