My Journey of Life After College.. The Real World

Business & Life Sense...Hard Lessons Learned

By:Amy Smith 

College has become the conditioner for the drone mentality. 

Not everyone has the time, attention span or energy to sit through 4 years of college to get a business degree and then take the time to gain the necessary "experience" in order to know what you are doing in your field, how the real world operations are to implementing the subtle nuances of your field of study and how to navigate office politics. Interns have the advantage in the industry of business. 

I had to learn through experience, which means bad judgement, failure, defeat, adversity and misplaced faith and trust, teaching me what not to do. Here is a bit about me and my journey to having business sense.

Let me start this article by telling you that I admit to being a "late bloomer".

I went into the working world at the age of 16 and I was blithely socially inept. I had a very
controlled home environment by parents that were blind to the realities of the world and consequences of their choices. I had a rocky and unstable foundation growing up fraught with trauma and loss. So I am no middle-class regular gal. I know what it is to be hungry, to miss holidays, to wear shabby ill-fitting clothing to school, to never have my parents supporting my efforts and to be humiliated. I never got to play intramural sports, because that takes your parents paying a fee to join and we were nearly always broke and my parents saw extra-curricular activities as a waste of time. I know, messed up.

The first time I tried out for anything I was 14 and it was cheerleading. The camp was $400. I believed that I could raise the money working with my youthgroup to fill sandbags and do fundraisers. When the day of the tryouts arrived I threw my tryout. All I could think of was that my parents were never going to enable me to live in that world...and I still could not to a cartwheel.

Intramural sports are key to a child and young person's development. I grew up believing I was worthless and never worth anyone's time or attention because I was poor. I gained my self-worth  

from my studies in school and my jobs as I began working. I was my job and I liked the respect that money on hand afforded from my peers.

My world was shaken when I went into the US Air Force. I had nobody there with me and I felt terribly unloved alone in west Texas at Goodfellow Air Force Base(AFB). What social status I had achieved at home in Colorado Springs, CO did me no good there. I had no idea what I was doing and no idea how to deal with so many different people. I finally snapped when 9/11 happened and I began smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, choosing risky behavior and promiscuity. I got the attention and affection that I so desperately craved through interactions with males. I did not like clingy and fell for someone who was not interested in me.

My health suffered from the stress of post 9/11 fall out and my bronchi suffered from smoking. 

I was medically discharged with an Honorable status. I came back to the Springs to find my world altered and I was adrift. I began job, after job, after job to find that I missed the Air Force core values and that people and companies sucked. I found solace in partying with my Fire Dogs from Good fellow who happened to be stationed at Peterson AFB.

The best job I ever had was working in Mortgage Home Equity Sales with Wells Fargo as a contracted temporary employee with an employment agency. I lacked career direction, was lonely and unsatisfied because I lacked purpose.

Right before my 22nd birthday I was physically assaulted and could not go to work. I lost my job there. I was too humiliated to tell the best boss ever what had happened. I believed that vulnerability was a weakness that the strong preyed upon.

The next few years would have been great for me to go to school and learn about the world and business, but I had no mentors. I had no faith in myself and I did not trust anyone. I was very self-centered in my pain, confusion and loathing of my circumstances. Adversity only leaves us once it has taught us what we need to learn, that much I can tell you is true.

I did finally start courses and went to school after I had my son, because I had a living, breathing reason to. I tried 4 times with 4 different schools. My main challenges? Lack of support, lack of stable income, lack of childcare and being horribly alone in my journey.

Thankfully after the age of 25 the logic center of the human brain begins to mature and for me the puzzle pieces began to come together, but nothing really clicked until age 30 for me. That is when the world began to make sense. That is when I moved to be near my oldest friend and when I began to engage in the messiness that is the world of business. I put the control in my hands and learned the extent of my abilities. I learned what I am capable of and what I am not, what I am strong at and my areas of opportunity, what my body and psyche can and cannot handle, what revs me up and what slows me down. I learned how to say, "Hell no, stop that noise, that is not for me, that is wrong, this person is toxic, that doesn't work, I am not giving up and I need help." out of necessity. 

No one ever took my by the hand and taught me the life lessons that a lot of people now instinctively know. The whole tribal knowledge of how to function in society was never passed down. I am an intellectual and my mother was an intellectual and her parents are intellectuals...and they have social developmental disabilities. Thank God for my foster parents! I would never have found the joy in communicating with other people and the value in reaching out to make friends! Also, thank God that we are composite individuals and that we can adapt what traits we admire in others into our own personality!

So, my point in all of this is that if a recovered socially inept, now experienced single mom with

health issues and a tiny support system can pick herself up by her bootstraps time after time and keep going, so can you. It doesn't matter how many times that you get knocked down, it matters that you do not stay down. You get back up again. And if you cannot get back up again you get help. God and the living organism of energy that we live in called the Universe will send you the help that you need. I only hope to be able to be an instrument and give others the help that I needed.

My journey has taught me that compassion and vulnerability are good to practice. Our strength comes from standing for what is right. I know that can be hard. I know what it means to be ostracized for making choices that were right for me. I know what it means to not have a voice and then finding it!

                                   Maghintay Ka Lamang..By:Ted Ito

So, in saying all of this, I want you to know that I relish the opportunity to become your business partner, your mentor and your friend. I look forward to helping you on your journey to success, freedom in your financial life and direction in attaining your purpose.