Growing up, my family taught me, Never quit. We even had a motto, “quitters are losers,” which, when I was little, was mostly applied to things like sports or board games. No matter how badly I was losing to my brothers in a pickup basketball game or Monopoly, quitting wasn’t an option.
That attitude served me well — until I started working full-time.
When I graduated from college four years ago and started my first “real world” job at a non-profit in Boston, I felt prepared to tackle anything that was thrown my way, which happened to be a lot. The workdays were long, tough and not what I thought I’d signed up for. I felt unsatisfied and unfulfilled at the end of each day, and I couldn’t see what opportunities the job would lead to down the line.
Still, the thought of quitting never crossed my mind. After all, you can’t leave your first job at age 22, especially not after just two months! It would be unacceptable, by society’s standards, my family’s standards and my own.
