You know, I really never saw myself as an extraordinarily ambitious person.
Always had what I thought was a reasonable sense of self-worth and realistic, achievable goals. I guess the problem was that nobody ever sat me down and explained how hard it would actually be to accomplish all of my aspirations.
Ever since fourth grade, I've had essentially a three-pronged life plan:
Play football for Ole Miss
Become a college history professor
Get a family
At the time and, really, through high school, this seemed like the least ambitious course of action, at least among all paths I could see myself following.
I wasn't trying to be an NFL player or an Olympic athlete, though I certainly dreamed about such things.
Instead, I just wanted to strap up for my state's college. Didn't seem like an unobtainable goal at the time, as it was clearly not the most ambitious outcome. Knew it would be difficult, but not out of reach.
I wasn't trying to be a West Point grad career soldier like my uncle, or some super successful business person, or a novelist, or a film director, or a boat captain, or even a lawyer like my daddy (all career options I envisioned as possibilities from an early age but that I ultimately passed on because they seemed unrealistic, except the lawyer thing which I simply assumed would be more work).
Instead, I just wanted to be a simple, unassuming college history professor. By the time I graduated from high school, I had only ever known two college professors (neither of them history) and I'd never met a single other person my age who aspired to be a professor (let alone a history professor) so I always just assumed it wasn't a highly sought after job. That last detail was what led me astray.
Becoming a history professor was certainly the most obtainable life goal from my adolescent perspective because I never met another soul who WANTED to be one. So I figured it was the kind of job most people turned to as a second or third choice or one you simply stumbled into haphazardly. Which, by that logic, would make it an easy career goal for me if I prioritized it as a first choice.
But I think herein lies the disadvantage of going to a public school in Mississippi:
I knew playing football for Ole Miss would be challenging because almost all of my male classmates shared my dream of playing for Ole Miss or State or more ambitious dreams of playing professional sports. I knew lots of college athletes. I was surrounded by a culture of sports worship that made athletic achievement the absolute highest indicator of success. Not only among men, but women as well. I was far more likely to get a compliment for being "big and strong for my age" from adult women than I was to be praised for saying something smart, which was just as likely to get me in trouble as not.
The point is, I'm sitting here studying for comprehensive exams and working on a proposal for a dissertation that could take another few years to write.
And I've only made it this far because I studied hard as an undergrad, fought to get accepted into the few funded history PhD programs, navigated the tedious minutia of upper academia, taught and did all the hard grading for my professors, crawled my way back from numerous setbacks and blindsides, and lived on a grad school shoe-string budget in small apartments for all of my adult life.
And even if everything goes well through the rest of my PhD studies, I'll still have to publish furiously, cast a wide net that might land me in Alaska or Lord knows where, and fight ferociously for one of the ever-dwindling tenure track positions against a competitive array of colleagues, most of whom will have more credentials and a more prestigious university behind their doctorate.
What am I driving at?
I don't really know. I suppose I just wish someone had warned me that becoming a college professor would be the most difficult choice in the whole doggone world.
In light of what I know now, being a novelist or a film director or something doesn't seem so implausible. Because there's no way that my path has been the one of least resistance.
And it's honestly not even the work itself that's so difficult. I legitimately enjoy reading several books a week and constructing historical evaluations and arguments from scratch. It's just difficult to balance that with pleasing academic advisers and getting published and grading and all with the looming existential fear that I'm training for a job in a barren market.
And I guess another conclusion is that, as a people, we Mississippians should tone down the sports-love just a hair. I always thought the hardest thing would be playing football for Ole Miss and all my friends and coaches braced me for that. I had droves of conversations with authority figures who sat me down and explained how difficult it would be to play college football, let alone actually do it for the Rebels. My middle school football coach (who really believed in me) once used the word "remote" to define my chances.
And he was right. It was doggone hard to play for Ole Miss. I really did have to work my tail off, put my best foot forward on the field, pass on other scholarship opportunities, walk on, trudge through years of scout team work by day and cram studying by night before finally earning a scholarship and getting the chance to play.
Yea. That was dang hard. But the difference is that I was ready for it.
No one ever sat me down and said, "boy, getting a PhD is crazy hard and landing a job after that is even more difficult." No one so advised me until I was in the process of applying to master's programs my senior year of college.
Looking back, I don't know if I'd do things differently (except a few costly mistakes here and there). And I still hope to land a coveted tenured spot someday. I'm not intimidated by the remaining hard work I'll have to do. I've never been intimidated by hard work and I'm not about to start now.
But, man, I just wish someone had psyched me up for this challenge the way they psyched me up for the challenge of football.