Let’s get Started

Hello, friends!

Hopefully, by now you have had a chance to read my about me section on my website to get a little preview of who I am. To put it simply, I’m a native Vermonter who loves to do anything outside and working in the nonprofit world in communications after spending some much-loved time in higher education.

This idea of starting a blog flourished in the midst of the pandemic while doing some in-depth soul searching regarding my career so far and what direction I wanted to go. While I have known my entire life that I am indecisive in almost all aspects of my life, doing this soul searching and reflecting on my choices for my career and professional development only proved my point.

As I was doing this reflecting, I came to three realizations; I love to learn, I love to motivate, and I love to change my mind.

If you ask either one of my parents about my indecisiveness, they will probably start having flashbacks from when I was trying to decide “what to do with my life” as I prepared for and started college. I will not go into the details of those two core years of my life as a senior in high school and a freshman in college, because honestly, they were rough. The pressure that students experience when making these post-high school plans is far too intense. And this is exactly why I am here – to normalize that it is 110% okay to change your mind in what it is you want to do with your life, and you certainly are not expected to know the answer as a high school student. In fact, if you ask most adults, they will tell you that they still do not know what they want to be when they grow up.

Why do we feel so much pressure as high school students - and later as grown adults – that we are locked into a career field forever?

To give you some context on the number of times I changed my mind about what I “wanted to be when I grew up,” I will give you this list.

Elementary Teacher
Architect
Lawyer
Arson Investigator
Social Worker
Chef

And I promise you there were about 15 ideas in between each of these.

I am not going to get into too much detail right away and instead provide some insight on how I landed here and where I want to go – at least for right now.

When I first started thinking about starting a blog, it was my full intention to focus on women in the workforce and addressing challenges we face every day, specifically in male-dominated industries. But guess what? That idea changed.

This idea changed because of one significant day this past spring when I was fortunate enough to give the keynote address at my alma mater, Stafford Technical Center. I have worked in higher education before (and loved it!) so I am familiar with working with students. However, this was something entirely different. I attended Stafford Technical Center in the Public Safety Program my junior and senior year of high school with dreams of becoming a lawyer. I am sure you can now see that certainly did not end up being the outcome. As a graduate who did not pursue my program, I was asked to talk about how changing your mind is perfectly normal, very common, and that you can still be successful.

After giving the keynote address to Stafford Technical Center Class of 2021, I walked away full of momentum and energy. 

So, here I am. Through this blog, I will be sharing my indecisive journey, working to empower young adults to try as many things as they can in life, encourage networking, and give some real talk about the challenges we face as young professionals today.

We cannot decide what we want to do in life without trying new things. And we cannot be expected to never change our minds from there as we try and learn new things in this world.

I hope this is the first of many blogs of mine that you will read as we continue to build our careers, change our minds, think outside the box, empower each other, try something new, and feel confident in our decisions.

If you make it to the end of each blog – which I hope you do – I will always leave you with a challenge.

Today I challenge you to think of a time you’ve changed your mind in either your personal or professional life. Do you regret changing your mind? Think about how things would have turned out if you didn’t change your mind in that instance. Would you be where you are now? Would you have accomplished what you have so far if you hadn’t changed your mind?

Go forth in your indecisiveness! We all have it – just some more than others. For example, I’ve already changed my mind three times on what I’d like to order from the Chinese take-out menu tonight which is absolutely fine. 

Cheers, friends!