City Planner turned Virtual Assistant

Like many people, at 18 years old college was the obvious next step in life.

My parents stressed the importance of getting a college education and so I pursued, what I thought, was my passion.

I had my heart absolutely set on California so I only applied to California schools.

Risky? Probably.

But I ended up being accepted early decision to my #1 school. My mom cried. I cried. I was going to be an Engineer.

(But Aubree, the title of this section is CITY PLANNER turned Virtual Assistant, what gives?)

Well, after two years - you read that right - two years, I was miserable basically failing in every class that mattered and unsure of what I was going to do.

I really didn’t want to leave California,  so I found an intro class to urban planning. It counted as elective for engineering at the time so I thought, what the heck - if anything it’s an easy A to get my shitty GPA up. 

LA Livin'

After graduating with my City Planning degree, a couple of friends and I packed up our things and headed down to LA! I had no job, no plans but we had a free place to stay and some money saved up from our part-time jobs. 

I spent the next few months applying to every City Planning job that I saw open. Crickets. 

I kept at it, applying to things that would even be an hour commute or more.

Crickets. 

I  found the VA World

And then I found the Virtual Assistant world!

And I haven’t looked back.

I’m still working in the corporate setting too. Let's be honest, LA is expensive!

However, I’ve found the balance of both and love having this creative outlet.

I shifted gears a bit and started looking for jobs not in City Planning. I landed on a customer service job, answering phones for a baby company.

The plan was to work there for 6 months and then begin the search again for City Planning.

My 6th month at this job was March of 2020… oof

In a matter of moments, I was being sent home to work remotely for what we thought would be 2 weeks (HAH) and feeling lucky to just have a job.

I started to think about what my plan was. What I wanted out of life.

And truthfully when I thought about it, it wasn’t City Planning.

Every time I read those job descriptions I felt my soul dying inside.

I wasn’t applying to Urban Planning jobs because I wanted those jobs, I did it so I could use my degree. So it felt like it was worth it.

But for what?

I shifted gears