Firsts, Failures and First Starts

Melissa: Welcome to Side Note with Melissa, where personal stories spark deeper connections, conversations, and questions. I have a question for you to ponder. When was the last time that you did something for the first time? Okay, when was the last time that you did something for the first time? In my episode so far, I've talked a lot about doing this. Being a spa health writer, going back to aesthetician school, going to Italy, self publishing my first book, moving to California, and just pursuing my dreams. Well, let's talk about what I did next. It was another first. Welcome to Side Note. This is episode seven. Now, at the end of episode six, I kind of left you with a cliffhanger. I had talked about taking a leap of faith to California. I was working with authors. One of them was a little strange. I had self-published my first book, The Little College Handbook. And then nine eleven had happened. So this was all in two thousand one. The economy really tanked. The job that I had at Girls Inc. lost its funding and we all lost our jobs. I could not find a job. Now I wasn't about to move back to Colorado. I had been in Santa Barbara and I had been pretty productive since I'd lived there in the last few months. Again, found a place to live, published my book, worked for a couple of authors. I mean, some things happened, but it had only been a few months and then 9-11 happened and I lost my job. And I wasn't going to move back to Colorado. But I couldn't find a job. And I was just, I was charging things on my credit cards. The financial situation was not good. Well, what do you think I did? I'll tell you what. I came up with a good idea and a good plan. And I did another first. It was another goal and it was another dream that I had kind of forgotten about. Maybe even put it on the back burner because when I was married, I had talked about it and thought about it, but I was too busy. I was working two jobs while my then husband was in graduate school. So What did I do? I went to graduate school. This was a goal and a dream, but I honestly I actually never really thought that I would do it. Remember that I was a first generation college student. Neither of my parents graduated high school. So for me just to graduate high school and go to Colorado State University and graduate, that was a big deal. I had thought about graduate school and I thought that maybe my then husband could work while I was in graduate school since I was doing that for him. That obviously didn't work out. But remember, don't kill the messenger. Okay, so all this stuff had happened when I moved to Santa Barbara. I couldn't find a job. The only thing that I could think to do, besides moving back to Colorado, and that necessarily wouldn't have helped anything. Is to go to graduate school. Why? Because I could get financial aid. I could get loans and possibly a job on campus. And that's how I could live. It was something that was moving me forward, contributing to my life. And so I applied to different programs. Now, again, I was still of the mindset that I wanted to be. in higher education, working on a college campus. That was my career path and that's what I'd wanted to do. And so there were graduate programs. I think there was one at Cal State Long Beach, there was one at USC, and then there was one at Azusa Pacific University, which is a private Christian school. So I applied to all of those. Again, this was another first because not only did I apply to graduate school But when I got offers, when I was admitted, Azusa Pacific APU was a private Christian school. This was way different than I'd ever experienced. I grew up in a small town at a small high school. I then went to a large public university. Now I have gotten accepted to this smaller private. Christian university. And that's where I decided to go. Their program was highly ranked. It's definitely where God wanted me because they offered me an assistantship. The other schools admitted me, but didn't offer me any sort of scholarship or assistantship. Now, side note, I gotta share this because I think it really shows what it's like to be a first generation college student. I had actually connected with my mom. And I told her that I was going to graduate school. And her response was, okay, but I thought you already went to college. And of course I explained to her the difference that I was going to graduate school. I was going to be earning a master's degree, that I had already gone to undergrad and earned my bachelor's. And this was a higher level of education. And it was important for my career. And APU offered me an assistantship. They offered it to me because of the little college handbook. They were really impressed that I had written this little college handbook. During my interview to get into graduate school, I talked all about first generation college students, ⁓ my experience in helping them, my personal experience, and then of course my book. And so for the assistantship, you have to work on campus. They assumed that I would be working in their admissions office. Now you get to choose based on your interests in higher ed tracks or paths, so to speak. But I said, actually, no, I don't want to work in your office of admissions. I feel like I've gained that experience in my previous jobs. I've worked a lot with first gens. I'm in a different place in my life. Instead, I would like to work At your women's resource center. And they said, What's a women's resource center? Now this was kind of funny because of course, in my experience in going to and working for large public universities as a first gen, I learned that there's this thing called the WRC, the Women's Resource Center. It's one of the advocacy offices and it helps support women. And they do sexual assault policy and prevention programs, they do eating disorder programs, they just have various things to support women. So they said, Well, we don't have a WRC. I