A Little About Me + Overcoming
When I was about 5 years old, my parents divorced. Although many people feel the need to apologize, it really was the best thing for my parents, my brother, and myself. I know it might not always be easy to see that from the beginning, but with time you will tell. After 18 years of cordial interactions between divorced parents trying to decide what was best for me, it came time for me to decide what I wanted for myself. The first question was Do I want to go to college? Of course. The second question was Where? The University of Georgia. The good news was that I knew immediately what school I wanted to attend. The bad news was I had no idea what I wanted to study. Fun Fact! I changed my major 7 times. Three times before I even STARTED college, and five once I did. Here they are in order: International Affairs. Genetics. Marketing. Genetics, again. Management. Marketing. Accounting. I was clueless and somehow ended up as an accounting major. I was good at it, no question there, but what drew me in was the financial security. I had come from a broken family where financial stability was not a familiar topic. Neither of my parents went to college and as a result, I was a first generation student. I had no exposure to what a stable, high-earning job may have looked like. But I did know one thing, accounting was “safe” and it was well paying. Three years later, it came time to apply for internships, and like most of my colleagues, I went Big 4. I was thrilled. I did everything by the book, I took every class in order - you name it, and I did it. Until it came time to apply to Graduate School. My internship was set for Austin, Texas, so I thought to myself, why not apply to the University of Texas Master in Professional Accounting? Keep in mind, it is the #1 program for a Master’s in Accounting, so I had -2% confidence that I would even be considered…UNTIL I WAS ACCEPTED. The tricky thing was, that everyone in my major at UGA was staying at UGA for their master’s, and I would be the only one leaving. I had a choice to make, and the choices were either to leave what has been home to me my whole life: Georgia. Or to move halfway across the country to a state where I knew not one soul: Texas. At the age of 22, what would you have done?
It came time to make a decision, and being a state-born Georgia resident, I often got asked the question, “Why Texas?” and to be honest, there is not one reason why but rather many. I am not sure which reason is more prominent for my desire to move out of state. One of my college roommates was from Fort Worth, Texas. She often got asked the same question I was being asked, “Why Georgia?” I thought to myself in the midst of those questions, “Why isn’t anyone asking me why I chose Georgia?” Well, that is likely because my hometown is only forty five minutes from the University of Georgia. It seemed that many of my peers were headed to the nearest city: Atlanta. It then soon dawned on me that Atlanta is also only forty five minutes from my hometown, so I would have only lived within a forty five minute circumference for my entire life thus far. If you can’t already tell, I did the opposite of what was expected of me. I did the opposite of what my family wanted, what my professors expected, and what my friends would have preferred. I chose the University of Texas. I chose Austin, Texas.
Moral of the story: a few things.
It is okay to change your mind - I changed my major 7 times. In my opinion, it is crazy to have lived in the same four walls of a home for 18 years of your life, only to then make a decision and decide what it is you will be doing for the rest of your life. Just like in my last journal where I talk about change and lessons learned - change is what got me where I am today, and I learned plenty of lessons along the way.
I will write later on all of the wonderful things that I have done/learned since moving to Texas. However, I feel led to say that I believe everyone should move out of their home state for at least a very small season of their life. When we get uncomfortable, we learn to adapt. Then, our comfort threshold rises again. We then get a littleeeee more uncomfortable, and become the people we always knew we could become just by getting a little uncomfortable.
You can do hard things. Accounting is hard. Moving is hard. Divorced parents is hard. Life is just - hard. However, the difference between you today and the person you have the potential to become - is just one little thing. The difference is this: the person you have the potential to become believed in themselves. Belief. That’s all it takes.
