I share this story occasionally, it’s very personal but also one of the more important moments and lessons of my twenties. After I got my degree in Chemistry from Millikin University, I did what nobody in my department did—I skipped grad school. Instead of going down the path towards a PhD, I moved to Durango, Colorado and worked at Fort Lewis College for two years as a Resident Director.

You might have known the RD under a different name like Hall Director or Dorm Mom, but it is the recent college grad who lives in the residence hall, supervises a para-professional staff of Resident Assistants and deals with all the safety, discipline and emotional needs of the students. I was 23, living in a co-ed residence hall with 180 students and a staff of four students. The line between my life as a college student and my life as a working adult was very, very blurry.

To try and deal with it, I started participating in a type of group therapy called Dream Group. Along with a counselor, eight of us gathered every week to talk about our lives and the dreams we were having at night. Then the counselor would help us parse the dream and see if there were lessons to take from it.

Sure, it all sounds a bit woo-woo new agey, but it was a very important support system for me. From those 18 months, I remember one dream—this is the lesson I mentioned.

I told the group, “I’m in a large toy story and I can see Winnie-the-Pooh. He’s walking down the aisle, but over his shoulder is the shadow of a hunter.” This is a scary thought, I mean who would want to kill Winnie-the-Pooh? “Then my vision backed up, like in a movie, and it became clear that there was no hunter. The shadow was Winnie-the-Pooh’s shadow and it was hunting him. I don’t know what to make of it.”

Everyone looked at my in shock. “How do you not know what to make of it?” they asked me.

After a bit of back in forth, it was clear. I had separated myself into two distinct personas. One was the strict disciplinarian that my students knew and the other was a nice, funny person that I let my friends know. Because I didn’t know how to be myself in my work, I just created a new version of me.

A very inauthentic version of me.

So I started working to merge the two personas, to become someone who was always the same. Eight years later, I think I’ve done a fairly good job with it. I am the same person at work that I am with my friends. The same at my synagogue that I am with my family. I think that the people who read my blog could meet me and feel like they are meeting the person they expected to meet.

Was it an easy lesson? No. Is becoming an authentic person ever done? No. Is it worth trying? Absolutely.