Waking up early in the morning for a job that you aren’t psyched about the night before is never a good thing. You should love the people you work with, and you should love the actual work. And I can safely say that I love my job. If this were doodles on a page rather than content for a blog it would just be “Vail Ski Vacations” written all over the place with a bunch of hearts and smiley faces. I digress, but it’s still a fairly accurate comparison. I work 45 hours a week as an intern at Vail Ski Vacations.com, and I work for free. This is my first summer in Vail, and hopefully not the last. So taking this job wasn’t just a random, spontaneous action. I knew that it was a career move, in which I would hopefully build professional relationships with people that would want to work with me in the future, eventually, after I graduate from CU and move two hours west to the beautiful, wholesome, revitalizing town I call Vail, Colorado.
I moved here for the excitement of what’s to come after I graduate, when I’m on my own, nothing holding me down except the personal barriers I set for myself, of which I hope to have very little. Before I got the job, though, I thought about the possible options for my summer plans. Leaving all of the impractical equations aside, I came up with two feasible choices (for which my parents wouldn’t absolutely disinherit me). They were: Moving to Vail and getting a bartending/serving job that would pay fairly well, or moving to Vail and accepting the competitive internship position, here at Vail Ski Vacations, but earning not one dime all summer. Though the former option would allow me more pocket cash for concerts, bar-hopping, overnight trips to Aspen, etc, it didn’t take me long to choose the latter. While strumming my fingers across the cup of tea I was holding in my cozy Boulder living room, I began to think about why I’m in college to begin with. Yea, yea, my parents always drilled it into my head that once I graduated from high school I would invariably head to college. Both parents went to Ivy Leagues, my four older brothers were at great schools…really, everyone I knew had been, or was going, to college. To be completely (and embarrassingly) honest, before I got to college, I had no idea that only about one quarter of the American population ever graduates from an undergraduate institution. I brushed that first motive aside, knowing in my heart that just because my parents engrained college into my brain my whole life, it wasn’t the reason I was there, making the effort, doing the work, living the “college life”. After all, I’ve never been one to take the paved roads to get to where I’m going. I walk down a new road, at my own pace, making unprompted stops along the way.
Ultimately, I moved to Boulder because of an intrinsic urge to prepare myself for the future, to ensure that I am the best “Connie” I can be. Now that does not exclude room to grow and learn in other various chapters of my life, including, even, my eventual inclination to be a “ski bum” so to speak, spending the majority of a year or two (or three?) outdoors in the wild. College, alone, will not make me the best I can be, and of that I’m sure. But had I not gone to college, (and same applies to this internship—had I just become a bartender for the summer), I would be selling myself short. I would be assuming that I never have to put myself in situations that are out of my comfort zone, but from which I will learn, not just about myself, but about life, other people, other ways of the world I wasn’t formerly accustomed to. If you do the same things and hang out with the same people day after day, year after year, how are you putting yourself in a position to grow? To become whole ? In my opinion, you don’t know what you have until you don’t have it anymore, and you can’t appreciate your life without seeing another side of it. It’s the existential outlook on life—or the Batman outlook, whichever metaphor you prefer—you are what you do, not who you say you are, or how you feel. It is one’s actions that define who one is.
So I gladly accepted the internship position, and it is probably the best decision I’ve ever made. Why? Because it was solely mine. It was off the rocker, nowhere in sight to what my parents, brothers, or friends expected me to do, but it was a position I worked hard for, and earned on my own. No way was I giving something like that up. I spoke to James Bengala on the phone for my first interview, and I loved him right away because he totally got me. Though I was only an English major, with no real estate or marketing experience on my resume, and only waitressing jobs to speak of, I had the drive, the passion, the intellect, and most importantly, the enthusiasm. I wasn’t some burnt out, over-worked sales associate with a “been there, don’t that” attitude. I was ready and eager to learn from the best in the vacation rental industry, and to work my way from the ground up. I didn’t mind starting as an unpaid intern because what else can I expect entering a brand new career field, of which I have no background or experience?
In only the month I’ve been here, I’ve learned that limits to what I can achieve are simply out of the equation. I can do anything I put my mind to. I can sit in front of a computer screen for 6 hours and write thousands of words of content for our expanding websites. I can enter an office not knowing anything about the people I’m working for and how they do what they do, but figure it out by the end of the week, only to walk into the office the following Monday morning feeling cool, calm, and collected. I can come up with an idea about the future development of the corporation and take full ownership for it, knowing that just one month ago, I had only far-off aspirations of how my summer job would unfold. And lastly, I can feel genuinely involved, partly responsible, even, for the progress of the company and for the working relationships within the company. We are a family, and I am the “sister” link. I’m so happy to call Vail Ski Vacations my home for summer, and I’m eager to see what unpaved roads this chapter in my life will lead to. What’s most important—I won’t know where I’ll be until I’m already there.