This is me.

First of all I would like to introduce myself, my name is Katie Rice and I am a new team assistant here at Fast Horse. I’m new to Minnesota … OK, that’s a lie. I have to confess something, I have lived in Minnesota before, in the not so distant past, but this time around it is SO much different.

After graduating from the University of Northern Iowa I set off with two friends to become a “big city girl”, as my mother liked to call me. I had the mindset that a recent 23-year-old grad would drive to Minneapolis with everything she owns in the back of her 1997 Ford Taurus, and employers would throw job offers her way. That was not the case. I was a young, naïve, and very timid small town Iowa girl that couldn’t take criticism and was scared of everything.

Fast forward to today, approximately five years later and I have realized, after moving here for the second time, that the growth and progress I have made in that short time has been tremendous. I’m sure some people are saying “Katie, why didn’t you just buck up and be an adult! Well, I just wasn’t ready. It just wasn’t my time to grow up. I needed to gain experience in an actual business world that wasn’t just talked about in college courses, but also wasn’t as severe as being thrown into the mad crazy corporate world. So I lived and worked in my hometown, where things were familiar and less scary.

After living in the bubble that was my hometown, I began to realize that I was growing and the world around me wasn’t growing at the same pace. I was itching to do something more than I was currently doing, both professionally and personally. My boyfriend and I began to find ourselves spending more time away from our hometowns and more time in Minneapolis. The restaurants, entertainment and friend supply appealed to us, but the 2.5 hour drive didn’t. So what do 20-somethings without kids or a mortgage do? Whatever the hell they want!

We began the job search, landed pretty great gigs at pretty great companies and recently bought a house. Now grown up things excite me — the pharmacies are open til late hours, the grocery stores are close and offer a wide array of options (gluten free in my case) and researching the best DIY way to re-stain a floor are what I find myself doing on a Friday night.

That “big city girl” that my mom always talked about might just be in the cards after all, I just had to wait til it was my time to grow up.