May 13, 2017 could best be described as one of the most fulfilling days of my life. Wanna know why? Because I, Danielle Brown, a 23-year-old from St. Louis who is the youngest of three graduated from college. I received a bachelor of science degree in mass communications with a minor in communication studies from Southeast Missouri State University, located in Cape Girardeau, Missouri (two hours away from St. Louis).
All of my many accomplishments, including my graduation, has me more than thrilled for the future. Except there’s one thing; I’m also beyond nervous because I honestly don’t know what’s next. I wouldn’t be doing myself justice if I didn’t keep it real with everyone and deeply explain how life has been since I’ve graduated.
After graduation, I moved back to my hometown of St. Louis and into my father’s house, which is located in the Greater St. Louis area of O’Fallon, Missouri. My daily routines have consisted of endlessly filling out job applications, rearranging my resume and going on multiple job interviews. Although I have had numerous job interviews, I have managed to not land one job until now. I’ll be sure to get into more detail about that later on. I didn’t know what was going wrong and some even believed I wasn’t trying hard enough or that maybe I had even majored in the wrong field.
My father even suggested that I look into warehouse jobs and mechanical engineering jobs. That’s all fine and dandy except, for one, I’m not an engineer, and, for two, I refuse to settle. You see, I’ve worked far too hard and spent too many sleepless nights for me to work in an environment that I know I won’t be happy in simply just to satisfy someone else’s ideals for me.
My father has always been about money and that’s alright, but money isn’t everything. There’s far too many people making a lot of money at jobs they hate and I don’t want that for myself. I understand that fields like nursing and engineering are constantly thriving because they’re always in demand. But for someone like me who considers herself as a creative, that line of work doesn’t work for me.
All of the weeks I’ve spent not working have definitely paid off because I have finally been granted a job which I start on Wednesday (July 5). I will be working as a loan processing specialist at a loan agency in Missouri making a pretty decent amount of money. I know it’s funny I just did all of that rambling about how I didn’t want to settle at a job, yet I find myself doing that exact same thing. I’ve just realized at this point that I need to do what I need to do as far as making money because I’m ready to move out of my father’s house and start chasing my dreams.
Of course, I don’t plan to work there forever, but it is a start somewhere. I’m tired of being broke. I’ve been without money for so long and I’m so ready to get back into the swing of things to make money to support myself. So for now I’ll work there and I plan to start freelance writing on the side. I also want to start my own blogs, a personal one and a professional one. And I’m definitely still going to apply to jobs within my career field. Eventually, I do plan to move out of St. Louis to get a fresh start so that I can get my foot in the door with my career, meet new people, go new places and try new things. I mean, after all the world is much bigger than St. Louis, Missouri.
I honestly don’t know what’s next for me in this chapter of my life. It seems as if everything is happening so fast. I’ll be 24 in two months (September 30th to be exact) and I’m really learning the importance of waiting on God’s timing instead of your own timing.
I have a feeling that things can only go up from here and I’m just going to remain positive and continue to get my grind on!