You might want to keep trying to rise, using a path that builds on your natural strengths: sales, analysis, managing people, whatever, and keep asking for honest feedback. When you reach the point at which it feels clear you've topped out, revise your job description or take a step back. Up is not the only way.

Education isn't a magic pill. There is no magic pill. But the closest we have is practical expertise and relentless drive.

Being a good writer may result in your being nicer to more people, having a bigger positive impact.

Entrepreneurship may be the most under-taught subject.

When you're going to school primarily for career purposes, it's more important to focus on which program is best for you. In addition, your success at college depends far more on what you do at the college than at which college you do it: Choosing the right program, then the right advisor, the right courses, the right term papers, the right co-curricular activities, the right fieldwork, the right internships. You can make those choices at any college.

Some people who are recovering from depression want to use the lessons they're learned in coping with depression and their empathy for people with depression. Others want their career to have nothing to do with depression.

Some parents let kids "learn on their own skin" and many of those kids end up, as adults, languishing on their parents' sofas.