Dance, nails. dance.

At 16 all I was concerned with were sports, my hot driver’s licence pic (I wore a crop top and Dickies overalls), and math.

At 18 I was enrolled in the School of Engineering at the University of Michigan. During orientation I wore my matching U of A sweatsuit, donned brand new Nike Air 95s, and snarled at my astute peers. As I was oriented the Dean reassured everyone that U of M was right in line with MIT. My mother laughed at me. She had every reason to. I was a gym rat who happened to be good at math who wanted nothing to do with engineers or engineering or engines.

So I left. I left the room, I left the campus, I left the state. I wound up at the most unlikely of institutions — UCSB — where I shed my engineering cloak and became (what else) a Sociologist. A woman of the world. (I later discovered that I looked better in heels than Jordans).

Then I graduated. I packed up my sneaker collection (and the few pairs of Aldo’s I owned) and headed back to LA. Graduate School awaited my arrival. I was pursuing a Master’s Degree in Kinesiology: Option Sport Management.

But then I found a pen. A distaste for sport grew inside of me, and the more I wrote and performed (at the time I did a lot of spoken word poetry) the more the engineer/sociologist/sneakerhead got angry.

Let’s review: I left University of Michigan, left my engineering buddies in the dust (one day in Computer Science class and I was terrified), had a useless BA in Sociology, was pursuing my Masters in Sport Management, and decided I didn’t like that either. Could I have possibly been any more haphazard with my path?

At 22 I had scrubbed more gym floors, set up more basketball nets, taken more stats, ran more box scores, written more post-game wrap-ups and worn more Khaki pants (as a woman in the sport industry they encourage you to wear khaki…guess why) than I ever wanted to.

So like I did with U of M and all their engines, I left. (I still presented my thesis and got my Masters for the hell of it.)

I was hired as an assistant at a magazine in Los Angeles, worked and worked and worked my way up. I faked it like it was my job. I studied AP Styleguide like it was the Bible and figured out where the f*ck commas went.

At some point in between all the pretending and all the Please-God-don’t-let-her-ask-me-to-top-edit-that-in-front-of-her chanting I did I became an editor. I concepted and produced fashion and beauty shoots, assigned, trafficked and edited copy, hired photographers, covered the market, and a list of a million other things — none of which I had any training in.

So here I am in New York. I don’t have a Journalism degree from Columbia. My first internship wasn’t in the fashion closet at Lucky (I interned for the Lakers and wore an oversized polo shirt with an emblem on the pocket). I have a laundry list of didn’t’s and if I was to turn around and look at the path I took to get here I wouldn’t be able to see past yesterday.