Picture this:

You've just hit an absolute career high, spending a week in New York essentially on your own, alongside team members you’ve just met. You're at the top of your game, and you want to stay there. My only regret of the week was I was still hungry—hungry for more opportunities and more backstage work.

Now let’s rewind a bit. It was Sunday afternoon, and after attending one of the shows, I got a notification that my flight had been moved to Tuesday. As much as I love traveling, I’m a homebody at heart. I frantically called my dad and sister, who travel often, trying to figure out how to get my flight back to its originally scheduled time on Monday morning. After looking into rental cars and waiting on hold with Delta for three hours, I gave up and went to see if I could add a night to my hotel stay.

The hotel staff was friendly and accommodated me. But when I got back to my room, I decided to check for flights one last time—and there it was! I booked the flight, rushed downstairs to cancel my extra night, and all was well. I packed my bags and headed to attend the last show of the weekend.

My hair was dirty, my face was reacting to all the makeup I’d worn that week, my Uber was scheduled for 4 a.m., and I was beyond exhausted. Just five minutes after I turned off the lamp to go to sleep, my team lead called. A show had opened up on Monday, and she wanted me to work with her. After all the begging I’d done all week, you’d think I’d jump for joy! Instead, I called my boyfriend, sobbing about how much I wanted to go home but not miss the opportunity I had been asking for. After a lot of tears, I decided to cancel my Monday flight, rebook for Tuesday, book another night at the hotel, repack my kit, and finally settled down for bed at 2 a.m.

This show was different —

Everything was super secretive, from the location to which door to enter. It ended up being at the Brooklyn Museum. We worked under the incredibly talented lead Andrea, sponsored by Olivia Garden and Oribe—it felt like Christmas morning! I got to enhance the natural hair of three models and watch the pros and celebrity stylists work their magic. The show was completely worth the stress and stood out from all the other shows I'd done.

Later that night, I called my boyfriend to tell him how happy I was that I stayed. I showed him my models' Instagram pages, and I saw they’d posted about the show. Continuing on with my stories he noticed something that made my jaw drop—the post mentioned Vogue’s website. I thought there was no way that was true. After some digging, we realized it was!

This show was on Vogue's runway site. I cried, called my mom crying, called my lead crying (who also started crying). If you had seen me, you would’ve thought I belonged in an insane asylum—from laughing to crying and back again.

Seeing my work in Vogue was a dream come true—a dream I didn’t even know I had. I have such a vivid picturesque moment of this day. It was truly a picture perfect moment.

I flew back the next morning, landing in Grand Rapids at 11:30 a.m., ready to jump right back into the grind with a busy week ahead. The exhaustion was real, but if I could do it all over again, I’d do it in a heartbeat.