Awaken

9Back to Boston

Boston was a haunted place for me. Everywhere I looked, there were memories – many painful, some traumatic – that became fresh again: driving through the Boston University campus, the building where we got married, the classrooms where I had suffered my teaching humiliations, the undergraduate dorm in which I had been a faculty‐in‐residence for two years, the apartment complex where my father had put a knife to his chest, the spot by the Charles River where I had proposed.

It was time to put all that behind me and start afresh.

We rented a house in Lexington for the first year while we looked for a house to buy. Lexington played a central role in early American history. It had outstanding schools and a relatively diverse mix of residents. At least seven Nobel laureates lived in the town, the advantage of being so close to Harvard and MIT.

My new colleague and friend at Bentley College, Alan Hoffman, a professor of strategy, joked that faculty only want two things: to get paid more and teach less! I achieved those in this role. From an associate professor three years removed from getting tenure, Bentley had catapulted me to the pinnacle of the academic hierarchy: a tenured full professor with an “endowed chair.”

I had a prestigious, highly visible position with all the trappings of success: a good salary, a big house in a lovely town, and a brand‐new Mercedes. Yet I was quite miserable. The move had put a further strain on our marriage. Having just turned 40, ...