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The Decision Point II

Slightly over a year ago, I wrote the post The Decision Point, mostly focused on an up and coming comedian who quit the business for a corporate job. I wrote this post well before I had applied to grad school, gotten into a top program and moved across the country to attend classes.

Here’s the gem of that year old post:

When I reach the decision point that he had, I hope for two things: 1) That a job in academia will allow me to do comedy, teaching and research without having to give any of those up and 2) If I can’t do both, I’ll man up and go for the chance at comedy

It’s funny how delusional I was. Teaching and research don’t coincide with doing comedy. In fact, teaching doesn’t coincide with doing research. All three are full time careers.

Given this, there’s two huge lessons I’ve learned in the past year:

1) You can’t have two careers. You can have two or more jobs, but only one career.

2) Sooner or later, any career is going to have a wall that sucks to climb over (or a dip to get through) and you’ll only be able to get past the wall if you have a passion for what you’re doing.

Today is the first time I read that Decision Point post since I wrote it and today is also when I officially announced that I’ll be withdrawing from the PhD program at Caltech.  I’m moving back to NYC at the end of the month to man up and pursue comedy full time.

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