said, Okay, well, how about if I start the first women's resource center at a California Christian university? And so that is what I did for my assistantship for. Two years in graduate school, my job was to start this WRC. So I led the efforts in that. Now I had a wonderful group of people that were helping me along the way. Sandy Huff, who was my supervisor, she was a full-time staff at APU. She was director of student services. Joy Hoffman was also working on campus. She was very knowledgeable in sexual assault. programs and trainings and workshops and things like that she had done, I think, for other organizations. And I believe her role on the campus was multicultural resources for students. And then I had a great group of undergraduate, mostly women, who were so excited about the WRC. And we actually even had, I think we had three males that were a part of this initial group. That was starting the WRC. It was amazing. This is what I had done in graduate school. Now, mind you, it was a full time program. I could not work any other jobs. The classes were during the day. So I was full time at APU. I wasn't living on campus because only undergraduate students lived on campus, but I was living in a studio above a garage in Alta Dena. So Alta Dena is near Pasadena. And it's about a 30 minute drive to Azusa off of the 210. I am also living in a big city. Remember I'd moved from Colorado to Santa Barbara, cute, quaint, charming Santa Barbara, which was still like a city to me. But now I'm living in sort of the LA area. I'm living in the studio above the garage. It was kind of cool. The owners of the house, a teacher, and the wife was one of the kind of big wigs at the Universal Studios. And I remember for extra money, they had one daughter. She was just a little girl. And I would babysit her. And so on the weekends, I would get to take her to Universal Studios, but we had a special pass. So we wore these. passes where we could get to the front of the line and people would always look at us like, who are they? It was just that I lived in the studio above their garage and she was a big wig at Universal Studios and she wanted me to take her kiddo on the weekends. And that's what we got to do. So Azusa Pacific was a wonderful experience and it was different. It was a Christian school. We were not required to go to chapel like the undergrads. We usually did anyway. It was just so interesting because keep in mind, not only am I going to classes and learning about higher ed and I'm starting the WRC, I'm struggling with my own stuff. This is really actually looking back why I wanted to be a part of the WRC or start of WRC because I was struggling in ways that I wished I'd had support or a better understanding of what was going on. And this was probably all the stuff from my childhood and being married. And I'm realizing subconsciously that I'm not outrunning anything. Remember, my goal was that I was gonna outrun everything that I left back at the ranch. But it was catching up to me. I was struggling in my own ways, not only with what they would call sort of disordered eating, also dating. And making decisions that were not safe and not good for me. You know, again I was late twenties. And so even in graduate school, there's not a lot of time to date. I remember one time ⁓ somebody at the campus had wanted to introduce me to a nice guy that goes to their church. And I'll never forget it because they showed me a picture of him and he was so handsome. And they said, ⁓ he is very successful in real estate. So they set us up. I'll never forget it because we went on our date to J Lo's restaurant. She owned a restaurant in Pasadena. And again, here's me from Colorado. I still get starstruck about this kind of stuff, but it's so LA, right? So we're At JLo's restaurant, and I remembered this guy's energy. It was so hateful, so negative. He was just mean. Nothing bad happened, but I just remember thinking, not only was he not a very nice person, but I remember thinking he just wasn't happy in his life and did not treat me well. After that, nothing ever happened, but this guy went on to be. kind of famous. So I'm actually not going to give his name because he actually lives in Austin now. He ended up getting married, had a terrible marriage, was not a good person, and really turned his life around and became sort of like this guru and helping people and doing workshops and he's a speaker and all this and ⁓ has a beautiful, beautiful life now. And that was just one example of me making decisions That put me in spots that were not safe. Eventually, I actually talked to the therapist ⁓ at Azusa Pacific. I'll never forget it because I'm starting to share with this male therapist my experiences and just going, gosh, I'm making decisions that I normally wouldn't make and that aren't safe for me. And after our first counseling session, he hands me a book called Women. Sex and addiction. I was mortified. I mean, side note as a person who understands mental health and counseling well at this point, his approach and doing that on the first therapy session, not a good idea because it just was shocking to me. Like, ⁓ my God, what what do you think I'm doing? But later on I'll tell you, I read that book cover to cover. the things that are talked about in that book very much resonate with me and the challenges and struggles that I've had over the years. And really, of course, it's not rocket science, psychology 101. It comes from being an a daughter of an alcoholic. ⁓ but that was my first experience in talking with a therapist about my feelings and thoughts around that. So This idea of what that meant for me was tabled for a while. Now, as I'm working on things through the WRC, another really fun thing came up for me ⁓ in graduate school. And I was working for an organization called College Summit. And it wasn't a regular job, it was a consulting job, and it was started by an amazing philanthropist and entrepreneur