The Unlikely Preparation
Not every career follows a straight line. Mine has not come close to one, and I have spent enough time now looking back at the path to say with confidence that nothing along the way was wasted, even the parts that looked like detours at the time.
When my family moved to New Jersey in 2005, I was walking away from full-time ministry without a clear idea of what came next. I explored options that ranged from the practical to the improbable. Tree trimming was on the list at one point. What I landed on first was a job teaching English as a Second Language in Newark. The pay was low and there were no benefits, but it was work, and it was work that required me to communicate clearly across significant cultural and linguistic distance every single day. I did not think of it as professional development at the time. Looking back, it was exactly that.
Having taken an introductory paralegal course while living in New Mexico, I got the idea of pursuing work at a law firm. Without credentials or formal experience in the field, I did something that required more nerve than preparation: I posted on Craigslist describing myself as an aspiring paralegal, made clear I was simply looking for someone willing to give me a start, and waited to see what happened. Someone answered. I soon found myself holding two jobs simultaneously, teaching ESL in the mornings and evenings while working at the law firm in the afternoons. The role only lasted a few months, but it taught me something about process, documentation, and the importance of precision in professional environments. More than that, it taught me that positioning yourself honestly and asking directly for an opportunity can open doors that waiting for the right credentials never will.
The role that truly prepared me for corporate life came shortly after, when I joined AT&T as a business customer service specialist. On the surface it was not a glamorous position. In practice it was an education. I learned how to file and manage tickets, how to troubleshoot technical issues under pressure, how to handle demanding customers with professionalism, and how to navigate billing disputes with both accuracy and diplomacy. I absorbed the rhythms and unwritten rules of how large organizations actually function. That operational fluency, earned at a customer service desk rather than in a boardroom, turned out to be foundational to everything that followed in my technology career.
The throughline across all of it, the ministry, the ESL classroom, the brief paralegal stint, the AT&T customer service floor, is that each environment asked something specific of me and gave something back in return. Ministry built my capacity to lead without authority and communicate across difference. Teaching sharpened my ability to translate complex ideas for audiences with different backgrounds and frameworks. The law firm introduced me to process discipline. AT&T gave me corporate fluency. None of it looked like a plan at the time. In retrospect it was preparation, just not the kind that shows up neatly on a resume. The careers worth having are often built that way.
