Karen Smith

Desert Rose Karen Smith

Publisher Marketing: Going over to Iraq to work as a contractor was different to how I planned it, my real ambition was to tour Iraq or Afghanistan with my regiment but due to circumstances I was never able to get out there with the army, had I have gone out there with the British army I know that what I ended up experiencing as a civilian, would never have happened to me as a soldier. No one told me what to expect or what the contracting world was really like until I arrived, I went there with a soldiers heart but realized once I had entered the sand pit or the bubble as everyone likes to refer to it, I had left my naivety back home and that was the rise and fall for me. People don't like to talk about the contracting world because it is seedy and corrupted through money and power, been a women entering a man's world I quickly realized I held a lot of power which was simple, I had a vagina and that's all I needed, forget your resume and what it stands for, forget your experience and were it has got you, as a women you don't need it, regardless to what anyone says, It's a game and if you don't play the game you won't survive, if however you do survive without playing the game you will suffer, there are still many women silently suffering over there in the sand pit, because there is only one rule, you keep your mouth shut to what you see, or hear. I am not the kind of women who will follow those rules nor keep my mouth shut. Contributor Bio:  Smith, Karen Karen Mitchell Smith is a graduate of Texas Tech University. She has been an English and Spanish teacher, a motivational speaker on the importance of post-secondary education, and a technical college recruiter. She is an award-winning writer and editor for more than 20 yeasrs who has an abiding concern for students and a wish to see them succeed.