Sitting at her desk, flipping through the latest issue of Vogue and sipping out of a coffee mug, she prepares for her incoming class. As the bell rings and students begin to flood her classroom, her piercing green eyes dart between the door and her now empty mug. While she thought she knew what she wanted to be early on in life, she now finds herself in the fourth year of her third career.

Despite the fact that it’s still early on in her teaching career and it’s only her first semester at Killough, fashion design teacher Valerie Nite has a lifetime of experience that she brings to the classroom.

“I started modeling when I was 15, I moved to Italy in September of 1995, and then I turned 16 in January,” Nite said. “I’ve lived in at least five cities [throughout] Texas, California, Florida, Missouri, Maryland and Italy.”

Nite’s childhood was what others may perceive as normal from the outside looking in. She lived in a three-bedroom suburban house with both her parents and her sisters, where she would ride her bike to school. Her parents had to work full time and her father often traveled for work, which made him miss out on family events, holidays and birthdays. Seeing how her dad had to travel to maintain a stable income for her family taught her strong work ethic and encouraged her to keep working toward what she loved doing, which has always been helping others.

“My dad traveled a lot which was hard sometimes because we missed him, but growing up it was just what I knew,” Nite said.

A positive to her dad traveling was that it gave her family the opportunity to travel more often as well. As Nite and her sister Lisa Fletcher think back they can both believe their family outings were the most impactful memories they have from their childhood.

“Our family would go to Angel Fire, New Mexico on family vacations,” Fletcher said. “We would fish and hike in the summers and ski in the winters. Our trips were always an adventure.”

These trips inspired Nite to travel around the world, which led to one of her future career choices: modeling in Italy.

Her modeling career began after a previous dream was crushed. She played basketball but ultimately ended up suffering a foot injury. With basketball out of the picture, Nite had plenty of time to pursue other hobbies.

While at first she didn’t seem convinced about being a model because of how foreign the idea was, with nothing else to occupy her mind and the persuasion of her parents who both believed in the once-of-a-lifetime opportunity, she eventually accepted the offer to model.

“[When I couldn’t] play basketball, I was very sad,” Nite said. “I had worked hard my whole life at basketball. But honestly, now that I look back I was actually much more successful as a model than I ever would have been at basketball. It was definitely a blessing in disguise.”

After her photos were sent off to the representatives of One Up Model Management, she got hired and traveled to New York. Although hesitant at first, she plunged into the world of modeling and found herself in Italy soon after.

“[Modeling] was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life and looking back I’m really proud of myself,” Nite said. “I was nervous and felt a lot of responsibility to be successful, work hard, still do good in school and manage a whole bunch of stuff that [you] normally don’t have to manage when you’re that age.”

Modeling required Nite to continually walk 25 to 30 miles a day to get to her photo shoots and back to her hotel; she often got lost in the repeating streets of Milan.

“I had a paper map and calling card, and every two hours I had to call my agency [and] they would give me a new address and I would look it up on the map,” Nite said.

While living in a foreign country, Nite noticed the drastic difference between Italian and American cultures. In Italy, nothing was carpeted, so after a stressful day when she wanted to unwind, she’d be welcomed to cold tile floors, something entirely different from her wooly carpet in America.

“[I’d] go home and it was cold tile floor and [I’d] go to work and it was cold tile floor, then [I’d] go outside to cold wet concrete and I remember when I got home the first thing I did was rub my feet in the carpet,” Nite said.

Although her father was greatly supportive of her modeling career, he still wanted her to pursue a college education. She, however, wasn’t settled with going to college so early in life.

“I was just at a time in my life where I wanted to meet new people and do new things,” Nite said. “[Being a flight attendant] seemed like the means to the end. You get paid to travel; what [else] does that?”

Luckily for her, her best friend applied to be a flight attendant for Southwest. Because Nite wanted to travel, she joined her friend and applied as well. Attending training and taking a variety of tests posed challenges for Nite, but they were steps to bring her closer to becoming a flight attendant.

After that, it was like jumping in front of a moving train; with no simulations or practice, she was assigned to a flight and had to begin her job. Her career as a flight attendant lasted eight years, and during those years she became more prepared to take on unknown and unfamiliar situations.

“I was on an airplane that had to land in an ice storm once and we slid off the runway because it was so frozen our plane wouldn’t stop,” Nite said. “Thank goodness no one was injured, but it took hours to get us to the gate to get off the airplane.”

After getting married and having two children, Grace and Caleb, Nite began to think about her future and her family. She wanted a career where she could have the same schedule as her children, so she began to pursue a job in family and consumer sciences.

Teaching was a career choice both Nite and her sister were led to for the same reason: spending more time with their families. Currently Nite teaches fashion design and interpersonal studies at Killough, while Fletcher teaches sixth grade English at DeLay Middle School.

At Killough, Nite has integrated into the family consumer science department. She works alongside Brenda Russell and Nancy Peters who believe Nite’s addition has helped the program bring new options for students to explore and a new sense of professionalism to home economics.

“[I’ve been the] only teacher and while I have been able to teach all the courses, I had only three class periods,” Russell said. “[Nite] being hired allowed us to add fashion design and interior design classes so it’s building more opportunities to allow our students to take more classes.”

With her new opportunity as a teacher, Nite has had chances to grow not only as a professional but also as a person. Taking everything in as she jumped from career to career has led her to have time to take advantage of what’s in front of her instead of letting the opportunity escape her.

“[My past has] made me realize to always take advantage of the opportunities given to you because they will more than likely make the best memories,” Nite said.