When I was nine my family moved from a small hick town in New Mexico to a small hick town in Indiana because we wanted to own a dairy. I started fourth grade three weeks later. The children all knew me as the new kid with the dairy farm. I had never heard so many cow jokes.

That school year, I made a close-knit group of five friends. When summer came, we decided to get jobs on my father’s farm. I had worked there before but not for more than a few hours at a time. During the course of the summer we went from picking weeds to milking cows. I thought the transition was going to be great because of the increase in pay, but I was wrong. Milking taught me quite a few things. First off, in order to be a milker I had to pull long shifts. Those long days taught me how to work hard and fast.

By working shift labor I soon realized that the best job is the kind where you set your own hours. Watching that clock count down all day drove me crazy. I decided that no matter what career I chose, I was going to pick something where I could set my own hours. However, when I put my mind to it I can work faster and harder to get the tasks I dislike out of the way. If I procrastinate and save chores for later, I tend to forget them. Despite this great epiphany, the farm wasn’t done teaching me yet.

While milking, I also learned that s--t happens … literally. During the course of a shift, it is guaranteed that a cow will have at least one bowel movement right above a milker’s head. As a new and inexperienced milker, I didn’t know to watch for the warning signs. I dealt with a lot of feces that summer. But I had to keep working because the carousel kept spinning. If I stopped milking, the entire process would come to a halt and money would be lost.

Eventually I learned how to foresee what was coming and avoid most cow-pies, but I was still occasionally caught off-guard. I learned that you can have all the experience in the world but s--t still happens and the world, much like the carousel, keeps on spinning. In the end, there’s nothing to do but shake it off and keep working.