I'll never be Miss America

I’ve been thinking of doing this for a long time. So here we go.

I sat on a panel this week for a young leaders group here in Chicago, and I realized that I have a lot to contribute when it comes to developing your career even when you’re unsure of yourself and (more importantly) generally trying to live with some integrity. A few people came up to me after the event and several others messaged me afterwards and genuinely seemed to want to know more about how I got where I am now, especially after learning about my background and somewhat bizarre path to working in financial services marketing.

And so, I’ve decided to start a little blog here on LinkedIn to talk about building a career and being (somewhat) successful when things veer off course from what you thought was your master plan. Many others would just call it “life,” but when you’re 23 you don’t have that earned wisdom to know it happens to all of us. So that’s what I’m here to do. To tell you that if you work with some integrity and have a backbone, everything’s gonna be ok.

This series will not be a regular weekly post, and it may seem to come out of nowhere in terms of what stories I share and when. They won’t be chronological and sometimes you'll wonder what the heck it has to do with my career development (or your career development), but there will be a reason for each of them that hopefully you’ll see as you get to the end (see what I did there, you NEED to get to the end of the post for the payoff).

Let’s kick it off with some back story. I grew up as an only child in a military family on both sides. I was transient long before I knew what the word meant. But it’s all I knew. Most times, I didn’t think anything of it or feel like it was unusual. In some instances, I felt sorry for the kids in my class who had never left the rural county they lived in when I had seen a lot of the world before junior high.

As you can imagine, that made me “different.” Bullying wasn’t so much the issue; isolation, however, was. I became pretty resourceful, and I knew how to find connections with different types of people. This is something that has stayed with me ever since, and I could not be more grateful for developing that skill! (Thanks, Mom and Dad)

I think my need to adapt to new surroundings made me always feel like an actor anyway, so going into theatre made a lot of sense. I was always playing a new character wherever I went. Sometimes I had grand plans of “being a whole new me!” when we moved to the next town, but ultimately, I always settled back into some version of the “real and somewhat underwhelming me.” Like my celebrity doppelg?nger, I was always the “new girl.”

However, the world had other plans for me. My overly generous parents let me go to Northwestern (“if you get in, we’ll figure it out,” they said, maybe secretly hoping I wasn’t quite smart enough to actually do it), and suddenly I was thrust into the deep-end of a pool where my previously impressive doggy paddle just would not save me.

Imagine this: my freshman year of college, I went to an audition for a student production. It would be my first, and one of my last, auditions. I stood in line, waiting my turn, with a future Miss America and with the future love interest who stole McDreamy from Meredith on Grey’s Anatomy. I was, to put it mildly, OUT OF MY LEAGUE.

Maybe you’ve had similar experiences, where you thought you could keep up with everyone around you, maybe you thought “hey, I’m just as good as everyone else here,” only to be painfully (or in my case, publicly) reminded that no, I actually couldn’t, and I wasn’t.

It didn't mean I was destined to be a failure (although I did try to drop out right after that, meeting with the Dean to tell her maybe college wasn't right for me!). But it made me rethink my priorities, and I made a difficult decision not to pursue acting as a career around that time. That doesn't mean I don't use my theatre degree every single day, though. I'll definitely talk more about that in a future post.

What kinds of formative experiences really shaped you, whether as a child, a young adult or even later in your career, that maybe even echo in your head daily? Some may cut you down to bring you back to reality, but hopefully, they inspire you to do better!

What things do you want to hear about, what stories can I tell you to reassure you that no matter where you are in your career development, it’s not as bad as you think? Anyone who knows me knows I'm an open book, so ask away!

Some future posts (may) include:

• Helping others with no ulterior motive
• Leading without being "the boss"
• Dealing with toxic people
• Accepting criticism
• Taking pride in what you do
• Recognizing how others perceive you
• "Acting" in your professional life