named JB Schram. And College Summit was this organization that partnered with universities around the United States. My role was that they partnered with universities during the summertime to have these retreats or workshops for underrepresented high school students. And the one main goal for us was to help these students write powerful, dynamic College essay. And it was wonderful because you would have mostly inner city students, LA at the time. This was not about writing it for them or anything like that. It was meeting with the students, learning about how they grew up, where they grew up, their challenges and adversity, helping them shape an essay around that that would help them not only get admitted, but also get scholarships. So one summer I was doing this on the weekend because again, I was a full time graduate student. They had hired me because of the little college handbook. Now, again, side note, the little college handbook had already opened lots of doors for me just by being the author of the Little College Handbook. This was a tool for me. Now, when I got there, the first lady I met was Cindy Cheadle, Don Cheadle's Sister. So I got to meet her and talk with her. And so she was one of the consultants and coaches like myself. Now the other one is really funny, and I'm still to this day a little embarrassed to admit this. As I'm meeting all the other staff, I'm looking at this woman, and she's really tall, like oddly, strangely tall. She's got glasses, she's got short hair, and I think she looks familiar, but I don't know from what. And then she starts talking and I think, ⁓ my gosh, that sounds familiar. And the thing that popped into my head is Will Farrell SNL. Now I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't know really who Janet Reno was at the time. This was two thousand two or two thousand three. I had seen the SNL skits of Will Farrell playing Janet Reno. I thought they were funny, but I think I was too young and not really into politics at the time. So I didn't really understand the connection. I was watching SNL for other reasons. Well, Janet and I got to know each other quite well during the weekend. The young man that she was working with for the college essay was best friends with the young man that I was working with. And so Janet and I had to talk. We had to help the kiddos together. She was amazing. So I'll have to post a picture that I have that That we took together. But it's funny because the following week when I went back to work, I was in my office at the WRC and I was listening to my voicemail on speaker. And I had given Janet a copy of the little college handbook. So I was listening to my voicemail on speaker, and all of a sudden I had a voicemail from Janet that said, Hi Melissa, it's Janet. I just wanted to call and let you know. That I read through your book, and you should be really proud of yourself. You've come a long way as a first generation college student. And I really enjoyed working with you this past weekend. And I just wanted to let you know that. And I wish you well. And the dean of students, the director of students, the vice president of students, the secretaries, they all came running into my office and they were like, ⁓ my gosh, that that's Sounds like Janet Reno. And I just started laughing. I said, It is. It is Janet Reno. And then of course, you know, I tell them, but this became sort of my MO. Like this didn't surprise anybody. They actually said, Of course it is, Melissa. Of course you know Janet Reno. Of course you met her. Because it was just one example of how in my mind, small town Colorado mind, I was like, I live in California. I am gonna maximize the time here. I don't know who I'm gonna meet, but if I meet them or whoever I meet, I'm gonna talk to them. I'm gonna get to know them and I'm gonna see if it leads to an opportunity for me. And if nothing else, I get to have these amazing experiences. I had No fear. No fear about it. College summit happened. It was wonderful. And I continued to do consulting with them. And then I was also hired as a diversity consultant for the other engineering school in Pasadena. I can't think of the name right now, but a major STEM university ⁓ in Pasadena. They were working on their diversity policy and plan. And again, I had a lot of experience in this. So they paid me as a consultant. I had the assistantship for graduate school and then I had these cool consulting gigs. Now, side note, I'm still struggling financially. Like I cannot get ahead. I still have the Toyota Camry. I'm still paying on that thing. I'm using credit cards. It's catching up to me. And it's Getting difficult. The other thing that I was able to do in graduate school that I want to share with you because it's something that I think you would benefit from. And that is something called the strengths finder. Now, the strengths finder is one of those personality tests, sort of like what color is your parachute or 16 personalities, or those different tests that you can take to find out not only more about your personality, but maybe As a college student, you're thinking, which major do I want to go into? You know, those kinds of tests. Now, the Strengths Finder was developed by a man named Chip Anderson. And I was blessed to have Chip as one of my professors. And so I was just automatically trained and educated in the Strengths Finder. And later on, it It became really kind of famous, still is to this day. The Gallup organization uses it. All kinds of different organizations use it to train their employees. What I love about the Strengths Finder, and you can do all this online, and there's a book called The Strengths Finder two point ⁓ I think is what it's called. They look at not only all of your strengths and wording it in a way that you can really understand and digest it, but they also look at your Personality traits that seem like their weaknesses, but the strengths finder reframes those. And so