Kaley: When Life Happens in the Right Place

On April 28, 2013, my dad dragged me to BU Accepted Students’ day. I had no desire to go, except for, maybe, the free bacon. As I sleepily grumbled in the passenger seat, Dad reassured me that there was no pressure. I didn’t have to like BU. I just had to give it a chance.

Boston always seemed like an inferior sister city to New York. Quieter, duller, older. I was dead set against the cliché college town. There was nothing there for me.

Mapquested directions had us turn down Bay State. A newly-bloomed tree-canopy fell over the car, and my eyes were pulled towards the intricacies of the brownstones. The Charles glimmered from between side-streets. I was hyper-aware of the way my heart was softening. So I did what any COM-destined kid would do, and tweeted about it.

“Kinda falling in love with Boston.”

I wanted to dig my heels in to the cobblestones and march right back through my house and into New York. I really did. But Dad made me stay for the bacon, then past the bacon, and then the BU in LA Internship program presented, and all of the sudden I wanted to stay on my own.

The two-hour drive home was a completely different hue than the one there. Dad and I buzzed with ideas and opportunities and possibilities. No school had a program like BU’s LA semester. At no other college could you spend most of undergrad in America’s oldest city, and then finish your last year in one of our newest. No one else was as established on both coasts. Boston felt right. And the sunshine state at the end of the tunnel felt even more right.

My three years in Boston were bolstered by world series wins and marred by 8-foot snowbanks. Life happened. Most of the time for better, sometimes for worse. And then I made it to the City of Angels.

I woke up for work today looking at a hazy skyline with the Pacific Ocean sprawled behind it. I got in my little red rental car, blasted this new song by the Chainsmokers called “Closer” (don’t know if you’ve heard of it), and eventually screeched into the NBC Universal lot. Up the parking garage I climbed, passing spots reserved for everyone from the executive producers of The Voice to the costuming department for This is Us. I smiled to myself as I parked in an unmarked spot with a view of Harry Potter World, and then trounced through stages where beautiful creative things were happening on the way to my office. Tomorrow I’ll do the same at Warner Brothers, when I pass the Pretty Little Liars set on my way to offer Conan O’Brian cheese plates in his green room.

Born and raised on the East coast, I left everything when I made my first trip West. There are moments – when I’m exhausted from interning 40 hours a week and having class until 10 pm, when 3000-mile stretch marks devastate relationships, when I really just need to hug my mom – there are moments when I question whether I made the right decision. Because, for better and for worse, life is happening.

But since April 28, 2013, I’ve learned that as long as you put yourself in the right place, life will happen as it should.