How I Chose My Career Path

(Or Not)

You don't find many young high school or college graduates begging for, or planning in advance for, a job in the field of insurance. Most people that I have spoken to claim to have gotten into the field "by accident." It just happens.

My career started right after high school. I had been working a co-op job in a pediatric dentist's office throughout my senior year, and after graduation they hired me full-time. The dentist closed the office for a week to go on vacation and, at the time, no work meant no pay. I had a few hours worth of work every morning, bringing in the office mail and processing the insurance payments, but after that there was no immediate source of income for the week.

My grandmother's friend worked for an insurance company and told me they were hiring temps to come in and do some filing. What a mess! Weeks before, the office had received a visit from their corporate office and their "clean-up" efforts had involved boxing up all of the back-filing on everyone's desks and putting it in a closet. Out of sight, out of mind - for a very long time! They forgot it existed. The new backlog built up. You can probably figure out where this is going.

So, every day after working at my regular office I would grab a quick bite to eat and head back down in the opposite direction to file. That was it: filing.

When the dentist came back to work, things continued to go downhill. The woman I worked for was acting crazier and crazier, and I was starting to get desperate. I actually went back to the manager of the Burger King I had worked for and asked them to put me back on the schedule. Believe it! Flipping burgers really did look better than dealing with a potentially schizophrenic dentist. I gave my two-weeks notice and suffered through, wondering what on earth I was going to do next.

Thankfully, I was saved! One day before I was to start flipping burgers, the company I had been working for called, out of the blue, to ask if I wanted to come back and work for them full-time. YES! Of course, I did!