Abstract
Changing one’s research path mid-career is humbling. I took an unexpected detour from ivory tower to action research. In this chapter I tell how the evolution occurred, how it was shaped by my personal life, and the three lessons I learned: (1) being humbled by starting from scratch, (2) gaining a new level of respect for practice, and (3) living in the “space between” academia and practice, facing the need to satisfy multiple stakeholders, each of whom requires something different from you.