I have always been a stubborn woman. That particular personality trait has manifested itself in so many facets of my life – in my politics, in my choice of college and major, in my extracurricular activities and my hobbies. I imagine I was a handful to try to raise because I could never just accept an answer and would fight for what I wanted until I either got grounded or got my way.

My mother called that stubbornness “drive.” She would know – I inherited it from her. She is an incredible woman who has managed to build up a successful, thriving interior design business entirely from scratch. Periodically throughout my childhood, she’d tell me that I had “so much drive” and that I could do anything I wanted. It turns out what I wanted was usually to do things the hard way.

I went to Ole Miss. In fact, it was the only school I ever applied to. I got a scholarship to cover tuition, and just jumped in feet first. I could have tried to get into Texas or Texas A&M or UNT or even SMU. I could have looked for a school that was in state where I’d know some people, but instead, I went to a school where I’d never met a soul that was an eight hour drive away from home.

I started out as a Public Policy major and decided it was too easy. So I ended up an accounting major, which was essentially a sentence to three years of hard labor in the library. Accounting was one of the hardest majors at the school, and I chose it in part because it had a 100% job placement rate, and in part because I had heard it was incredibly difficult. I wanted to test myself.

After eschewing Greek Life for the first year of college, I sort of came around and decided to rush and join, despite being a little different from your average Ole Miss sorority girl.

All of those things worked out for the better, though. On the face, they were kind of stupid decisions. They led to some really difficult times and in those moments, I definitely thought I regretted my decisions. But in the end, if I hadn’t made those choices, I never would have met Ben or the women who were my bridesmaids at my wedding. I wouldn’t have Murray, and I wouldn’t be able to spend my days working on things I’m passionate about with my awesome coworkers. In the end, all of my decisions led to better things, and the struggle made it worth it.

I started running because I put on weight in college and wasn’t happy with that, but there were a million ways I could have gone about losing weight. I chose to start running because I wasn’t good at it – because I like to do things the hard way. The first year of running was essentially an exercise in “drive” to put it the way my mother would. I did it because it was hard, and I hated every minute of it, but I knew I was getting faster and getting closer to my goals.

Running is easier now, and I don’t hate it anymore. I look forward to it every day. I want to go run, or go lift, because fitness is an important part of my life. I don’t think I was ever sure I’d reach this point, but now that I have, I can see that my drive or my stubbornness, whatever you want to call it, got me to this point. It’s the reason I was able to keep with it this long, and sometimes I still have to draw on it to get through a hard workout or during the kick a the end of a race, but now it’s the joy of running that gets me through most of my running, even the treadmill runs and the early morning runs and the runs in the heat of the summer. I’ll always be thankful for the drive that got me here and which will get me through more difficult things for the rest of my life.