Decade in Review
Ella and Old MD Girl did the decade in review and they were really inspiring. While I’m a little late on this, I’ve been thinking about it for a while so I’m just going to go for it anyway even though it’s almost 2011!
2000 – I was a freshman business major at ACU. I was on the yearbook staff as a student life editor and really enjoyed it. ACU was not really what I wanted or expected out of my college experience and I was truly unhappy, probably on the verge of depressed. I hated going to chapel every day and didn’t have many friends because my boyfriend was super possessive and jealous and I let him occupy all my free time. My roommate was nice, but couldn’t have been less interested in talking to me. Luckily, it wasn’t just me she didn’t talk to, it was everyone. No one ever visited our room because she ate so much tuna, but we had awesome neighbors next door and across the hall (not including the one girl in the dorm room on the other side of ours who played The Rose by Bette Midler on full blast every morning while she was getting ready.) That year I went on a spring break campaign to Canada and finally made some real friends who made me see how it was time to break up with the boyfriend. I did. That summer I got a job at a coffee house with my best friend, Rose. It was the best job ever.
2001 – Was a pretty great year for me, but definitely a difficult year for everyone. I was still working at the coffee house, had study abroad at Oxford and traveled across Europe during the summer. My boyfriend was from Boston and I flew up to see him before school started and he showed me around his town. I was finally getting to see the world and realizing how sheltered my life was back in Abilene. I moved into a house with two of my coworkers who were just so amazing and fun. We had the party house and my life was just great and happy. I was happy with my major and tolerating my last two years at my university and really looking forward to getting out of school and into the real world. All I wanted to do was see the world and make a difference. At my school, if you don’t have an engagement ring by the second semester of your senior year, there’s probably something wrong with you. I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was get out of Abilene as fast as possible and a man would slow me down.
2002 – Rose and I went to NYC for my 21st birthday and I just knew that was my city. The city was so inspiring and fascinating. I planned on moving there after I graduated in a year and becoming some high powered business woman, but we all know how plans work out. During Christmas break, I took a Biology course in Australia. We scuba dived at the Great Barrier Reef, trekked the Daintree Rainforest, and chased the cute Aussie boys in Sydney, the best city in the world! That’s where I met my friend Kristina and co-author of Do It While You’re Young.
2003- Was a big year for me. I graduated from college and not having any job offers, decided I wanted to learn Spanish in Spain. So I packed my bags and moved to Barcelona for the summer. I had a boyfriend from Milan, Italy, and visited him on the weekends. We’d drive to Switzerland or hang out in Milan. I felt the world was mine. While there I learned that my grampa, the man who had raised me on his own, had lung cancer. I started making my was back to the US reluctantly, stopping over in London for a couple weeks and debating whether I should go home. I figured I could always go back to London if I wanted. I returned to Abilene and spent some valuable time with the most important man in the world to me before he passed away. Once he left me, I knew that I was free to go anywhere in the world. I never wanted to be far from him because I knew my time with him was limited and it’s why I never left ACU to go to another school. After that, I was offered a job by some family friends at their hotel in the Caribbean. Not having anything to keep me in the states, I flew out 3 days later with a suitcase and a one way ticket.
2004 – I got bored with living the island life. They call it Island Fever. I started looking for ways to get off the island and travel more. St. Martin is a haven for mega yachts and I started meeting the yacht crews from all around the world. They told me how much money they were making, where they got to go and how much fun they were having. I started taking classes to get my certification to work on a yacht, got a job on sailing yacht over the phone. I quit my job in one day at the hotel (it was already summer so things were slow) and flew up to New York City to meet my boat. I had never been on a sailboat in my life. The owners came on and we sailed up to Maine stopping in Newport, Rhode Island and some other coastal villages along the way. Every day was a new adventure. I saw whales and dolphins for the first time! I met Rockefellers and some of the other richest and most powerful people in the world. I was making more money than I ever had in my life. Life was fantastic. I traveled to Argentina by myself. My boyfriend and I were supposed to go together but we broke up before so I decided to go anyway. Then I got the call that my mom had lung cancer and everything changed. When she died, I decided to change my life. I was living an awesome life, but had no direction. I knew after my mom died that I wanted to help sick people, help their families and wanted to go to medical school. I doubted I could really do it though. So I kept working on yachts for two more years.
2005 – I was still mourning my mom, and was trying to pack life in at the fastest rate possible. It actually turned pretty self destructive. I realized that I had been to 4 continents and decided to get in 3 more before I turned 25. I went to South Africa and backpacked across it for 3 weeks. I learned to surf, went on safaris, and visited AIDS orphanages in Swaziland. I was stuck between wanting to go to medical school and thinking how much life I’d give up if I stopped working and traveling. I couldn’t bring myself to settle down just yet.
2006 – I was getting burned out of working on boats, and missed the few remaining family I had and was about to turn the pivotal age of 25. I went to Japan for my 25th birthday and started thinking about how to return back to Texas and start my “life” and get serious. I quit my job on the boat I was working on in Boston and drove from Boston to Houston where I had decided I wanted to live. Once I arrived though, I realized that the fast paced life I was living wasn’t how other people were living. I thought having a bachelor’s in business was enough to get a job while I tried to apply to schools to get my pre-reqs for medical school. I couldn’t get a job at all. I went from making tons of money and traveling the world to barely scraping by. Reality was setting in that this was going to be a lot harder than I expected.
2007 – I couldn’t get into a groove. I needed money and worked briefly as a personal assistant for a guy in Beverly Hills. It was an awesome job. He had a private jet and we flew back and forth between his houses in Las Vegas, Puerta Vallarta and LA. My heart wasn’t in it though. I wanted to go back to school and this job wasn’t going to mesh well. I went back to Houston and decided internet marketing was something I could do while trying to go back to school. After scoring a sweet job at Schipul, I considered working in marketing instead of going to school and thought maybe I should get my MBA instead because that would be so much easier than getting an MD.
2008 – I had an awesome job, was finally meeting people in Houston as friends and beginning to like Houston. I was beginning to realize that if I didn’t finally commit to going back to school, I never would. I applied to UH and got in and tried to start taking classes but just couldn’t manage to fit it in with full time work and the availability of classes. Money was a huge issue and I couldn’t figure out how I was going to hack it.
2009 – I finally got the push I needed to leave my job and concentrate on school. I worked and saved money during the summer to save up for going to school full time in the Fall. I met the love of my life at a time when I had decided that a relationship would be the most distracting thing while trying to go to school. In fact, it turned out to be the best thing for me because John actually balanced me and encouraged me in everything I did. So I started school in the fall, joined the National Guard as a combat medic to help pay for school, and started working in a chemical laboratory.
It took me an entire decade to start becoming the person I wanted to be. While my life on paper (or screen) looks like an awesome adventure (and it was) it was really more difficult than you may ever realize. The decade was filled with a lot of second guessing, low confidence and fear. But I think that this next decade it going to be amazing and I’m ready for it!
