When I was younger, I wanted to be many things – an elementary school teacher, the U.S. president, a constitutional lawyer. I don’t want any of those things anymore. Students are rowdy, bureaucracy is slow, and law is not my cup of tea. Instead, I am fascinated by the way businesses operate.

Sure, finance has a rather bad reputation after the mortgage crisis and near-collapse of the economy post-2008, and I’d rather not talk about all the sketchy things that banks have done since to recover lost profits. But the minute details of what makes a company run – how customers are targeted, pitched and sold, how employees are recruited and encouraged, how money is won from investors – that is incredibly interesting to me.

I recently graduated with an economics degree from UCLA, and let me tell you, the real learning happened far from Bunche or Public Affairs. No amount of taking first-order conditions would really tell me why customers wait in lines for days to buy the newest iThings or bolted from Netflix the moment Reed Hastings announced Flixster.

No, the learning occurred everywhere else, from the business fraternity that first taught me about investment banking and consulting to the private equity firm where I spent many late nights running intricate financial models. I learned how to value companies by making assumptions and building projections, why defense and consumer products companies are better investments than tech companies, and why one should never ever in their right mind invest in service providers. Finance (pronounced with an accent on the “nance”, nose up) was exciting and new.

By the time I headed to London during my third year, I thought that I was destined to become an investment banker working 100+ hours a week selling companies to private equity firms like mine. I didn’t know any better.

But London was a game-changer. Suddenly, there were no club meetings to attend, no internships to worry about, and no intensely competitive classes to stress over. Instead, after fun classes debating Shakespeare, I could nap in Regent’s Park, munch on lamb sandwiches at Bourough Market, or wander through the streets of London, gloriously lost. Whatever I wanted to do in the moment was a few Tube stations away. There was no way I could envision heading to investment banking after experiencing the joy of London freedom.

Instead, I returned home in time to recruit for consulting (naturally the better choice, with travel options and a problem-solving culture). Got an internship, and spent the summer solving a multi-billion dollar company’s analytical problems. It was what I expected – challenging, creative work within a supportive team environment – and more. Other consultants took the time to teach me about healthcare, green tech, mobile payments, and credit card authentication. I learned to run on three cups of coffee per day and to use my corporate credit card sparingly. I learned the way to talk professionally and to present myself, and each day, my team cheered me on. It was a fantastic experience, and one I encourage all business-minded people to try.

And yet here I am today. I’m two days away from my twenty-second birthday, writing this post at 3am in the morning knowing that my alarm clock will be ringing in just a few hours. Why am I writing? All I know is that I’ve been struck with this feeling of gratitude and reflection, and I wanted to capture it before sleep washes it all away.

For here I am, almost 22 years old, pursuing a dream with every ounce of passion I have in me. I haven’t slept much in months, I’ve turned my room into an office, and yet I feel so incredibly blessed to be where I am today. Starting a company is tough work, they tell me, and it certainly is. Skipping Saturday beach days to slog through emails and debate strategy is hard. Going weeks without seeing many of my friends is hard. But at the end of the day, nothing could be more worth it.

This company of ours has been built with so much love and passion and late-night ramen meals. My co-founders and I have studied computer science, business law, accounting, and marketing. We’ve attended at least 30 speeches, events and conferences that have taught us, in many ways, how others have succeeded as entrepreneurs.

Travelstrings is a product of many hands, mentors and shapers, and I have been lucky enough to see it grow. And grow it has! From an idea to a product, from a two-person team to a team that is big enough to field a side in Ultimate Frisbee (7 to be exact), we have moved quickly and slowly all at once. Some days I have no clue what I’m doing and some days, I can see clearly the strategy I’m building. It’s an incredible thing, building something from nothing, and I’ve been so lucky to watch and be a part of it all happening.

So I just want to say this one thing to remind myself a few weeks or months down the line: All of these sacrifices have been worth it. Having the opportunity to chase a dream, and to see it slowly becoming reality, is something to cherish and give thanks for. Melanie – no matter what happens in the future, this journey has been an amazing ride and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.