I got a job the day I turned sixteen, and until this fall, I’ve held one job or another (sometimes more than one) ever since. They weren’t all great. Here is an incomplete sampling of jobs I’ve had:
- Pet food salesgirl (my first, but not worst, job)
- Abercrombie model (briefly, and yet somehow this does not make it less embarrassing)
- Grocery store courtesy clerk/cart pusher
- Horse groom
- College campus catering intern, and, later, Queen of the Catering Interns (I was a tyrant)
- Shoe salesperson at sport-store (they did not care that I did not sport)
- Waitress/bartender (of course)
- Indentured servant for large climbing-focused non-profit (this lasted another nine months after my semesterlong internship technically ended, and taught me how valuable my inability to say “no” is to the non-profit industry)
- High school teacher
- Kindergarten teacher
- Teacher of hippie-dippy class at a school we literally called “Farm School” (we mostly Nordic skied)
- I am counting graduate school because it took up SO MUCH TIME
- Avalanche safety instructor (kind of—mostly for kids, but sometimes adults took me seriously, too)
- Whitewater raft guide, also kind of
- Backpacking instructor
- Horse groom, again (these things always come full-circle)
Continue reading “Jack of all trades, master of my own destiny (or something)” →
my alaskan odyssey 