As many young girls, babysitting was the first job I ever acquired. I started around the age of 11 or 12 watching after neighbors and younger cousins. It was always a great way to earn some extra cash to spend at the mall or the movies with friends. It wasn't until I was in high school that it became a full-blown job for me. I became a nanny for a family with five children and the rest is history. I stayed with this family for several years and wore many hats, including but not limited to, chauffeur, tutor, maid, chef, mediator, and overall director of chaos. Looking back on the experience, I know that job and those kids taught me a lot of valuable and essential life lessons that I will always carry with me.

1. Time management

They get home at 3 PM and all homework needs to be completed before anything else.

The youngest has singing lessons downtown at 4:00 PM.

The boys need to be dropped off at lacrosse practice in midtown by 4:30 PM.

The oldest has cheerleading practice across town at 5 PM.

The youngest also needs to be picked up at 5 pm.

By 5:30, the boys need to be picked up and by 6 pm the oldest is now ready to be picked up as well.

This is just Tuesday. If you don't acquire excellent time management skills in this job you'll literally lose a child in the mix. I somehow masted the ability to be two places at once and it has proved to be an asset in future tight schedules I've had to deal with, like having a class that ends at 12 PM and another that starts at 12:05 PM on the other side of campus.

2. Multitasking

There are laundry and dishes that need washing, food that needs preparing, homework that needs assisting, boo-boos that need tending, troublemakers that need disciplining, pets that need walking and never-ending attention that needs giving. There's five of them and only one of you, if you can not do at least six things at one time you are going to get outnumbered.

3. Patience

In the time I've spent working with children, I've learned that yelling or getting angry is rarely ever an effective way to solve an issue.

I recall screaming at the classically troublesome middle child to get back in bed as he continued to flash the brightest grin back at me with a hint of pure evil in his eyes. Years down the line, the same child accidentally struck me across the hand with a lacrosse stick while horsing around. I was much more seasoned at this point and knew better than to start yelling.

I was calm and collected, swallowing my pain, and he was instantly remorseful. Lashing out in a situation like that would have only added to the dramatics of it all. Kids are unpredictable and chaotic, they need you to be stable.

Learning such patience at a young age has proven to be an asset in my life and maybe one day with my own kids.

4. Compromise

A huge lesson l learned from nannying was knowing when to pick your battles. At a certain point, you have to realize that some moments are more important than others. If they leave their shoes lying around or sneak an extra sweet, it might just not be worth getting on their case about it today.

If they are all running around like maniacs having a nerf war when they are supposed to be doing homework, oh well. Let them live a little today. We both need a little leeway in order to stay sane.

5. Selflessness

Nannying gave me the opportunity to experience just a glimpse of the amount of selflessness it takes for a parent to raise a child. I learned what it was to have to constantly put someone else's needs above your own.

I think the perfect example was the day someone (you know who you are) didn't screw the cap back on the chocolate milk. Long story short, the contents of the carton ended up all over the floor and all over me. And so that was the entire day I spent with dried chocolate milk in my hair (that would later take hours to detangle) because there was no time for me to clean up, me time was not on the schedule that day.

My needs were the last on the list of priorities and that's how it should be. That was one of many little lessons in selflessness I learned and just a tiny window into how selfless and hardworking their own mother was.

Now all my little kiddies are growing up and don't need me anymore but it was an honor to get to be apart of the family for as long as I did. Even though they all drove me absolutely crazy, I came to truly view them all as my little siblings.

They are a beautiful, intelligent, chaotic and absolutely insane bunch of kids. I don't get to see them much now that we've all moved on but they will always hold a special place in my heart and I will always be grateful to their parents for the experience and the lessons it taught me.