I got fired from my job in May, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Yes, you read that right. Me getting fired was the best thing that has ever happened to me. My freshman year of college was a complete and utter failure. The good grades and study habits I had developed in high school were of no use. I was expecting a clean social slate, but sorority life can sometimes make it feel like you're back in high school. My fall semester was really tough, every body's first semester of college is really tough. What makes it even more tough is when you stop taking your medicine, your Grandmother is dying, and you have too much pride to ask for help. I didn't know how to deal with my emotions in a healthy way and ended the semester with a bad GPA, a bad mental and physical state, and the threat of being brought home. I started second semester pretty much in the same state that I ended the first. I was starting to figure somethings out, make some new friends, but not enough. In February, I went home for a combination of reasons.

When I came home, my parents made me pay rent and so I had to go get a job. After I put out a few applications and went on a few interviews, I was told that a local boutique was hiring. Somewhere I had shopped for several years and had thought about working at in the past. Of course I put in a application and interviewed and eventually got the job. I had never worked retail before and was very excited. For the most part, I loved the job, I loved the people. I thought everything in my training was going well. I was getting good feedback from the girls who trained me, as well as my customers. I was the new girl and that comes with a certain amount expectation that I would get some things wrong. I am one of those people who would much rather I be told I'm not getting it right at the beginning than everyone just sitting around watching me mess up and then complaining to the boss about how I'm doing it all wrong. All while telling me that I'm doing great. See a problem?

So, I'm running around clueless until I finally start to hear things about me. Now, I am taking responsibility for things that I did wrong. I'm bad with timing, I always miscalculate when I need to leave somewhere to be on time. All this being said, something happened that was far beyond my control and I lost my job. I was fired over text message, the owner of the store has yet to contact me. An assistant manager fired me over text message. The owner could not give me the courtesy to physically call me, or even contact me at all for that matter. Additionally I start hearing from friends of mine that used to shop at the store, and friends that still worked there that the grown women that I worked with were now talking about me like we were in ninth grade. GROWN WOMEN. That does a lot to your self confidence. I started to feel like everything I tried to do would just end up in failure. Why bother trying to get my life together enough to continue with my life. So ya, I threw myself a bit of a pity party. And in my pity party I stewed on the fact that women with college degrees that are still working retail had this much power over me. That's when I realized that I was letting them. I was letting people who are still mentally in high school affect how I was viewing myself. When I realized that the only person who's opinion I should let matter was myself, I never felt more free.