Back here Again. Just wanting to flee.

Today, Jim Kim was picked by President Obama to lead the World Bank. I think if Dr. Kim was not the president of Dartmouth College, I'd likely just read this news and think "Oh, okay. That's great that Pres. Obama didn't pick some old white guy."

But Dr. Kim *IS* the president of Dartmouth, and I work at Dartmouth, and I read this news and have felt like I was going to throw up all day. Because - somehow - I felt like having Jim Kim at Dartmouth represented some kind of hope that I was tied to an organization that had global health potential. I thought that even if I'm not currently working in a global health capacity, at least there is some kind of potential here. Because Dr. Kim helped found PIH, on of the most legitimate global health organizations in existence. He has a global health agenda. While others at Dartmouth criticized the fact that his priorities were global health - that Dartmouth is about other things, too, and he should have focused on them, as well - I embraced his focus. I came here hoping that it would be a conduit to me returning to the global health world.

But now I feel crushed. Betrayed by my fictional boyfriend after he promised to never leave me. And it's ridiculous - for so many reasons - not least of which is the fact that I've never even spoken to Dr. Kim. Never even saw him, in fact. And there's the fact that the things going on at Dartmouth will still go on. People aren't closing up their shops just because Jim Kim is leaving. It may be a little harder of a process now, but things will continue. AND it's not like I'm even a part of what is going on here globally. I mean, I've talked to people, I've tried to integrate myself, but let's face it. I'm new to Dartmouth. I DON'T HAVE A PHD. And I don't have funding to do anything.

This all really comes back to the fact that "HEY, AM I REALLY LIVING THE LIFE I WANT TO BE LIVING?" It's like I'm a broken record. All my life, the grass is always greener. First I was flitting all over the world and depressed that I had nowhere and no one to call home. Now I'm in a home - my home - with a family, and I feel eternally suffocated by stagnation.

I suppose if I felt even remotely interested in my current position, this wouldn't be such a huge deal for me. But what I thought I was hired to do, has not turned out to be what I am doing. So, I find it impossible not to dream about what could be. And while Jim Kim was president of Dartmouth, I at least felt like some of my dreams could root me here. But now I feel professionally untethered. And depressed.

Someone: "Put me in squalor in the developing world. And let me work on data systems. Let me not sit in a window-less office, writing SAS code for something that will never matter."

And here I am - AGAIN - ready to flee. (At least this time, I have a family to take with me. But would they go?)