Chloe Lin

For most of my life that I remember, I’ve worked at my family’s Chinese restaurant throughout nearly all of my time at school.

It was nothing that I was particularly proud about working there; as a cashier and occasionally a waitress, it was more embarrassing to me and something I felt I could not bring up in conversations about me. I was mainly at the front working as a cashier, handing out cash and credit cards as well as ringing up customers getting takeout. Working only a couple days of the week to help around and at the cash register, I dreaded every moment that I was there, even though at times I actually enjoyed myself.

As I grew up and entered my last year of high school, finishing all of my college applications and other important student things, I had a late realization that all of my time working at my family’s restaurant wasn’t quite so bad after all. I had learned some very important things while working there, most of them being how to talk and interact with people as well as learning the many hardships my parents had with running a business. One of those hardships was the finances of operating such a business and the amount of stress that came with maintaining one, especially since every day was a little different than the one before.

This ultimately was what got me into my specific major since, at the time of learning about the finances of running a business, I had absolutely zero clue of how money worked in the real world.

In the end, it was working at that restaurant that formed my life today.