Shortly after college, my roommate was an auditor who hated his job. So I wasn't surprised to hear Gary Gebhardt explain that he hated auditing, too.

Gary's parents were both German immigrants who lived through World War II in Germany and watched their families lose everything. They were seven and twelve when the war ended.

He says, "I was the first person in my family to go to college. I knew I was supposed to go to college, but didn't really know what it was about. So I picked a state school, far enough to move away from home. I didn't know what to study. Because I was good at numbers, I picked accounting. It was really silly, but I didn't know any better.

"It turns out I was really good at business. In my junior year, I got a summer internship with Price Waterhouse; it was really high status and they liked me. It turned out I was working at the best accounting firm. My family didn't understand what it was, but they were proud I was working at this fancy place."

"I hated auditing," explains Gary. "Your job is to find out what is wrong. So I applied to a consulting services training program, which only took about 30 people a year - out of 5,000 consultants in the firm. Your managing partner has to pay $50,000 to send you to the program. When I got there, many of my peers thought I was just some big, goofy Midwestern football player. It turned out I was very good at it."

Growing up, Gary didn't realize he had any particular talents, and didn't realize he was smarter than average. So enjoying success in a prestigious firm not only came as a surprise to him, it also made him feel like he should keep going on this path. There was just one problem: he kept getting bored.

"Back from the program for six months, I was bored again. So I went to Case Western Reserve University part-time, then fulltime to finish up." He earned an MBA in 1989.

Back at work, he got promoted ahead of schedule. He got a 50% pay increase. He was still "itchy." Gary tried to get into the strategy group, and finally got an assignment at GM, but then the project shut down. Things were going great, but it wasn't working for him.

Gary then tried switching firms, going to Frank Lynn & Associate for three years, back to Price Waterhouse for a year, and then to Motorola - working on the "client side" - for three years.

"Along the way, I started buying stuff. A condo. A baby grand piano. By everyone else's standards I was doing great. I was getting paid $80 thousand a year to do nothing. Then Motorola downsized our group. They kept me but fired eighty percent of the marketing staff."

Bored at Motorola, Gary returned to consulting. He accepted a job at Kuczmarski & Associates as a new product consultant making $120 thousand a year. But that only lasted six months before Gary called his internist and, "Asked how do I know if I'm having a nervous breakdown?"

Gary quit the next day.

"People couldn't figure out why I would quit. Everyone told me I was great at this. I got a bunch of books on what should you be when you grow up. One had lists about what makes you happy. The two things that made me happy were teaching and learning new things. In consulting, the best thing was doing something no one else could do. But doing things again and again made me crazy. In systems work, I loved training. I loved explaining something and that moment when people get the look in their eyes that reveals they finally understand."

Gary came up with three career possibilities: physician, high school teacher, or college professor.

After talking to lots of people, he chose to pursue being a marketing professor. He earned his Ph.D. at Northwestern - considered by many to be the best marketing school in the world - while simultaneously being turned down by five lesser schools. But at Northwestern, Gary visited the campus, met with numerous students and the chair of the department. He put in the extra effort, and it paid off.

"I sold my condo, car, and everything I could to raise cash. At age 35, I was living on a stipend of $15 thousand a year. But those years were the happiest of my life. I was working really hard, always learning, always doing new things. And I got to teach.

"It took six years to earn my Ph.D. At the end, I had $5 thousand left. It wasn't clear I could get a job."

But Gary did get a job, and now is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida. He makes less than he used to, but plenty enough to live on. He teaches undergraduate students, so he can have more time for research. To keep both himself and his students engaged - he has over 400 in each class - he tries to be entertaining and fresh, using was he describes as a "talk show" lecture style.

Looking back, Gary says, "I got screwed up by defining success based on how other people define success. It turns out I was good at certain things, and people were telling me to be proud because I worked for a fancy firm and made good money. That's how I got caught up in my shorts. But at 35, I was miserable more often than not."

The turning point was when Gary just couldn't do it anymore, and took the time to figure out what made him happy. Ever since then, he has been.

To learn more, visit Gary's web site.