Boldness and Curiosity: How I got 5 awesome jobs with that combo (Part 4)

Elissa Teal Watson
2 min readNov 4, 2021

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After my first son was born in 2005, I returned to work for almost a year but then I made the decision to leave my full-time job to be home with my son.

During my time serving as the academic advisor for the MBA Program at The University of Toledo, I got my Master’s Degree in Composition. With that degree, I taught college composition part-time at a community college.

I was a stay-at-home mom for 10 years. But then life took a dramatic turn. I found out that my then-husband was in a 3 year relationship with another woman. Long story short — we had an amicable divorce. I needed to get a full-time job to support myself.

I wanted to return to academic advising but there were no open doors.

I began Uber driving while continuing to look for full-time employment.

In September 2016, I met a woman who would become the biggest, positive influence in my life. Her name is Angie Tuglus and she called for an Uber to get to work that morning. Lucky me — I got the notification on my Uber driver app and I picked her up.

She and I had a bold and curious conversation that changed the course of my life that I will be forever grateful for.

She shared with me that she was looking for a new executive assistant. I was very open to the idea of working with this amazing woman, so I applied for the job. And I got it!

In tomorrow’s essay, I will share how dramatically my life and skills changed because of being her assistant and mentee. And that experience led to my current full-time job as a product development analyst at the same company.

Today’s take away: Opportunities for bold and curious conversations can appear at any time. Develop the awareness of these opportunities and your life will change in wonderful ways.

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Elissa Teal Watson

I write about mindset, emotional intelligence, self-care, productivity, habits, career, and relationship management.