From Cubicle to Campus: My Journey Through Defense Contracting and College
If you had told the college verison of me that I would be where I am today based all on a fluke internship that occurred with a major contracting company, I would be extremely proud. Through navigating how to balance courses, sorority life, and a full-time job with a top defense contracting company I had a lot on my plate. Ultimately this taught me valuable lessons early such as keeping my head up even when things get hard. Document, document, document anything and everything. Most importantly time hacks everything because schedule can drive deadlines and that’s the most important thing.
Starting with a top-defense company came from my mom - she's social - and wanted to ensure that I had the best opportunities. Her job had allowed her to socialize with some important individuals and then all of a sudden, I was a college kid with a daydream that I would become an engineer. I never really understood what program managers were - it's not like a young kid wakes up and says “Hmm I want to be a program manager one day”. When I first started at work I thought it was so cool that I got my cubicle, while being younger it was at times to see how I could fit in. Overall I was able to find my swing and got confident. While my team was not always a bunch of team players, I found my people within the organization and stopped crying in my car at lunch.
Early on I had to find a way to have and instill a work-life balance. That was because I had a variety of things to juggle within year one of college. I always strived to be successful throughout high school but having a career where I was assisting in training soldiers overseas was a whole new level of responsibilities. The best part of this was that overall - my parents never forced me to work, they just suggested a job so I could start finding what would come of my future with a degree. With their consistent support in all phases of my career, college, and sorority life I was successful in everything I wanted to go after because I knew I could fail and all my people would still be there no matter how bad I may mess it all up.
Within college I quickly realized mechanical engineering was not for me - apparently calculus and I were not besties. I then took up a degree in Public Administration, ultimately understanding that it's good to accept a change in career or focus. Change does not mean failure - as much as I would like to be contrary to this. I have learned from a variety of people that no plan survives first contact and neither did my plan in college. I am huge at measuring myself against others and always comparing myself to others, while I still struggle I am trying to get better. With this in mind, I did stop to look around a lot to measure how social, how engaged, how fit, or how whatever metric I wanted to measure. Looking back now I wish I slowed down from time to time or stopped for one more happy hour. All this work has panned out well though I got to learn a lot, fail a lot, and see even more success.
While working and balancing all of these activities turned out to be difficult at times it was truly rewarding to know that the work I was doing impacted the success of the warfighter down range. Unfortunately, at times a lot of my friends did not understand the balance of this and having a social life. I would also agree that this is also some of the moments I truly dropped the ball and sometimes lost the balance of it all. Thankfully I had my bestie attached to my hip and my little one who kept me settled. There are a variety of other individuals who also kept me grounded throughout this period to achieve the success that I saw within my career early on.
None of this support was something that dissolved as I started to decide to move across the country with the guy that I picked to be my future husband. The family support kept out-pouring.
In this phase, I also learned the importance of talking things through with your friends, or maybe your mom yelling at your friends to get it together. While I pulled the rug from underneath one of my other friends, she came around. There's a huge value in communication and this is something I did not execute so well. I went into a very selfish mode - while I stayed my life probably would look different. I think this is now something she gets and we have since made up. So thank Aunt Aubs for always sticking it through in our many phases of life.
Overall, something that I learned early on is that there is a need to have a work-life balance and there truly is a glory in leaving work at the door and learning how to be present. I had leaders at work who constantly challenged me to truly - grow up. It was time I had to be responsible and own up to my mistakes. Additionally, I needed to learn how to let more stuff go and not always think I could handle it all. Asking for help and support was, and still is, a huge weakness I have. Furthering this understanding means that ultimately college and career with a sprinkle of social life can happen but there is a need to have a team that supports you on all fronts.
Bribing toddler and briefing bosses - same skillset different snacks.
Dr. Strange