We recently connected with Bethany Holmes and have shared our conversation below.

Bethany, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Risks, either big or small, can be absolutely terrifying but hopefully exciting. Over the past few months, I have taken many small risks that have given me a new lease on life (like taking my first solo international trip) but the biggest risk I took was moving away from my friends and family to Rhode Island. I was born and raised in Florida and for the last 23 years of my life, I have been content to stay there, close to the people I cared about and the university I studied at. But in April, with graduation only a few weeks away, I knew I was ready for something different. And that’s when I started looking for my next destination, away from Florida and hopefully someplace with four seasons and a chill in the air. To help find that next destination, I participated in a week-long student affairs career placement convention called The Placement Exchange where I interviewed with universities across the United States. I had 12 different interviews spread out over the last spring break of my college career. My heart was set on a university in Washington State. Recently, my sister and I visited the state to celebrate her graduation and I yearned to return to the mountains, fresh air, and cloudy skies. After they turned me down, I wasn’t sure where I would go or what I would do. But I was incredibly lucky when Brown University reached out to me and invited me to interview for a position there. (I had interned there the year before and was excited for the chance to go back.) After a string of virtual and in-person interviews, I was offered a position! That’s when it hit me that I would actually have to leave Florida for real this time and find my place somewhere new. Sure, I had spent summers away at different jobs and gone on a few week-long vacations but I had never REALLY moved before. Which was terrifying. The farthest I had ever moved was 45 minutes away from my hometown of Tarpon Springs to the “big city” of Tampa where I went to college at the University of South Florida. There I lived on campus with roommates and then eventually moved off campus and lived with my sister and other roommates just down the road. Even then I was still relatively close to home and would travel back pretty often to have dinner with my parents, visit my grandmother, and celebrate the holidays. Before deciding to move, I already struggled with bouts of social anxiety and sometimes found it hard to feel as though I was wanted so it was hard to imagine leaving all my friends and family and moving to a new place where I didn’t know anyone. But I was determined to make the most out of this opportunity and do something worthwhile. Despite the fear of the unknown (and going through a recent breakup), I packed my bags and boarded a plane for Rhode Island with my cat, Asher, in hand. (Getting him to Rhode Island is a whole other story) Now that I’m here, I look back at the last few months, filled with fear, anxiety, self-doubt, and indecisiveness and I realize that I made the right choice. I am right where I’m supposed to be (at least for now). I’m not sure how long I’ll stay or whether or not I’m going to return to Florida someday but I am happy I took a risk and put myself out there. I’m happy I did something I thought was terrifying and I did it despite the fear because I know somewhere down the road I will be thankful I did.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I consider myself an Instagram content creator. Most of my content consists of my everyday life and information about the city I live in including things to do, places to go, and where to eat, I’ve always been in love with traveling, trying new things, and eating around the world so I try to include as much of that content as I can on my social media as well. Currently, I am focusing on my new position because I just moved but I am trying to stay active on social media and continue to share my daily life with my followers. I think what makes my content unique and something worth viewing is that it’s very low-key. I’m not overly polished and I’m as real as I can be. I want people to follow me because I feel like someone that they would want to know and be friends with. I am a relatively small page and don’t often do collaborations or get paid for my content but I have fun and enjoy sharing my life with others! If you’re interested in seeing how a freshly graduated higher education professional who works at an Ivy League in Rhode Island lives then I’m the account for you!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Although I am currently working in higher education and running my Instagram is more of a hobby, I hope to one day be able to rely solely on my work as a creative to live. I am so passionate about taking pictures and traveling and sharing my life with my friends and followers and I think it would be a really satisfying career choice. But part of me does worry that making it my job could take some of the fun out of it and make it much more stressful. Currently, my goal is to find a job that combines my love for social media, traveling, and education. I have recently been looking into EF or Education First which is an international education company that has various careers that focus on education and travel. I would love to someday work with them at one of their offices and help create content for their social media. Another goal of mine is to eventually live and work overseas! The process to do so seems pretty tedious but I hope that by then I work somewhere that sends its employees to other countries. In the meantime, I am focusing on growing my Instagram and tailoring my social media skills to hopefully reach that goal someday!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Sometimes in life, we set goals for ourselves, and sometimes those goals don’t go as planned. In my case, in 2019 I was determined to graduate from college and start grad school. I had the next few years of my life planned out and much of that depended on getting into grad school immediately. So during January of my senior year of college, I took the GRE along with other required strenuous and expensive standardized tests that I needed in order to graduate with my bachelors in English Education. I knew I was taking a chance because the GRE scores required for entrance into my graduate program were needed 10 days after I took them which was about the time it took for the test to be processed and graded. It was just my luck that the test results came out the same day the application was due but they were not received in time and I was denied entrance into the program. When I found that out I felt so lost. What was I supposed to do for a year while waiting to reapply? I wasn’t sure but I was determined to have the best gap year possible. During that year I taught at a summer camp in China while also splitting my time at a summer camp back in Tampa, moved into my first apartment, worked as a scare actor at Busch Gardens that fall as well as a security guard at the Yuengling Center and a cashier at the on-campus bookstore, I filled my time with different opportunities and saved up as much money as possible. Also during that fall, my grandfather, who had always been my biggest supporter and who had been so proud of me, passed away. One of my biggest regrets is that I never got to tell him that I had been accepted. But now almost three years later, I’ve graduated from that program and started my full-time job, and looking back I know he would have been proud of me anyway. I started my graduate program during the pandemic and spent an entire year working and learning virtually which was a whole new experience. The next year was spent relearning how to do my job in person and navigating a “post covid” world. But I am so proud of everything I accomplished during those two years and I know much of that is due to my resilience and ability to make the best out of a bad situation. I believe that in a way everything happens for a reason and I am happy that despite the bump in the road during my journey the path still led here!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littlemisssunflowers/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bethany.holmes.5
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethany-holmes/