So up until two weeks ago, I worked at Mitchell’s Ice Cream. I’d worked there for just about a year and a half, and I won’t get into the details of how or why I’m no longer employed there. The least that I will say is that it was unexpected, and I have found myself unemployed for the first time since I was sixteen. It’s a weird experience. I went from having somewhere I needed to be pretty much every day, to having absolutely nothing going on. It’s been refreshing for sure, but also uncomfortable and disconcerting. As weird as it is for an eighteen year old to feel this way, hard work is something that’s really important to me. I put a lot of my identity in that value, and to have it disrupted is almost painful.

Thankfully, my unemployment has come to a happy end. A few weeks before my untimely departure from Mitchell’s, I applied for a different job at Holden Forests and Gardens, the parent company for the Holden Arboretum and the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. The position is as a Nursery Assistant, functionally an internship for aspiring biologists. To say that I’m excited for this opportunity is an understatement. Plant and soil science has been a long-standing hyperfixation of mine, and to have the opportunity to develop my professional knowledge is so exciting. This is the first job that I will care about, and my first job in what I hope will become my career.

In four months I will leave for college. For three of those months, I will work for 40 hours every week. Not only am I finally employed again, not only is this my first job that I’ll care about. This is my first full time job. My first ‘adult’ job. I’m so excited. It’s a trial-run for the trial-run of adulthood that college will be and I can’t wait.