What New York Taught a Small Town Girl

To be completely honest, I am still in shock I can say that I spent the summer before my senior year working in New York. Being able to have that experience not only taught me a lot about the real world but also about life in general. My mom and I have taken a trip to New York almost annually since I was in the 2nd grade. I found that there are two types of people: people who absolutely can not stand the city and the others who have fallen in love with New York so deeply that they even admire the grungy yet iconic charm it has to offer. Being the later, I always dreamt about living there but knew it was just a figment of my crazy imagination. During my Junior year at Alabama, at the beginning of the internship season, I asked myself “Why the heck not?” and decided to reach far for this dream of mine. Now with this being said, it did not come easy. I spent countless hours in my favorite teacher's office, tweaking my margins and wording on my resume, trying to network as effectively as possible on LinkedIn and researching companies and their clients. Having gone through multiple interviews with zero follow-ups, my patience was wearing thin. Fortunately, I landed an interview with the fabulous fashion and jewelry PR firm IHPR. After the interview I felt okay but definitely not sure what was going to come out of it. I will never forget getting the call on December 9th while I was studying for my statistics final. I  kept it (somewhat) cool and collected on the phone with IHPR. Immediately after happy tears came swelling into my eyes while I gushed with joy telling my mom I got the gig. I learned a million important things this past summer in New York but the greatest lesson was that you are only limited to what you think you can achieve. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”