I hate you, but I need you. Every time you make noise I can’t wait to shut you up. You make me want to cry into my pillow, but I put on a brave face and get up, day after day. I dream about the moment when I no longer need you in my life, when I can sleep as long as I want to. Yes alarm clock, I am talking about you.

Well folks, I survived my first week at my first big girl job, and as you can tell, I rekindled my loathing for the daily 6:45 am alarm. But in all seriousness, I’m super happy and thankful to have gotten a full time job, in my field of study, only about three months after graduating from college. As many college graduates continue to look for employment and start their careers, I wanted to give my experiences on my first week in the infamous, “real world.”

I studied Tourism and Events Management with a concentration in events, at George Mason University. By my senior year, I knew I wanted to go into the corporate or association side of event planning as opposed to weddings and other social events. To be honest, my main reasoning was that I wanted a more normalized schedule as opposed to working every single weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I know that in this industry, weekends are a given, but at least with meetings and conferences they aren’t every weekend, and often fall during the work week.

I landed a position as the meetings coordinator at a national association that plans about 10 conferences a year. The perks are great, I get to travel for work, the people are so nice and seem to genuinely love their jobs, and they even allow dogs in the office, so on that side of things, I was over the moon. But my first week on the job came with a lot of fears and insecurities. Yeah I spent four years taking classes on event management, planning mock events on paper, and spent 10 months interning with two different organizations, but was I really qualified to plan an event? Events that cost thousands of dollars that hundreds of people attend? Those were the thoughts that kept popping into my head as I sat in on meetings and began training with the girl who I am replacing before she moves away. Listening to coworkers talking on the phone solving member’s questions in a snap, hearing acronyms flying all over the place with no idea what they stand for, feeling like I needed to contribute something to the conversation to prove to them, and myself, that they made the right decision in hiring me. I knew it would get easier, I’d get more confident, but that comfort zone seemed a million miles away

So to those pesky negative thoughts in my head, and to anyone else starting a new career, it may seem daunting, it may seem like you won’t be able to do it, but you can. You put in the long hours studying and doing countless group projects, and you gave up a summer to get some real word experience with an internship. Now if only I can take my own advice.