Less than two months ago, I left the working world. Today, I’m a grad student in a foreign country. If you’d asked me two years ago, when I was working in a Frank Gehry-designed office on Sunset Blvd, I would have laughed at the mention of grad school. Really, give up this paycheck when I’m on a roll, tearing through the glass ceiling? Since then I took it down notch by notch. First, a stint in London, supported by my fiancée. Then a year in Toronto working at an agency, living in a high-rise, and traveling around the world to friends’ weddings as a bridesmaid. But deep down, I was feeling lonely, and as time passed, I realized I hadn’t used my talents for years and years. Something had stood in my way ...
As an undergraduate, I suffered from mysterious abdominal pains that were at odds with my hunger to learn and excel. Only to the professors with whom I was very comfortable could I divulge my reasons for bolting out of class mid-exam in a cold sweat. The pains really began in high school, after track team pasta loads—I therefore attributed my stomach problems to nerves. Eight years later, I was diagnosed with celiac sprue, an auto-immune disease in which the digestive tract reacts violently to wheat gluten. I remember being frustrated at my ignorance of something so simple—I could have done so much if only I’d not eaten any bread! My academics, my social life, my own self-esteem—all had been plagued by this disease. I was determined to make up for lost time—I was to be a fierce career-woman!
So for nearly a decade I worked my way up the corporate ladder, and seemingly enjoyed myself in the meantime. I had fabulous friends, jet set vacations, a personal trainer, and a loving family. Stress, however, was eating away at me. I was considering abandoning ship, when serendipity happened. My last year in Los Angeles, I met my future fiancée, at work, of course! I loved his commitment to ideas, to being an auto-didact. Like me, he struggled with the futility of earning a good living. What joy did our paychecks really bring? We were far from family and a real community, and we were surrounded by status symbols of false lifestyles. Peers strove to attain more “things” to hide the discontent with their minds alone. We were tired of the outward excesses and innate emptiness of the young professional life. So, on a whim, we both applied to a small graduate school in Switzerland. After eight months of paperwork, visas, permits, and explanations, we left for Europe.
