25. Creative. Suburbia.
Times are changing. We’re living in an era where families don’t huddle around the TV every evening to watch what's playing on channel three.
Today, we control what we consume. We have the freedom to ingest as much or as little as we want. And the content never ends. Above all else, we've been gifted the ability to create.
Past.
I entered highschool a starry-eyed overachiever, fixated on the world of Psychiatry. Over time, my affinity for academia shifted towards something entirely foreign to me at the time. Business.
Being the first in my school with a PayPal account, I bought and sold modified laser pointers to my fellow highschool students for a profit. This was my first taste of entrepreneurship. I loved it.
Six years of business school later, I transformed from a shy science lover to a case competition fiend, a natural presenter, and someone with the everlasting need to create.
Present.
I got my BBA in 2017, and the jobs my friends were applying to terrified me. Ill-fitting dress shirts, stuffy cubicles, long commutes, and emails starting with "To whom it may concern"? Not a chance.
I wanted to work for a company with a mission I cared about, filled with employees as hungry as I was. Naturally, I Googled "The Best Canadian Company 2017". Enter Shopify.
I had used their platform to sell bootleg Kanye West merch in the past, but never actually considered working there. This was my first job application post-degree, and I guess it worked. I signed the contract thirty days after graduation.
Future.
At the time of writing, I've been at Shopify for just over two years. I've since moved from their core merchant support team to their enterprise division, with eyes on a marketing job within the company.
With that said, I'd be lying if I said the end goal hasn't and won't always be entrepreneurship. Ever since that day in highschool where I sold my first laser pointer, I've been chasing this dream.
I don't quite know how I'll get there, or how long the process will take. But one thing's for sure. To make it, I'll need to run very far, very fast.