Lily Grant
This week, To Be Human visits a store in Lawrence, Kansas, where recent graduate Lily was preparing for a job interview in senior living marketing, a topic close to her heart after her grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Store # 02612
Lawrence, Kansas
Lily Grant didn’t have long to talk; the University of Kansas graduate and her month-old degree in journalism and strategic communications were getting ready to head to her first post-college job interview for a marketing position at a senior living company. “But this will be great conversational practice, so I don’t stumble around later,” she said brightly. Lily grew up two hours north of where she went to college in Lawrence, Kansas, in the tiny town of Mound City, Missouri. “Like, 18 people in my graduating class – that small,” she said. “My dad’s a pastor, and my mom’s a librarian, so I guess you would say had a really modest upbringing. But I’ve always had these really big dreams and really big ideas, and kind of out-there views, compared to where I grew up.” That’s why she decided to attend school in Lawrence – it was a chance for her to be around like-minded people. Now, she’s dreaming even bigger. “I have six different life paths I would be ecstatic to go down. One of them is moving to Hawaii and going through yoga teacher training certification and living on the beach. Another one is moving to New York City and being this young professional woman, or moving to Kansas City and being a Kansas City young person, because Kansas City’s a really up and coming city right now. I wanna go travel Asia and go to Thailand and Singapore and Japan. And I love Lawrence. And my family is near here, so I wouldn’t mind staying around here a little longer, too. And I want to live in Colorado. There are so many things that I wanna do right now – I guess my biggest fear is not being able to do all of them.” Spoiler alert: Lily got the job, and is currently traveling down life path option No. 3: being a Kansas City young person.
— Jennifer Warnick