In 2014, I was a student at The Ohio State University with no clue what I wanted to do next. My first job was at a coffee shop, and when I got fired, it felt like the end of the world. Looking back, I know losing a latte making gig is not exactly a crisis, but at the time it was my first real taste of adversity.
My next step was less than glamorous: a job scanning thousands of dusty paper files at a local electrical construction company. Hours of feeding pages through a machine and battling endless staple jams was not exactly the dream. But here is the thing: that tedious role cracked open something important. A teammate handed me a “quick Excel project,” and suddenly I was learning accounting, payroll, and admin from the ground up. What looked like the most monotonous job became the foundation for the skills I still rely on today.
That experience eventually opened the door for me to step into AdTech, where I grew my skills in a fast paced, ever changing industry. I learned how to navigate complexity, support leaders, and stay grounded while everything around me moved quickly. That chapter taught me how to navigate complexity with resilience, a skill that defines my work today.
Almost nine years later, I have built a career as an Executive Assistant. A role that is about thriving in the uncomfortable, tackling the unexpected, and making progress out of mess. That coffee shop firing I once thought would break me turned out to be the first sign that growth often shows up disguised as loss. Since life has a sense of humor, I am writing this with a latte in hand, freshly made from our office espresso machine. It is also a reminder that the best things often start in the most uncomfortable places.
Cheers.
