When Jennifer Bishop graduated from Winter Park High in 2000, she had a clear vision of her career path: bachelor’s degree, law school, successful attorney. Four years later, Bishop was on track to achieve that dream. She graduated from University of Florida with a double major in political science and public relations and promptly signed on for an internship with a Tampa law firm. The verdict?

“Boring,” Bishop reports.

Fast-forward two decades. Bishop is a licensed clinical psychologist with a thriving private practice in Knoxville, Tenn. She treats depression, anxiety, and trauma-related disorders. She has three kids of her own, and she’s never been happier. So what happened in between Tampa and Tennessee?

In a word, life.

Bishop worked for a while as a high school social studies teacher, going on to earn a master’s in teaching — and inadvertently discovered an interest in psychology after being asked to fill in for AP Psych. As a newlywed, she moved to Tallahassee and took a job in educational research. “It paid much better than teaching,” Bishop says. She transitioned to remote work for an academic publishing house while she and her husband started a family in Kentucky. Only once her kids were in school did Bishop rekindle her interest in psychology. At 34, she was admitted to a doctoral program in clinical psychology at the University of Tennessee and completed her training in 2019.

Three states, three degrees, and three kids later, Bishop is far from the future she had planned … and she’s exactly where she wants to be.