Not sweating the small stuff: Meredith Ambrose

After facing four years of high school, senior Meredith Ambrose has noticed one big change in her mentality.

“To be honest, I care about things a lot less. It sounds bad when I say it like that, but I think of it as a positive thing. I don’t get stressed out over the little things anymore, like some people do. I guess I go with the flow better.”

Ambrose said that this mentality came from focusing on her happiness as opposed to laboring over school work. While she didn’t “give up” in her senior year, she took an easier route and she’s enjoying herself more because of it.

“All those people were like, just always going, always reaching for the next thing. Sometimes you just have to be happy with where you’re at, be happy in the moment and not always think about the future or make decisions for the future.”

This has manifested with Ambrose picking up new hobbies and extracurricular activities. One of which is her newfound passion for taking care of dogs.

“I’ve worked with two different dog rescues, Humane Societies and then Caring for Canines, and we fostered there before. I’ve helped take in dogs from the streets, clean them up, and help get them into new homes. I’ve worked at adoption events and I really liked doing that. It’s really cool,” Ambrose said. “I preferred getting a connection with the dog, seeing them from beginning to end, seeing the progression from when they were living on the streets, and now they’re living in a home with their family.”

She said that this is one of the positive things that is in her life. That by taking care of the dogs, she’s been able to find more joy in doing stuff that is actively a good thing.

“Things need to be more positive,” she said. “There’s not that many positives all the time. Especially with COVID. [But a really good thing was] more people were adopting dogs because they were home and they needed something or someone to be with them. Adoption rates went way up, and that was such a good thing.”

After graduating from Lafayette in June, Ambrose will continue her educational path to study business at the University of Kentucky. She’s excited to go there for their business school, and hopes one day to run her own company.

“Whenever I see something, I think of a way to do it better. That’s just the way I work. It’s like, oh, something’s not running smoothly, I can think of a solution for it. I think that’s really an important skill to have when you run a business is to be able to do that. So not only am I passionate about business, I think I could be a good leader,” Ambrose said. “I enjoy being in charge. I don’t want to have to rely on someone else for having a job tomorrow. I want to be liable for my future.”

Part of Ambrose’s passion she learned from her parents. Her mom owned her own embroidery business for around 18 years, and her father is in charge of an asphalt company. They’ve demonstrated their passion, and they’ve passed life lessons along as well.

“[My parents taught] don’t even stress the small things. That made me be okay with failing. I wasn’t scared to fail, so I wasn’t scared to try new things,” Ambrose said. “My mom built [her business] from the ground up, and my dad had a lot of experiences with different jobs that he didn’t like, and he took everything he learned and put it into the business he runs now. That’s kind of what I would like to do. I like the mix of the two.”

While Ambrose is certain that she wants to start a business, she doesn’t quite yet know what she wants that to be, and she said that’s okay.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and then I was talking to my dad and he said that it will come naturally in the future. So, I really don’t have a direct plan for what I want my business to be,” she said. “ I would like it not to be so large that I feel lost and can’t control it. I would like to have like, smaller number of employees, and be able to run it really well to make my employees happy.”

There’s two lessons that Ambrose believes were most important to her, and she hopes that others can learn from them too.

“I would say don’t sweat the small things. If there’s one little thing that doesn’t go okay, it’s fine. It’s not life ruining,” Ambrose said. “You’re also allowed to make mistakes, you have to make mistakes to grow and learn.”