![]() Having been first diagnosed with a mental illness when he was 10, he’d lived with it for a long time by the time he was diagnosed with OCD. ![]() At the time, “I was dealing with a lot of mental health issues,” Hance explains. He applied and was accepted to the graduate program, and moved with his new wife from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Santa Fe. He thought the emphasis on philosophy would help plug some of the gaps remaining from his undergraduate education. John’s came out like a beacon one day,” says Hance. He began looking around at master’s programs-particularly writing programs. Hance had loved his undergraduate studies, but he recognized that an enormous amount of English literature was “built on the back of the Bible, and the Greeks and Romans,” and felt he was missing an important foundation. It was also when he decided to continue his formal education. It was a difficult time during which many of his ideas about mental illness generally-and his own in particular-changed. The trip to the Amazon “brought back all the love of nature and concern for the environment ,” he explains, “but at the same time it was during that trip when I realized there was something else going on.” Upon his return home, he was diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The book also charts Hance’s experiences with mental illness. An unusual travel narrative that follows Hance around the world as he encounters exotic animals in far-away places like Kenya, Guyana, and Borneo, much of Baggage is about the resilience needed to push through discomfort and challenges in order to do what matters to you. It was a life-changing trip for Hance, which he describes in the first two chapters of his new book, Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-Trotting Hypochondriac. He and his now-wife took a trip to Peru, where they spent 10 days in the remote Amazon rainforest. He eventually landed at Macalaster College and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English literature ultimately, he would combine his many passions as an environmental journalist and writer.Īt the time, though, Hance was unsure of his next steps following graduation. As a teenager, his focus expanded: he still loved animals, but he also grew concerned with the state of the environment and developed an interest in writing. He was obsessed with wild, exotic creatures-the stranger, the better. Jeremy Hance (SFGI09) grew up on a farm and was always in love with animals. ![]() Santa Fe Graduate Institute alum, Jeremy Hance ![]()
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