My Story: How I've Gotten To Where I Am

Many people reading this blog probably know me well either from Highschool or college and know most about who I am. But for the others (and there are so many new of you here), I wanted to share a little bit more about myself, and how I have gotten to where I am in life. I apologize in advance for the length of this post.

I'm a small town girl who grew up in what's known as Wyomissing, Pennsylvania (AKA: Taylor Swift's hometown). I am a daughter, sister, other half, mother to 2 kittens, passionate, leader, dreamer, and believer and I will dive a little bit deeper into some of these categories throughout my story.

I grew up living in a small ranch house in Wyomissing, PA with my mother, father, sister and 2-3 cats. Graduated highschool, and went off to college where I feel as though my life has really only begun.

But, before going off to college, I was extremely into photography between the years of 2006 and 2011. I was lucky enough and greatful for my grandma to buy me my first DSLR camera and a few lenses. I used to photograph a lot of self portraits for my own growth, senior portraits for my friends, sweet sixteen parties, and just took pretty photos of my friends for my Flickr page. Check out the rest of my gallery here.

I never really knew what I wanted to do in photography, until I was inspired by marketing images I saw throughout retail stores of women/men in fashionable clothing, and remember telling my mom one day awhile we were in American Eagle that this is the type of Photography I wanted to do with my life.

So my senior year in Highschool I was able to take X-amount of electives, and decided to take a fashion course. I had already applied and gotten accepted into Antonelli Institute for fashion photography. I was not into the first semester of the class sewing, and learning about seams, stitches, and machines, but the second semester is where I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

We spent some days watching the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, and learning about what went into it, and we also learned how to make fashion illustrations, and then it hit me. I went home that day from school and researched all types of college fashion majors and found fashion merchandising seemed to be the track for me and applied to every fashion course I could.

I’d had a love for fashion since I was little, disagreeing with my mom all the time about what I wanted to wear, so this had been a long time coming. As I've said before, always shopped at the trendy teen mall stores like American Eagle, Hollister, and Aeropostale (still do, haha), and always tried to look the trendiest I possibly could (Even though now I look back and wonder who let me dress the way I did).

I eventually got accepted into Harcum College in Bryn Mawr, PA which is a 2 year associate's degree school, and graduated with an Associate's of Science in Business of Fashion at 19.

I worked a lot in college. While attending Harcum I worked about 30 hours a week combined at a local sandwich shop back home called "Mays Sandwich Shop" and American Eagle at the local mall. My mom always raised to me to work for money and be active and to work for what I want. This also definitely helped me gain a lot of great skills as well! I LAO took an internship on the mainline of Philadelphia at Stacey Lee Boutique for 3 hours/week and actually hated it LOL. But anyways...

I knew I had to attend a few more years of school and get my Bachelor's degree to get a decent job in my field. I applied to Albright College in Reading, PA and got a huge scholarship, and knew I had to go. Albright is an AMAZING school, and I recommend it to anyone!

While attending Albright, I had been working at Mays Sandwich Shop now for 5.5 years, and AE for 2 years and worked my way up to a Stylist for the store. I then knew I wanted to expand my career, and took my first management job as a part-time keyholder position at Plato's Closet Reading from all my past retail experience.

I quit working at the sandwich shop and worked between American Eagle and managing Plato's Closet. I had now been working 35-42 hour weeks between both jobs while still being a full time student. I had really built up an amazing work ethic.

A few months later over summer break,I had been offered another part-time keyholder position at Osh Kosh B'Gosh at the Philadelphia Premium Outlets, and I took it and quit my job at American Eagle. So now I had been working 2 part time key holder jobs at 60 hours a week, fighting for me when I then became promoted to Assistant manager at Plato's Closet.

Working at Osh Kosh ended up not working out for me anyways, so I quit and worked one full time job back down to 38-40 hours per week and stayed with one job the rest of my college career.

January 2017, my last semester ever of college is when I started applying for post graduation jobs. I had applied for so many jobs, and then I had applied for a Fashion Assistant Coordinator in April for a local company with a few major brands (not able to say) underneath its umbrella I didn't even know existed. I ended up getting a call back that they had already given someone a call for the position the same day I submitted my application. Instead, I was offered an interview for another open fashion position in the company for a Textile CAD designer. I quickly accepted the interview, and ended up coming back for a 2nd. 2 days later, I received a call saying I got the job! I was so ecstatic my career search had finally ended, and I had landed myself an amazing job before graduating with awesome benefits, and travel!

I started June 5, 2017 right after I had gone to Cancun for my birthday and graduation gift to myself. It was a very tough and frustrating job because I was using photoshop and illustrator in ways in which I never had before, and also learned a new design system, Ned Graphics. Thankfully, after 1.5 months of training I was on my own and learned how to get the hang of things for these companies.

I ended up getting to go to China in this past October for a meeting with a large well-known retailer (not able to say) for our partnering collections. This trip had been the most amazing experience of my life because I had gotten to see real China factories and how things are actually produced. I got to go to another side of the world that most people will never be able to go, and see a a completely different culture and learn A LOT of things. This experience had truly been the most memorable and amazing experience of my life.

Now it's February 2018, and I have almost been here for a year now. I'm hoping to go to some new countries in the future, but that all depends.

I forgot to mention, I've met the love of my life, my boyfriend at my current job here as well. He works in the IT department here while I'm in fashion. We just got a townhome together, and adopted 2 little baby kittens. Can't wait to marry him someday.

If you're still reading, all in all, I am extremely thankful for where I am today, how I got here, and this amazing job. I love what I do, and could not be happier. My past experiences, education, hard-work, and dedication have gotten me to where I am today.

I will post sometime this week an actually fun facts about me post, so stay tuned, all! Cheers!