What I Wanna Be When I Grow Up

When I was a little girl I wanted to be a buyer. Shopping on other peoples dime sounded like the best thing in the world. Then in high school I decided I wanted to be a bartender. When I found out I had to be 21 to tend bar I concluded the next best thing to do was go to college. My first major was Hospitality Management. I wanted to go to Johnson & Whales University in South Carolina so bad. Settling practically on a local community college 30 minutes from home, I quickly changed my major to Business, still desiring a hotel management gig but going for a much "broader" degree. I took my first Economics class that was so far over my head, I quickly changed my major to Journalism. By now I wanted to write for Travel & Leisure magazine and travel around the world and review my experiences (don't we all?). Then I had a suckie Journalism professor at the junior college in Northern California I attended for a year. About that time I had to declare a major for my Bachelor's Degree entrance to the university. I went through the California State University catalog and made a list of all the majors that 1) did not require math 2) did not require science and 3) were employable without a graduate degree. It was between Journalism (already tried that), Recreation Management (by now I was over the whole work-as-a-hotel-manager thing), and Interior Design. Being a creative and artistic person by nature I naturally selected Interior Design for my BA, assuming it was something I could do. I did quite well in the program but after graduation only gave the career a short and misguided attempt. I worked in that field for a few years and quickly burnt out on the furniture salesperson/interior designer gig I had at a prestigious and popular national brand furniture showroom. Then I took a job with a prestige cosmetic line at Bloomingdale's in Southern California.

Through the 9 years I have been in the cosmetic industry (never wanting a career in the field but not able to turn down the promotions that kept coming my way), I have searched behind every mountain and under every rock to find the perfect career. I looked into Paralegal school, thought about getting a MA in each English, Art History and Religious Studies at one time or another, thought about makeup artistry as a true profession (theatrical, movies, etc.), looked into esthetician school or revitalizing my long dead interior design career and my God I can't really remember what else there was! So the time has come to make a change and I am going back to lucky #3? Well, kinda. Journalism was most likely the closest I came to recognizing my true profession, my calling, the coalescence of talent, interest and ability that resides in each person. So 15 years after my high-school graduating class of '94 was unleashed on the working faction, and I am watching this blog and Spanish class expand my tiny little horizons and the wheels in my head are starting to turn, wondering how to make something happen.

Thanks for joining,
Leah