far in my life, I had up to that point had really found this idea of reframing. Remember when I got divorced and I thought, ⁓ no, what is everybody gonna think? And then I reframed that and said, ⁓ yeah, I am young and I am divorced. That means I can do anything I want and go anywhere I want. It's this reframing, right? So also as the child of an alcoholic, yes, you can say, ⁓ I've had challenges and it was hard and it was traumatic. Yes, all that's true. Reframing it says as a child of an alcoholic, I am extremely adaptable. I am extremely resilient. I am extremely intuitive. So this idea of reframing and the the strengths finder does that. One of the examples, after I'd taken the test, I think it gives you your top three or top five strengths, and then it gives you the information for what they are and how to use them. Again, highly recommend this. One of them really resonated with me. One of the things I'd already kind of realized about myself was that I'm not very detail oriented. Now, when you think about it like that, I'm not very detail oriented. It's negative. And I'm not very good at details. Now, side note, I get it. Some people are like, are you kidding? You're not detail oriented. Yes, you are. It depends on who you're talking to and their definition of it. And, you know, if we're talking about writing or my lavender products, I'm probably more detail oriented. But in general, in the big picture, I am not detail oriented. Remember, I don't get caught up in the details. Remember that college information session? I didn't want to get caught up in the details. Otherwise I would have gotten overwhelmed. ⁓ I didn't get caught up in the details when it was time to come to California. If I would have, I would have stopped. And I wouldn't have gone to California. So now all of a sudden, the strengths finder, after I take this test, one of my top strengths says, I'm a maximizer. Now, this is reframing the negative characteristic of not being detail oriented. It says, you are a maximizer. You maximize your time, your opportunities. Now think about what I'd already achieved at this point in my life. This really resonated. I was like, that's right. I am a maximizer. Forget about this not detail-oriented stuff. This is a good thing that I am. I'm a maximizer and I'm going to maximize my time and I'm not going to get caught up in the small stuff. So I loved that. I loved the strengths finder. And after that. I used it in my career. I used it in my classes that I taught to students, English, writing, skin physiology. It was something that I did at the beginning of class so that students would have confidence building, knowing their their strengths and how to use them. Now, two years had gone by. We had started the WRC. It was successful and helpful to so many, including me. I had taken these classes and higher ed administration and ethics and counseling and my brain was happy. I was ready for a career in higher ed. But financially it was a mess. I was a mess. And I felt really not only ashamed, but I felt defeated. I was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't keep up. I can't pay my credit card bills. I can't pay my car bill. The divorce was catching up with me. And side note, you know, when stuff like that happens You don't feel it right away. You don't feel the consequences of the financial ruin a week after you get divorced. No, it doesn't show up until about a year or two or three after when you're just struggling with the credit cards that you opened when you were married, with the car payments that you got when you were married with children in mind. And I had just taken that on. Given The situation with moving to California and then losing my job because of 911 and then going to graduate school. All these things were positive, but financially not looking good. And so in my late twenties, I filed bankruptcy. I was so embarrassed and so ashamed. And it was this big secret, but I had to. I felt like I was drowning and I didn't know what else to do. And on top of that, really awful for me was that my car was getting repossessed. And I'll never forget it because they had called me and they had kept calling me, of course, as bill collectors do. And they said, I said, you know, I'm filing bankruptcy. I don't know what to do. They said, okay, well we're gonna, you know, we're gonna repo the car. Well, what was I supposed to do? They said, park it in the parking lot of the Albersons grocery store and just leave it. Leave the keys in there, just leave it. Somebody will come and pick it up. And so I did that. And it was like the walk of shame, right? And then I think a friend picked me up and it was awful. So here I was almost graduating. My mom was remarried at that point. Her and my dad had gotten a divorce. And my mom and my stepdad came out to my graduation, which was a big deal. And I was graduating with a master's degree in higher education, administration, and counseling. I was ready to, of course, go back to Santa Barbara. But before I did that, right before I left APU, I got my last financial aid check. It was thirty four hundred dollars and I had no car. And I thought, well, here I am in my late 20s. I've got my master's degree. I'm getting ready to go back to Santa Barbara. I need a car. For some reason I had this thought in my head. And I thought, you know, I was glad to get rid of the Camry because it was very much with family and kids in mind. Now I'm in California and I wanted something very Californian. And I remembered back in high school, I was homecoming attendant. And I'll never forget it because almost everybody around me, the parents were farmers and ranchers, except for one dad. I had a friend, her dad was a lawyer. And I'll never forget he had a convertible red Miata. I think it must have been like a 1996 or something. And I remember writing on the back of that red Miata. In the homecoming parade in my formal dress, waving to everybody on the sides