Iris Mauss

Thank you so much for having me.

I think forever.

So this was a really big deal for me.

I'd been working toward this for a long time and had been really looking forward to that moment, hoping I would get tenure.

Getting tenure is a big deal, of course.

I would get to be with the most lovely colleagues I could imagine and doing what I love in a beautiful area.

Well, not quite.

It wasn't quite the way that I had imagined.

It's sort of like the saying, wherever you go, there you are.

So I was still the same person somehow.

And worries and stressful things still happened.

Although at first, at least in the sort of year after getting tenure, those sort of small worries hit me almost more than before because they had this element of, wait a minute, shouldn't I be happy all the time?

Is there something wrong with me that I have tenure now and yet I still have worries in my life?

This was the first trip I took in a really long time.

And I was gonna get together with my very oldest childhood friend.

She lives in Germany.

I hadn't seen her in two years.

And we had this trip planned.

I thought, this is just gonna be amazing.

I'm gonna be relaxing.