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Taking a Chance on Something Completely “Wrong”

posted 2nd October 2009    Written by: Molly Mahar    CATEGORY: All Posts, Job/Career/Work, Molly, Quarterlife Crisis, Stratejoy the Biz

Hi, this is Kristy — Molly’s intern. Molly is over in Indonesia right now (having the time of her life, I’m sure) so she asked me if I minded writing a little something about my own experiences. I took her up on the offer in a heartbeat.

wrong-wayBack in March, when I first stumbled upon Stratejoy in my department’s internship & job listings, I was looking for a paid, full-time job, preferably to begin in the summer and continue indefinitely. Stratejoy wasn’t that — it was a 10-hour-a-week unpaid internship that would start right away. It was completely “wrong,” — something my head told me I shouldn’t do. But there was a reason Stratejoy caught my eye, and why my heart told me that this was actually completely right.

When I was in high school I was the youngest person to go through a workshop series that was very similar to Stratejoy’ Lifestyle Design with a company called HeartSpark in Portland, OR. It completely inspired me and changed the way I think about my life. So when I read up on Stratejoy and the workshops Molly offers I knew instantly that I was behind what she did and wanted to help out in any way I could.

So I jumped in — I interviewed and landed the internship (although I did get a slight scolding / helpful tip from Molly who reminded her three new interns that it’s bad form not to send thank you letters — apparently no one she interviewed did). Molly put me right to work on developing her new online course based on Lifestyle Design. I was thrilled.

I worked hard throughout the spring and summer to create a fantastic online course — something that retained the authenticity and success of the in-person month-long workshop while giving participants the flexibility of time and distance from Seattle. To toot my own horn: I think I succeeded. I’ll take credit for crafting such a great version of Molly’s course, but the real shiny gold stars go to her for developing such an amazing program to begin with. Let’s just say I had fabulous material and enthusiasm to work with.

And through the creation of the course, as well as actually going through the in-person version, I actually took the time to think about what it truly was that I wanted and what success looked like to me. I had done this years ago in high school, but on the verge of graduation from college I realized it was very important for me to think about it again. Especially since everything — everything — has changed in these years since high school. Haha.

Through this unpaid internship that I randomly stumbled upon and which wasn’t ideally what I had been looking for, I gained experience in a kind of work I’d never done before, defined what it truly was that I wanted from the next couple years of my life, and I ended up actually landing that job I’d been looking for 6 months before, with Molly’s boyfriend Ken, who owns & runs an email marketing company. He was impressed with my hard work, enthusiasm and creativity and wanted me on board. It kind of just fell in my lap — like, I’m realizing, most things eventually do for people.

What are some things that have changed? Well the biggest one is that instead of going straight on to get my PhD in Communication Studies like I’d been planning for a couple years, I’m now considering getting an MA in Sustainable Communities or Sustainable Leadership, something I realized I’m passionate about, first — and taking a few years off beforehand.

Graduating is scary — I do that next June after I write my 40-page Honors Thesis, eep! — but it’s become a little less scary because of the events of these past 6 months. And I’m hoping by the time it happens it won’t be that scary at all.

The online course has just launched and you can still get it for our introductory price, which is 33% off. See this page for The Joy Equation: a 30-Day Guide to Living Life on Purpose.

photo credit: limonada

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