As I see the light at the end of the tunnel of a long summer of work, I realize that I have fulfilled a childhood dream of mine without even realizing it. For the past two summers, I have worked as an office assistant at a small auditing company. I work 5 hours a day, 5 days a week in an office of my boss and three other ladies, each of whom has a family at home, kids, and even grandkids. I call TONS of customer service lines, read, respond to, and send dozens of emails a day, send a huge number of faxes, answer phones, take messages, and say things like "You have a phone call on line 2" while I proceed to do that cool thing where you put the phone on hold and are still able to hang it up (which I have always thought was cool and will never get old to me).
As I entered my last week of work, I remembered that, when I was younger, I thought that this would be the job for me-I wanted to be a secretary. I wanted to send emails, answer phones, take messages, get faxes and, yes, put the phone on hold in that cool way. Over the years I have grown to learn that I am a mover-I like to be out and about, working with people, walking around from place to place and meeting to meeting, involving my creative side, and never doing the exact same thing twice. For that reason, I was completely blind to the fact that, for the past two summers, I had been fulfilling one of my childhood dream jobs, and, really, how many kids can say that?
Though I do not get any great what's-the-meaning-of-life-and-what-am-I-meant-to-do kind of satisfaction from fullfilling this dream itself, since it did in fact turn out to be something I realized I wasn't meant to do forever (and the next week I believe I wanted to be a marine biologist, so my dream was constantly changing), I find it interesting that it ended up being a job I did have for some time during college. I also find it interesting that I had the opportunity to have a job like this, and it turned into such a wonderful learning experience about what kind of things I like to do, what my interests are, and how I want to spend the rest of my career life. It's so great to learn these things about myself and get such reasurrance from a simple summer job.
Because of this summer, I have realized more about the kind of person I am-one who likes to move around, interact and channel her creativity-and what I want to do with the rest of my life. For the past two years, I have realized that that is what your 20's and your time in college is about. Grades become less important, and what really matters is the life lessons you learn because of classes you take, things you involve yourself in, people you meet, friends you make, and goals you try to achieve. I think that halfway through college, I have checked off a great deal of spaces on my laundry list of life questions. Though there are plenty more, I feel confident that I will learn all I need to know in order to have, not only the future I am MEANT to have, but the future I WANT to have.
