When I sat out to return to college and seek a degree it was one of those moves made out of desperation more than a seriously long hard look at where I was going. Before I ended up returning to college I was still running around trying to figure out what I was doing with my life and what I should be doing with my life. The problem is I was trying to do too much and not focusing on the things that were really important to me. I left Nevada partly because the economy was on the decline, the part time job I had only gave me usually 16 hours a week, and the signs were there that things were not getting better at least for where I was at. Some of my family had returned to Nebraska to start over and in the process I ended up where they were thinking I too would start over.
It isn’t so much that once I got here I had no idea what to do is that once I got here there just wasn’t much to do. We moved to a very rural area of the state were lets just say the jobs were beyond scarce and we were forced to try to start up our own businesses each of us. None of us were particularly successful and only one of my sisters husbands was able to land a full time job the rest of us were doing our internet stuff or trying to get some thing going out of nothing. I was working off what I had at the time, I had previously invested a lot of money into video production and editing equipment as part of a website I started with some friends as well as an extension of my music since I wanted to do some music videos also.
I had created a Youtube channel and was starting to really enjoy making video projects. For this reason and because I had some experience in computer repair and in web design I started a business doing those things for people, PC repair, making web sites, offering to convert old video tapes to digital files and put them onto DVD, things of that sort. It was a little rough going but I did manage to get a few decent paying jobs and was able to limp along for a brief period, before the money ran out and the market well dried up since there were just not that much demand for what I was offering.
I became a member of the local Chamber of Commerce and began attending development meetings and along the way I was hired to do a marketing video for the Chamber focusing on the local businesses and attractions that they would post online to their website, Face Book, Youtube, and show at the movie theater before the shows. Since they were a historic theater and were a non profit that showed movies for much less than others, they had an untapped market of people coming to town to see cheap films they could show case their video to and show off all the other attractions the town had to offer. Truth is the project eventually fell a part due to a lack of cooperation with the local business owners, and a lot of miscommunication on every end, so the project was scrapped and I was left again with nothing to do to make me any money.
This was shortly after the government changed the rules on how to apply for and qualify for student loans and since I had been rejected in the past for one stupid thing or another, I was reluctant to even bother signing up. Turns out it was a good idea as not only was I approved but I did get accepted into the school as a non-traditional student and from there I was in. This was great because it meant I had four years of basically free money to live off and a safe environment to plan my life.
I started out right away in the Broadcasting Major because well that was where I was at during that point in my life. I will skip over the part where I went through major changes during school and get right to the end. My last semester, which was my junior year meaning I had completed three years already and was only a year away from finishing up, due to a serious of events I won’t get into I was suspended from the school and kicked out of my apartment.
Up to that point I had kept my area of studies in the same general focus, mass communication, mass media. I moved around from Broadcasting to Content Development, Multimedia, Theater, Journalism, Advertising and Public Relations, Computer Science, and even changing to English Major at once point. The theme was the say, I wanted to do something in the mass media field mostly video production or maybe writing, but I was just finalizing my plans. A year ago I made a major change that threw everything into a big mess which ended up leading to my end at the University.
Not wanting to give all that up again out of pure desperation I immediately transferred for the next semester into the local community college and began taking classes right away in the area I wanted to be in, except I ran into problems, they wanted me to relocate to a town thirty miles away, then denied me the student loans I was going to need to move and live on, and to top it off I was not able to get a job to supplement my lack of income. So I made a quick change to the plan, I moved my major out of Mass media and into Business Administration, something I had been struggling with for a long time at the University. Why do this?
Well partly because I could do business classes online, which is the main reason, but also because I had previously completed an online diploma in business management a few years before so I already had the basic knowledge and being three years into a Bachelors meant transferring to an Associates all my general studies work was already completed and it put me a little closer to graduating. Still I felt like this was not the path I started out on and so I went into a panic and began doing what I always do, making quick changes without doing much thinking, I applied for a full time job at this factory that paid pretty good and decided I would just give up on school and go into that line of work, this proved to be a mistake I couldn’t shake off my conscience so I ended up finding some relief when they offered me a different job for slightly less money but better hours so I could continue to work on school.
Needless to say I was still facing other things that were getting in the way of me being able to enjoy or at least accept where I was at and so I went into a real panic, I sold all my belongings, packed up my van and took off for LA. As moms tend to do mine interfered and talked me into stopping off with her brother in Arizona. See the thing was he was just too close to LA for me to not run over and at least check it out so I did just that, and on the way as my money was running out and I was realizing the gravity of the situation I got a phone call from the company I was trying to get on and they offered my a full time position that would pay enough to live and go to school and gave me weekends off so I could still do my studies and things started to look like maybe they would work out after all. With just enough money to get me home I turned the van around and headed back, leaving California behind and that silly dream that somehow I was going to make it out there in the big city. Did I say big city I mean mega city and well let’s just leave it at that, that place was not for me.
Still looking back the reason I went into such a major panic was I didn’t want to throw away the last three years of my life and go back to what I was doing with no education no experience and skills that without education and experience weren’t worth much, I was doomed to return to bouncing around from one meaningless job to another. Well After taking a nice vacation/road trip I was able to clear my head and refocus on what is important to me. I am most likely not going to be truly happy with this job, there is no doubt about that. But it is the kind of job unlike most previous jobs that I can see my self sticking with at least for the time being.
My intention is to just do this for now, finish up my school, and see where I go from there. I don’t want to make plans too far into the future because one thing I have learned is plans change, they hardly ever go the way you expect them to anyways so it is best to stick with the short term and not worry about the future. So here I am now back on track but a little slightly off from where I was. At least I didn’t throw it all away and I have been keeping up with my school work, the best part of taking online classes is you can do them from any internet connection so far that has been very helpful for me. I am considering what my options are and as I look at the world, the job postings, and attending job fairs, I think that once I complete this degree I will be in a better position to at least look for better jobs than those I have been stuck doing in the past. It isn’t even so much about finding a job I will love as it is finding a job I won’t hate. Now that I at least have one of those, even if it is temporary, it is better than doing what I was doing before. I usually tend to remain optimistic in all things but lately it has been even harder than usual to do so. I think that with my head cleared and my new plans being something I can actually look forward to I am in a better place, even if very little has actually changed. Sometimes you just have to know what you are doing is the right thing for you and right now I can say that at least I am right where I should be right now. Stay Cool.
Stephanie Bri 