You’ll never forget the taste of 💩

You’ll never forget the taste of 💩

I had lunch with a former intern this week. I absolutely loved our conversation and her successes over the last year. From our discussion came a few lessons that are worthy of sharing. I plan on sharing many of them, but I will start with this one:

I was congratulating her on her recent promotion and we started chatting about the journey, mine over 20+ years and her 2+ years. Ha. The realization that I am that old was very scary!! I had never known that she went to community college before transferring to the school that she was in when she interned for me. I was so excited to hear about that experience.

First we talked about the challenges of going to a community college and they should be troubling for all of us. The disappointment that people thrust on you when your reply to the question, “what are you doing now?” isn’t up to THEIR standards can be paralyzing to someone. This pressure and judgement comes from all over, from family to friends to random strangers at your part-time job. The societal pressures of having to go to a certain school (and in most cases take on massive debt), so you can have an acceptable answer to that question, for other people is maddening to me!! For a young person still trying to find their path, these pressures can become consuming. I went through this as well when I decided to not go college after high school. It sucks and it’s awful, but it’s not permanent, if you don’t let it be!

Second we chatted about the positives of her experience at her community college and it would make anyone sitting across from this young lady smile! “The best years of my education!”, she told me. Wow! So many of her teachers also taught at major universities and her credits transferred over to the school that she got her degree from. Smaller classrooms and more attention was perfect for her at that point and it prepared her for later success. I was so happy to hear that she made that choice against the wishes of everyone around her, because she knew it was right for... HER!

The humiliation that we both felt from the judgments that other people made about us can be laughed at now, but it was devastating back then. She talked about bagging groceries for her friends and their families and I talked about delivering their pizzas or their office supplies. People would look at us like we had already lost the game and it wasn’t even the bottom of the first inning in our life. To be fair, not everyone looks at you this way, but when you’re young and unsure, your insecurities are magnified.

When I was 20 I worked on a truck delivering office supplies and furniture. One day we delivered all new furniture to a bank in Worcester, Ma. They ordered the biggest and heaviest desks I had ever seen and we had to carry them up to these huge offices. At the end of the day I looked at this office we had set up. I was exhausted! I said to myself, “I want to be the one sitting in this office, not the one setting it up!” I just wasn’t sure how to make that happen... YET!!

The point of all of this is that we sat at lunch, now removed from the humiliation we felt back then. We both chatted about how happy we were now for having had those experiences in our past. We never forgot the tastes that were in our mouths in our past and I don’t think I ever will. It still drives me today! I’ve tasted both 💩 and 🥂 at this point and I prefer the 🥂! Here’s the good news, if you’re going through this right now, please know that it is awful in the moment, but when you come out the other side I promise you will be stronger for it.

I’m so proud of her for realizing all of this at such a young age and already having a moment of appreciation of how far she has come! There were so many more lessons and stories that I will share later! Enjoy the rest of your weekend everyone!

#Internship #Intern #Leadership #Leader #BeBetter #CommunityCollege #Mentor #BrandedHappy #BeHappy #Happiness #Happy #GaryVeeChallenge