Road Less Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow woods

It's hard to believe that its been four and half years since I started my high school graduating speech with the first line of Robert Frosts poem "The Road Not Taken."

When I graduated high school I had just made a huge decision. I was going to college, but not only that but I was going out-of-state.  I am from a small town in East Tennessee.  I graduated high school with most of my kindergarten class.  So going out-of-state was a huge deal.  I was leaving everything I had ever known to go to school 8 hours and a states away from home. I was going to University of Florida. I didn't  know a single person at the University of Florida when I arrived. At the time, this was the most terrifying decision I had every made. Little did I know that I would have an even more terrifying decision ahead of me.  As my final spring semester started, life beyond school was starting. I started job hunting.  Since starting college I had spent time living and college, I spent time living and working in Washington and Colorado.  Based on those experiences, I decided I was willing to work anywhere as long as I had a job.  I said anywhere, I was thinking somewhere in the United States.

I was about a quarter way though my final semester when I got a job offer from my first choice company, Schlumberger.  The kicker was it was an international mobile offer in the Drilling and Measurement division. The offer was for Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.  The job offer was in Africa.

I could not believe that I got a job offer in West Africa.  Accepting that offer was probably the scariest thing I had ever done.  Not only am I starting a new chapter of my life, I am starting a new chapter of my life about as far out of my comfort zone as I possibly could.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I 

- I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.