What did you do for a career? Why did you choose that career?
Textbooks ... Textbook ... Textbooks
I grew up in the college store industry as my father was a college bookstore director when I was born. I helped him after school on many days. Some days I would help unload the textbooks from their shipping boxes and use a charcoal stamp to print the price in the inside cover. Other times I would help erase those stamps and prepare shipments to return to publishers.
One year when I was in college, my father and some of his staff had to be out of the store during the quarterly textbook sell back period. I was able to fill in for him for a few days. One of the national used textbook wholesale companies learned that I was helping buy back textbooks and offered me the opportunity to conduct buybacks for them at other colleges and universities. Throughout the remainder of my college years I conducted these buybacks in Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and California and I worked for three different wholesale companies.
After I graduated from Southern Utah University with a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration /Accounting and I was looking for a job, I was at the University of Utah helping with a textbook buyback and while there found out about a job in their textbook department. I applied and was interviewed and hired before the week was over.
At the University of Utah I worked as an Order Expediter and then as a Textbook Buyer. I worked there for two years and then went to Utah State University in Logan, Utah and worked there for three years as the Curriculum Materials Manager. I got married while working there and my husband lived in Bountiful and worked in Salt Lake City, so I left my job. Though I didn't really leave it, because for the next two years I continued to work as a Consultant for the bookstore in helping with business plans and resolving aging accounting issues.
I worked for a few years for Deseret Book Company in a few roles: Data Specialist and Category Manager. Then I had an opportunity to work for a computer company for a few months helping them rewrite their textbook ordering system documentation. I wanted to get back into the college store industry and had that opportunity when I was hired as the Bookstore Manager for LDS Business College. I worked for the college for two years and then my 1st child was born and I planned to quit. However, they didn't have my replacement so I kept working for nearly 6 more months. Then I worked as a Consultant again in helping my replacement for a few more months.
My plan was to stay home with my daughter and be a full-time mom. That idea didn't last very long when we were quickly running out of money trying to pay our regular bills. So, I applied at Weber State University and was offered the job of Textbook Manager. I worked there for six years and through the birth of our 2nd child.
The stress of trying to run a university textbook department with all the pressures of excessively high textbook prices and demands and pressures from every angle at work, and lack of support and communication from my supervisors finally took a toll on me physically and mentally. I wanted to be a good wife and mother and my home life was suffering and at work I was exhausted and burned out. So I quit my job to focus on my family and some hobbies.
So, textbooks and the college store industry have been my "career" and that stage of my life is over. Even though I'm not at retirement age, I have "retired" from that line of work.
Now I'm enjoying doing family history, blogging and speaking, sewing, baking bread, and figuring out how to run a small business to help make ends meet.
See this post for more information about "Memory Jogger Monday":
