All work and no play: How Lan Nguyen Chaplin re-architected her career

"I had landed this prestigious job at a Big Ten university, I was a marketing professor at age 27, and I was not happy. After several months, I wanted to quit. I decided to be the architect of my career, and that changed everything."

Lan Nguyen Chaplin, Ph.D. 's American Dream was coming true. The youngest of 14 children from a Vietnamese refugee family, she was the only one to go college, and then grad school. Her siblings had sacrificed, she told Catalyst, to support the family and help make that dream happen. To pay back that debt, Chaplin said, "I felt like I needed to be laser-focused on success."

"Everything looked great on the outside," Chaplin said. "I was producing great work, everything was working out really, really well. But I just wasn't happy, and I thought, how ungrateful to be so unhappy after getting to where I am today."

The solution wasn't obvious, and like all great ideas started small. Chaplin had grown up immersed in the sport of lacrosse, as a player, fan and coach. She even kept a lacrosse stick in her office, her own sort of fidget spinner: "I've always just cradled in my office, as I'm thinking, as I'm processing my research ideas, I would stand there and cradle."

She didn't know if the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she taught at the time, even had a lacrosse team. But if they did, maybe watching a game would help. "And then, that quickly turned into, why don't I ask if they need a coach?" Chaplin wondered. "So I contacted them and they said, 'We actually don't have a coach this year,' and so I became the women's lacrosse club team coach."

Chaplin's story isn't your typical work-life balance saga. Resurrecting a pastime of passion, as she puts it, allowed her to "craft my job."

That revelation and bold changes which ensued not only changed her perspective but that of her students. To hear Chaplin's whole story in her own words, watch this episode of Catalyst.

Are you tailoring your job to fit your needs? Tell us how in the comments!

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