Even in the atmosphere of private education, most of my fellow students seemed to think that the high quality of schooling provided during our high school years would mainly serve the purpose of landing us a spot in an exclusive college. There was rarely consideration of beginning a career on a trajectory different than that of the beaten path.
For many of my fellow classmates, those opportunities proved to be the case. One of my closest friends went on to study computer science at a prestigious Southern California state university, graduating to find work with a federal organization, and others experienced similar levels of success.
But for the first several years after graduating, I struggled with this idea. I had been stuck in a holding pattern, attending community college classes under the vain hope of stumbling across my passion in a concrete brick classroom. Even when I did find afield of study I was interested in, it wasn’t something that was worth the tens of thousands of dollars in tuition it almost certainly would have cost. And what would I have at the end of my investment of time and money? A slip of paper that roughly 16 million other people would also have, all of whom would be vying for the same entry-level positions as me, at the same time as me, en masse.
Add to this the general sense of judgment from others when I told them what my education goals were. Explaining that I didn’t want to go into a large amount of debt for a degree whose only purpose would be to help land a job in an unrelated field to pay off the money I was lent to study, I oddly got the notion that they felt I was squandering my own future by not doing so. This didn’t actually bother me, because I knew my choice was the right one.
Once I left college, I sought out work. I didn’t have any lofty goals, just any job that could pay the bills. There was a large, relatively blank spot on my resume between high school and the part-time jobs I worked in my last year at college, so I was nervous that no one would want to hire me. Thankfully, someone did hire me, and I worked as the front desk receptionist for an apartment complex near downtown Sacramento. It was a short-lived temp gig, so I moved on after a month, this time to do administrative and organizational work for a medical sales company.
I worked that job for the next five months, discovering more and more about myself and the hurdles I had to overcome to be successful. What I came to realize was that my favorite part of the job was making things organized, bringing order to chaos. This realization continued through the next job, where I was tasked with streamlining an association’s member database and updating their professional development profiles. From there, the responsibilities only increased until the only office task I wasn’t involved in, to some degree anyway, was paying the bills.
Now that I’ve done so much in this type of role, and since the skills I’ve learned are so broadly applicable, I’m ready to expand my experience! I want to try so much more and push myself to excel! I have a burgeoning interest in marketing and its companion field, sales. I learned that I want to help people in any way that I can.
Leaving college behind wasn’t initially my breaking the mold moment. I thought I might eventually come back to it. That I’d focus on a different field, and get my bachelor’s degree somewhere. No, I broke the mold when I decided I wasn’t going to pick it back up. I’m going to prove the naysayers and doubters wrong. I’ve broken the college mold. I’ve broken the mold of strict expectations from some nebulous list. And Praxis is the hammer I’ve used to break it apart.
Now I’m making a mold that will continue being shaped for the rest of my life. It’s the mold for Bryan Broome, and that’s the only person it’s made for.