KCC Profiles: Sarah

Who is Sarah?

I am Sarah A. Massey.  I am the third of three daughters. My father is a preacher and my mother is Super Woman (she’s my hero).  I was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina but I was raised in Macon, Georgia. Of the 5 members of my immediate family, I was the ONLY one born outside of Georgia. I still don’t know why they left the state to give birth to me in a snow storm. LOL! I attended Bibb County Public Schools and graduated in the Top 5% of my class. While in grade school I sustained 1 terrible injury….I broke my thumb. I was attempting to save my sister a seat on the bus to school but when she came to sit down I didn’t move my hand quick enough. She did a power plop down on my hand and ‘SNAP!” So actually my sister broke it. I can still guilt her about it even now at family functions.

Upon high school graduation in 1998, I migrated down to Savannah to attend Savannah State University, the “College by the Sea”. And I’ve been here ever since. I didn’t get my drivers license or truly learn how to drive until I was 20 years old. And I only learned because my friends were tired of driving me to all my functions. My parents didn’t teach me because my 2 older sisters had wrecked their 2 Cadillacs, a Ford Escort, and a Grand Marquis whilst they were learning to drive. So my parents (and the insurance company) figured they couldn’t afford to teach one more. So right on the streets of Savannah, GA and the campus of SSU is where I did all my damage. My first car was a cream colored Ford Escort Wagon that was affectionately called the Dirty Banana (actually it was kind of yellow) by my friends and other students of SSU. You could hear me coming because braking at a curve or turn was optional to me. I bought a lot of tires for that car. I started working here at KCC in February 2003, just 2 and a half months after graduating with my degree. I recently started a Team Leader position at Target. Going from engineering to retail has been like a culture shock. But I’m having fun with it anyway.

What are your hobbies and interests?

I love music; but not just any music. It has to be GOOD music. Good music invokes something in the listener. Whether it be an emotion like happiness or sadness; or it could just be an urge to snap your fingers. Either way, good music should make you want to do something. So I will listen to anything from Bluegrass to Hip Hop to R & B to Heavy Metal if I think it embodies all the properties of being GOOD music. Having this type of relationship with music prevents me from having any “favorites”, but if I had to pick, it would be Jazz. I have played several instruments and attempted many more. My very first instrument was the violin. But it terrified me to go near it when a string popped as I tried to tune it. I always did love how it sounded though. I can currently play the piano with minimal confidence. I taught myself how to play and served as a musician for several churches in the middle Georgia area when I was a teenager. Other instruments in my repertoire include alto saxophone, clarinet, French horn, baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone, acoustic guitar, and drums.

What do you plan to do when you retire?

When I retire, I plan to do absotively posilutely NOTHING of substance or purpose. If I could do it now I would. I plan to still like video games and probably by the time I am able to retire, they will be so lifelike and fun, I will have no other recourse but to play them incessantly. If I happen to be a lottery winner or make millions from my bestselling novel (I can dream), I will do nothing to an obscene limit.

Freeform...

There’s really not much that I haven’t covered. I’m pretty much an open book if you care to investigate.

Times are tough right now, what is one piece of advice that you'd give to new college grads in any field?

Advice that I would give to a college grad right now would be to be versatile. Diversify your portfolio of skills. There’s nothing worse than not being able to grow because you only know how to do one thing one way.

Why I love Kern-Coleman.

My favorite thing about Kern-Coleman is the laid back atmosphere. It’s the greatest. We are under some pretty heavy stresses sometimes and the last thing I want to be worried about when there are 3 projects of Checkprints needing to be submitted (like yesterday) and 2 sets of Mylars to print…is my outfit. Also, there is a real feeling of teamwork when it comes to getting the jobs done (once we are all on the right page of course). My most memorable moment here at Kern-Coleman happened 2 weeks after I was hired. I fell asleep and Sherry woke me up. I thought for sure that I had lost my job, but she simply laughed at me (I guess because I was snoring) and told me to try not to fall asleep again. Whew!