6. An experience that made you who you are today.

There are a ton of little ones, and then there's the big whopper of them all - my parents' divorce.

At the age of 17, I had my whole life planned out. I was attending a Lutheran preparatory high school, that grooms young people for going forward and being pastors and teachers in the Wisconsin synod Lutheran church. I was all set to go to our Lutheran college in Minnesota to train to become a teacher, and then go wherever I was called from that point. I had wanted nothing more than to be a teacher since I was about 6 years old. I even played "school" with my friends and gave them pop quizzes and whatnot.
However, when my parents got divorced, the church excommunicated my mother for lack of "repentance". They sent her a letter stating she would go to hell if she did not "repent". Needless to say, this threw my whole plan into a complete tail-spin. I was a distraught, overly hormonal, confused 17 year old girl. And I was pissed off at anyone who thought they could judge someone like that.
So what did I do? I rebelled. I scrapped all of my plans and started over with applications to public universities in Michigan. I was granted a full academic scholarship to my university, which actually has an excellent education program. But instead, I chose a major that was about as far from education as I could get. Something that would actually be a little bit frowned upon by my old church - business. International business to be exact. I spent those 4 years traveling and dating the wrong boys (again, rebelling) and getting a tattoo and skipping classes but still acing them and pretty much establishing the new foundation of who I am today. All because my parents got a divorce. Who knows where I would be today otherwise?