Part 4 — I Hit the Ceiling

As the realities and limitations of being a peer support specialist became clearer to me — and knowing my three-month review was on the horizon — I made it a point to sit down with the Program Director. My intention was to have an honest, two-way conversation about the role.

Just before this was to happen, though, she pulled me into her office to tell me something: she would be leaving the company in a month’s time.

I took the news in stride, but was internally a little shocked and disappointed. She was the one to give me the opportunity; I had a certain loyalty to her.

She asked me what my highest level of education was. I told her, and she winced and calmly said, “Because I could easily see you in this seat.” She and I both knew I could do that job, but as I was to find out, the state requires anyone beyond a certain point to have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. That put a legitimate constraint on what was possible at this company and perhaps this industry.

I returned to the floor to finish out that night’s shift, and began investigating what would be possible and in what roles I’d be most likely to thrive.

The numbers:

• Behavioral health support work without an MSW, LCSW, or LPCC caps around $40-50K
• The same relational and organizational skill set in community development or program coordination work: roughly $65-80K

Eventually, I did push for my three-month review so I’d have another opportunity to sit down with the Program Director prior to her leaving. That conversation didn’t go as well as I wanted. She gave me a glowing review. I was grateful, but it made what I wanted to talk about even harder. Near the end of our conversation, I gave one of the few direct, honest statements I could: “I want to do this some of the time; not all of the time.”

My comment probably wasn’t all that shocking to her. She and I had an impromptu conversation during a lull in programming one day where I shared with her what I was building with AI and where I wanted to go with that. She sounded excited by the idea, and my mood took a dramatic upswing. She suggested I speak to the Administrator, so I took her up on that, getting my chance a few days later.

That conversation with the Administrator is where the ceiling actually showed itself. I met with him in his office. He seemed eager to talk, since we hadn’t had many one-on-one conversations before. I asked him about a path forward, mentioned the Program Director had suggested we talk, and told him that maybe the approach I’d taken toward work up to that point (find an organization, work my way up, let my work ethic justify the climb) was better suited to someone in their teens and twenties than to where I actually was.

He told me he’d started in this industry as a peer too, and that he’d once asked his own supervisor what he needed to do to make enough money to support himself and his growing family. Two tracks, the supervisor told him. He chose nursing, since it opened up more possibilities. He then laid out the ladder plainly: Resource Specialist, then Quality Assurance, then Program Director, then Administrator. Every rung past the first needed a bachelor’s degree. I asked whether that was a company policy or something bigger. It was the State of California. Not my employer being cautious. The state, telling me and everyone like me that lived experience and demonstrated performance stop mattering once you hit a certain rung, no matter how well you’re doing the job in front of you.

I deserve better, and I want better. And if I was to do something more impactful, I’d need to get a degree.