Have you ever been in a situation where your body was literally telling you that something is wrong? Literally screaming it to you but your brain wanted to try and make it work because that is what everyone is telling you and our culture tells us it is the right thing.

I got my first ‘real job’ before I graduated with my bachelors degree managing a herd of horses and teaching therapeutic horseback riding lessons. This should have been a ‘dream job’ for someone with a degree in Animal Science-Equine Management. However from the time I started this job — I was miserable.

Literally from the time I started this job my stomach hurt, I remember curling up on the floor in the middle of the night because my stomach hurt so bad. I tried everything to make it stop, meditation, medication, supplements, etc. Nothing seemed to work. As the demands of the job increased my stomach hurt more, making me even less productive. This was the complete opposite on how I was able to do things before. I am a fighter and I fight to get things done and do things well and when demands increased I used to fight more to get things done, not shut down. So what was so different about this position? Reflecting back I realized, this position was not me. Honestly I can’t even see myself in the position and being happy. I tried for just over a year to do so and could not. Here is what ultimately lead to my decision that it was time to make a change.

It was affecting my physical, emotional and mental health.
As a burn survivor, I have fought very hard to get my health — nothing in this world is worth taking that away from me.
I was on-call 24/7
I literally couldn’t do anything without getting a phone call or text message. As an introvert who likes to ‘go off the grid’ to recharge. It suffocated all of the energy I had. This left nothing left of me to do the things I loved.
Catty girls and power battles
The amount of backstabbing and drama from insecure girls was unbearable. For me — I need to work in an environment that lifts one another up not tears others down and where others are not talking bad about EVERYONE behind their backs.
No respect for my time.
If we had a meeting at 1, we would maybe start at 1:30. If I had a plan to do something later in the day you can guarantee that someone would make sure an ‘urgent’ situation would come up that only I could deal with. I never knew when I was going to have to work, therefore I could not use my time effectively.
Criticism not feedback
I am constantly working on improving and bettering myself. However if you confront me and only tell me what I am doing wrong, without even making it clear that, that was an expectation, that is not trying to help me improve. That is just trying to find something to endlessly critic me on. Give me feedback and make the expectations clear and I will work hard to deliver great results.
I started to question why I did what I did
I started to hate what was once my passion.
My values were different then the organizations values
What I believed and what I thought was important was not what the organization thought was important or believed.

Ultimately I left to pursue my Masters Degree in Strategic Leadership and Business Administration. I would not change this experience for anything. Through it I learned and grew beyond measures. I am now able to take my experiences and relate it to things I am learning in my program and learn what I need in future positions to be successful.