I love my LSE friends but being around them can sometimes depress me

Every once in a while you have one of those experiences that causes you to assess your life and re-examine where you've been and where you're going. This past week has been one of those times for me.

We had the 9th reunion here in DC for my Master's program at the London School of Economics. In the fall of 1998, myself and about 60 other people from around the world began a year-long program in Politics of the World Economy. I learned a lot that year, not just about world politics and economics, but about myself personally and what I wanted out of life. I also made a bunch of wonderful lifelong friends. Every year since we graduated in the summer of 1999, we've organized reunions in different cities internationally. I stayed away the first few years for a variety of reasons. This year in DC was only the second reunion I've attended. However, after so many years and so much distance, I still feel like I know these people as well as I did back in London.

However, for as much as everyone is the same in terms of their personalities, professionally everyone has naturally advanced quite far. I'm always so amazed by the accomplishments of my LSE cohort. Our group has some series intellectual capital. At the DC reunion alone, we had successful attorneys (both in government and the private sector), national government diplomats, International Organization bureaucrats and negotiators, policy and think tank experts, private finance big wigs, and business consultants coming from Brussels, London, DC, Rome, Oslo, and Amsterdam. It's not uncommon for people from our class to encouter each other in professional situations.

And then there's me. Still working on my Ph.D. dissertation. A dissertation I should have finished years ago. I think of my "career trajectory" post-LSE. I first moved back to Kansas for a few months while I applied to Ph.D. programs. Then I moved to Ohio to start the Ph.D. program at Ohio State. After two years I left the program and moved to DC. Worked in an entry-level position at a United Nations agency. Then I left the UN to re-start my Ph.D. at George Washington. Five years later I'm struggling to finish the dissertation. If I work hard and am real lucky, I will complete the Ph.D. a few months after I turn 34. If I don't go into academia, then I will be back on the job market, probably working for a think tank, non-profit or the federal government in a position at a level that most of my LSE collegeaues were at a decade ago. I will most likely have superiors 5 years younger than me. If I encouter any of my LSE classmates in professional settings, I might be the person assigned to get them coffee. (Okay, that may be a little extreme, but you get the picture.)

When I started the LSE almost 10 years ago, where did I think I would be a decade later? I can tell you it was no where near the position I am in now. I thought I would be a published university professor, a policy expert at a think tank, or an upward bound State Department official. Certainly not still a grad student sitting in front of her computer day after day trying to overcome a series case of writers block.

I guess the whole "who did you think you were going to be when you grew up" game is a bit unfair to play. Our lives never turn out the way we think they will. And I am very happy personally. But I still can't shake this feeling of professional failure every time I get together with my LSE friends. There's a constant cloud of "if I had only" that hangs over my mind. I think of all the different paths my life could have gone down and wonder if the one I have chosen professionally is really the one that will allow me to live up to my potential.

And then I get even more depressed when I realize we can't drink near as much as we used to back in London without serious hangovers! I really need a couple days of rest just to recover. Maybe then I won't be so melancholy.