One job could change my life.

One job could make a difference in the world that I have come to know. Just one. For once, one job in my life that isn’t working for my dad or house sitting or babysitting.

One job that I could actually live for.

One job that could make getting up in the morning worth it.

You don’t know what it feels like to wake up and dedicated your entire day to searching for some place to work only to get rejected by every single employer, to do that for six months and still nothing.

The worst part about it is that they all say someone like me should be hired on the spot. Someone like me would make any employer proud, and I still get nothing.

All that has made me lose hope that later in life, if I’m able to pay for my education, if I get to pursue this dream, I’ll even get hired then.

But that’s what I’m here for right? To decrease the odds that someone will want me. Anyone can go for subway sandwich maker but for marine biologist, ecologist, oceanographer…oh no. For that you have to work, and work is what I’m good at.

I want that so bad. I want to wake up in the morning and know that I get to spend time studying on a reef. I want to wake up and know that the ocean around me, that huge mass of water, is all mine. That it is my canvas, it is my cubicle.

I don’t care how hard I have to work, how many jellyfish sting me, how many sunburns I get. I don’t care how many papers I have to write or how many sleepless nights I suffer through. All of that will be worth it. Just to know that I am where I belong. Just to know that I finally made it would change my life. To know that after all those years of putting off what I want in the moment to get what I want later have paid off would be worth dying for.

All the years stopping to pick up the penny on the side walk for the jar of coins that never seems to fill, all those years of law-mowing, greeting card writing, book publishing, house cleaning, every last dollar saved instead of spent in a store like every other teenage child, would finally have paid off.

Every single meal missed because I had no money, every day I showered without shampoo, every piece of clothing worn till you could see through it would have paid off because I would finally have that job.

That job would change my life. That job would change my future. That job would change it all.

It would make me happy to wake up. It would take away the fear that I won’t have money for dinner. It would mean that I would finally be able to help the marine world that I care so much for.

Any job could change my life…but one job, this one job…it would change me.