My career path to Google included bartending and working at a nursing home. Here’s what it taught me.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Milica Cvetkovic, a 35-year-old senior technical solutions consultant at Google, based in Chicago. Her identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I’ve been working on building AI systems for Google Cloud customers for about three years, but my path to get there was a little non-traditional.

I’m not one of those people who applied to Google 100 times. I took a lot of different routes along the way. My career journey has been wild.

I improvised; I had moments when I was poor without health insurance; I had moments when I was lonely and helpless; I had moments when I messed up and was scared. But I also met the most magical people and had the best adventures. Regardless of how hard it was, I would change very little.

I was born and raised in Serbia, and moved to the US when I was 18. Instead of going to law school in Serbia, I took a…