Being from India, I had never imagined working. For me, a normal day was school, homework, go to play or study and then go to bed, so the thought of working at any place when I was on a gap year between high school and college never crossed my mind. To be honest, it scared me more than anything.

I knew I had to work eventually but the thought of me going to a place and working there seemed too real too soon and at that point, young Jyoti thought she could avoid it for as long as she could. So eventually when I decided I would be going around the college applications block again I knew this time around I had to make my application stand out and really appeal to everyone.

I decided to do what no one would have ever expected me to do or even would have thought that I would have ever done: I got a "job." As weird and awkward as it sounded it was true. Most of my friends in high school never worked. We were never expected to work. The only expectation from us was to study do my work and get into a good college.

So when I decided to get an internship everyone from my family to my friends to even my teachers were shaken up.

The idea that an eighteen-year-old girl was working as an unpaid intern at a new "start-up" rather than trying to get into college seemed to have left everyone shocked and had made me the talk of the town.

While it was a whole new "scary experience" what no one realized that this was one of the best and worst experiences of my life. "Worst" in the aspect that since I had absolutely no work experience before this, I was the most unprofessional and clueless person ever. The good was that it taught me so much about the professional world and taught me to be more confident and do my work. it developed a work ethic in me and taught me to multitask and improve myself before I went off to college.

What no one knew was that what they thought to be the most drastic step I had ever taken by not going to college was actually helping me get into college and shape me into a better person that I am today.