of the street in our little small town of Del Norte. And I thought about that car. And I thought, wow, wouldn't it be fun to get a Miata? Because I just always thought it was like the coolest thing. And I am not kidding you. That day. I was driving down the street with a friend of mine, driving down the street in Azusa, and I was getting ready to go back to Santa Barbara. We had graduated and I had this thirty four hundred dollar financial aid check. And there it was. There was a Miata, a used Miata parked on the street that we just drove by with a for sale sign in it for thirty four hundred dollars. So I got the Miata and I drove that with the top down back to Santa Barbara. And I had the Miata for several years, I want to say at least six years paid for. Can you imagine? I'd filed bankruptcy, had a car repo, and then I paid cash for a car. I'd never owned a car before. There I was back in Santa Barbara. I found a studio to rent. And I'd gotten a job at Brooks Institute of Photography. I was their assistant director of career services. So here I was working in higher education in Santa Barbara. Things were looking pretty good. But there was something different about Brooks Institute of Photography. It was a Proprietary school. Now, this was different. Again, another first for me. I'd never worked for a proprietary school. Proprietary means for profit. We're talking about schools like University of Phoenix, the ones that you see commercials for. That's a proprietary school. Now, Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara had a pretty good reputation. They were A well-known photography school. They also had a film school. They offered a three-year undergraduate photography degree. My job in Career Services was to learn how to review the portfolios, connect them with photographers in LA that would also review their portfolios, create internships for them, all of the stuff that would help them in their career. So I liked it. I liked the photography students. I liked the environment. But something that I started noticing that I didn't like and that I was uncomfortable with. Now keep in mind, I had just finished graduate school actually taking classes in higher ed ethics. And I'd worked in admissions. So I understood that side of higher ed. The whole for-profit side I didn't get. And when I started seeing things at Brooks, that required us to start documenting how many students were admitted, how many students got jobs, then we had to report these statistics for placement. It seemed like, well, aren't we just here to help the students? Why are we keeping track of how many jobs they are placed in? Or why are the admissions counselors basically salespeople and they're getting raises And reviews based on how many students they admit. That to me seems very salesman-y. And I didn't like that. My supervisor started telling me to report job placements that I didn't think were worthy of job placements. So I said, Well, I don't think a sales position at a camera shop is really a placement, especially for a three-year, several hundred thousand dollar program in photography. These students want to be photographers. They don't want to sell cameras at Sammy's camera shop. But we had to put those down as placements and other things too that just didn't make sense. Well, it was understandable that it didn't make sense because apparently somebody had reported them to this bureau called the Bureau of Private and Postsecondary Vocational Education. This is a governing board that keeps proprietary schools accountable for their actions. Well, they like to show up unannounced. and ask for records and see what's going on. And so they had done that. And Brooks Institute of Photography was in trouble for doing things that were really unethical. And I thought, ⁓ my God, I just got a master's degree in higher ed. The last thing I need to be doing is working for a school that's doing this kind of stuff. Well I did what I have always done and let my emotions get ahead of me before I have a plan in place. And I said, that's it. I'm I I quit. I I can't work for this college. And so I quit before I had a backup job. But it wasn't long after that that I found a job in admissions at the Santa Barbara College of Oriental Medicine. And if you go back to I think it's episode three, when I talk about becoming an aesthetician and a spa health writer. That's where those episodes start was when I was working at the acupuncture school. So not only was I working in higher ed, I was also starting to get that experience in holistic and alternative healthcare. And then started getting interested in skincare. It all worked out. Again, I always go with, ⁓ nope, I don't like what you're doing. I'm out. And then I figure it out. This was in my late twenties. And I was just ending my decade of twenties, getting ready to go into my 30s. I'm curious now for takeaways for this episode. I want to know not only what is the last time that you did something for the first time, the question that I asked you at the beginning, but I also want to go back to that strengths finder. I want to know what are the weaknesses, quote unquote weaknesses that you have. That are actually not weaknesses at all, but that are strengths. Thank you so much for listening to Side Note with Melissa. If these stories resonated with you, please share this episode with a friend. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and feel free to leave a comment. You can also follow and connect on my Instagrams, Side Note with Melissa or June Bloom Lavender. And I hope my crazy convoluted stories made you laugh, smile, and even reflect on your own chapters. This podcast is brought to you by June Bloom Lavender, a lavender speakeasy in the Texas Hill Country. June Bloom specializes in handcrafted lavender gifts and a premium skincare line made with lavender harvested each summer by owner Melissa Broughton, that's me, in Santa Barbara County, California.