#TheSW30 – Day 28
The 30-day blogging challenge from The Single Woman is nearing the end of the 30 days, so I wanted to take a few minutes to share one last post with you from this challenge. If you missed my first two, you can find them here and here.
Describe a moment when you made a big, bold move. In any area of life: Career, Love, etc.
When I first read this prompt it took me about 2.3 seconds to decide what I was going to write about for this post. To do this day I’m not sure if any decision I’ve made has been bigger or bolder than this one. In summary: When I was 22 I moved from Southern California to Philadelphia.
Where I didn’t know a single person.
Where I didn’t really have a job lined up.
Where I had signed a one-year lease on an apartment I had never actually seen.
Where it snows.
I have wanted to be a teacher since I was four-years old and at some point during high school I decided that I wanted to teach in the inner city. After graduating high school I went on to a local university here in Southern California and set out to get a teaching degree. Halfway through my junior year of college I started to think about the possibility of living somewhere other than Southern California after college. I had always wanted to try living in a big city and the East Coast was appealing to me. And so here is what I thought….Boston was going to be way too cold! New York was going to be way too big! Washington DC was going to be way too much of a teaching nightmare and so I picked Philadelphia. (Ummm…why didn’t I realize that there were way more big cities on the east coast than just those four?!?)
I spent my senior year of college applying to teach in the School District of Philadelphia, researching places to live and applying to grad schools… extremely difficult tasks when you’ve only visited somewhere once! I ended up interviewing with the SDP on my couch in my pajamas, found an apartment on Craigslist (good thing God had my back, because signing that lease when I had NEVER met the landlord or seeing the apartment this is possibly the dumbest decision I have ever made!) and got accepted into a Master’s program at a Catholic University (never mind that I am not Catholic!).
I then spent the summer after college preparing to move across the country on this big life adventure. At the time, I didn’t understand why my mom didn’t want to make the 3,000 mile cross-country trek with my dad and I. Now I get it…she physically would not have been able to leave me there where she knew that I didn’t know a. single. person.
My dad and I made the trip across the country and he stayed for a few days helping me buy a car, set up bank accounts, etc and then he left. And I can still remember that moment like it was yesterday. As he pulled away I trudged up the stairs to my new apartment and started bawling. What in the world had I done?!? I had signed a one-year lease to an apartment even though I had no job, knew zero people, and was 3,000 miles from home.
Talk about big and bold!
***Side note – I ended up living in Philadelphia for seven years, taught in inner-city Philly, made some amazing friends, and started my business. It was the biggest and boldest move I’d ever made, and I am so grateful that I did it!
A beautiful city!
