A Jamaican Adventure: My Decision to Leave Graduate School and Get a Job

By: Baron Stewart

I was on the brink of celebrating a hard-won academic milestone—the Comprehensive exam success and an invitation to pursue a PhD in mathematics—when Lennette came home with life-altering news. Her company was relocating to North Carolina, and just like that, she lost her job. While I had the comfort of a university stipend, her steady income held our world together. At that moment, the future we had built together trembled on the edge of collapse.

Determined not to let us fall apart, I took on more responsibility. I arranged to meet with the department chair and another professor on weekends, dedicating my weekdays to work and study. I believed I could balance it all, remembering the long hours of solitary research during my undergraduate days. I was convinced this sacrifice was necessary—until years later, when Lennette’s quiet confession shattered that belief. She told me that had I sought her counsel, she would have found another job. My decision, made in the mistaken belief that she was weary of working and that it was my turn to contribute more, had cost us dearly. I clung to her out of gratitude for four years of unwavering support, even as the distance between us grew.

I still recall the day after her solitary return from Canada. With a hesitant vulnerability, she asked, “Baron, how would you feel if you had sex with someone else?” The question, charged with unspoken pain, forced me to confront the guilt of my past infidelities—a guilt that had quietly festered between us. Her words exposed my casual acceptance of betrayal at that moment, mirroring her secret doubts. It was a confession that cut more profound than any argument.

Haunted by the twin losses of our crumbling relationship and our precarious financial future, I set out to secure my first real job. At Friends School in Brooklyn, the headmaster greeted me with a challenge: a puzzle that had confounded his entire mathematics department. My pulse quickened as I recognized the pattern—a familiar echo from my days at Stony Brook—and solved it immediately. The offer was immediate, yet another door was about to open.

Drawn by an inexplicable pull, I drove to Rockland Country Day School in Nyack for a second interview. The long, winding driveway of its stunning campus stirred something within me—it wasn’t a university, but it felt like a small college brimming with possibility. There, I met Jean Lythcott, the dynamic headmistress whose fiery spirit and keen determination lit up the room. She shared her vision of transforming the perspectives of privileged children—many of whom knew little of the realities and triumphs of black professionalism. In her eyes, I saw a call to action, a chance to be a living example of the excellence our community could achieve.

In that transformative moment, I chose a path that promised a job and a chance to redefine our narrative. I accepted the position at Rockland Country Day School and left behind the familiar offer from Brooklyn, stepping into a future filled with both hope and the bittersweet lessons of loss.

I believed I’d chosen the right path for almost forty years—until a chance reunion with Lennette shattered that certainty. In our quiet reconnection, she gently reminded me that while I’d seemingly completed my studies and was ready to work, she never truly understood the arduous, soul-stretching journey of the PhD process. That misinterpretation set me on a collision course. For an entire year, I struggled to juggle the relentless demands of a new job with preparing for my oral exams, and the weight of that impossible balancing act nearly broke me.

In hindsight, I now see that the root of our fractured relationship lies in our diverging worlds. Lennette, tethered to the comforting traditions of her Trinidadian past, longed for familiarity and the rhythms of a life she knew. On the other hand, I was drawn to the vast, challenging promise of mainstream America—a world where I believed I could truly belong. I have since understood that careers and relationships can flourish when built on shared values and deliberate planning, ensuring neither partner is left behind.

Much of my guilt settled in the quiet aftermath of our divorce when solitude granted me the space to reflect. Lennette was a good wife, shaped by her mother's lessons, yet she could not bridge the gap between her deeply rooted world and the future I so desperately chased. In retrospect, I recognize that marrying as a college sophomore—compounded by my assumption of impending fatherhood—was a decision born more of youthful idealism and a misplaced sense of duty than of true readiness.

Yet, through it all, my passion for teaching and the elegant challenge of mathematics never wavered. Solving puzzles and playing math games became my refuge—a steady reminder of who I was and who I longed to become. That pivotal challenge, the puzzle at my first job interview, epitomized my knack for problem-solving and symbolized the calm under pressure that has served me well even today.

Though I once paid dearly for a hasty decision, I am grateful for the unexpected gifts it brought: resilience, self-awareness, and the enduring lesson that every choice shapes us, for better or worse.