Maintaining a healthy work-life relationship isn’t easy. Whether you’re a student trying to finish assignments on time or an employee working the 9-to-5 grind, life can get pretty complicated.
Just ask Samantha Lane, UT Knoxville alumni and founder of Origami Day, whose life took a turn after a surgery in 2014 to fix a chest wall deformity.
“I am a very ambitious person and I really spent a lot of my life being a little bit of a workaholic,” Lane said. “I was doing that because that’s what I thought life was all about, you know, you finish school, you get a job, you work all the time and somehow that ends up being the perfect life.”
After the surgery, Lane had several complications throughout recovery, which made her realize that she needed to reevaluate her life priorities.
“That experience really shifted my perspective and made me realize our days are truly gifts,” Lane said. “Time is so valuable and so unknown, and I really felt like my priorities were off.”
Lane spent her formative years in a suburb in Chicago during middle school and high school before coming to UT in the fall of 2003. Looking back Lane had plenty of fond memories about her time at UT, specifically living on UT’s campus in Clement Hall.
“I’ll never forget my first football weekend,” Lane added. “It was nothing like I’d ever seen before … so I’ll never forget sleeping in and not waking up to an alarm, but waking up to the sound of the Strip on game day which at that point included a man standing on a speaker singing ‘Rocky Top’ at the top of his lungs and then just looking out the window and seeing a sea of orange.”
After Lane graduated in 2007 with a degree in public relations and a minor in advertising, she didn’t really know what she wanted to do, but her ambition was a driving force wherever she worked whether in higher education or marketing.
While her 2014 surgery did help Lane shift her priorities, it wasn’t until 2017 when Lane went all in to start Origami Day, after one of her sisters moved to Iowa to pursue her dreams. Lane, who is very connected to family, made sure to attend almost all her nephews’ cross-country meets and T-ball games. With her sister moving away, Lane felt torn.
She knew she would have only 10 days of vacation to split between all her family and that it just wouldn’t be enough. So, Lane took the leap into creating a business to sell her products: planner books and weekly planning sheets.
Now, she is able to balance her work and life to get the most out of her time. In addition, having Origami Day in Knoxville has provided an advantage, as Lane has found the city to be quite supportive of entrepreneurial businesses.
“We love carrying items at Rala created by local entrepreneurs,” Nanci Solomon, owner of Rala in the Old City, said. “Origami Day is such a great product that helps you streamline your life and we are especially lucky that Samantha also holds time management workshops at Rala on an ongoing basis.”
Beyond working with local businesses to help launch Origami Day, Lane has found a great partner and client in her alma mater UT.
“I personally also love the access to the university, not just as a client, which the University of Tennessee is a client of Origami Day which I’m very proud to say, but also 100% of my interns to date have been UT students,” Lane said. “So I love being able to give back and help teach those students about life after college.”
One of Lane’s past interns, senior in public relations Mariah Reid, worked with Lane last year and felt that she gained a lot of experience from her internship.
“Working with Sam was one of the best experiences I have had, especially being an overwhelmed college student. Working at Origami Day led me out myself first and be able to better manage my time,” Reid said. “I use the Origami Day products every day, and they work tremendously.”
“From my experience with Sam and Origami Day, I now always have a plan for the week, which has allowed me to put myself in a better position for success and for me to spend time with those I care for,” Reid added.
Honors Leadership Program director Ashton Cooper highlighted the importance of connecting students with alumni like Lane, especially for students wanting to see what life after college can look.
“It is beneficial for our students to see someone like Samantha who has experience starting a business or organization that is rooted in their personal values, and then to experience that growth first hand,” Cooper said. “As an Alumni of UTK, she is an example of how one can support the university in ways other than just monetary donations, plus she is a wiz in advising for time management.”
Lane’s advice for students also goes beyond time management. For other students looking to start their own business, Lane says there has to be passion behind the work.
“There are a couple of things that I think are really strong lessons. One is if you want to start a business, you have to have a passion for what you’re doing,” Lane said. “You have to really want to do it, because running a business can be very hard.”
In addition to having passion, Lane said that running a business is one of the most educating experiences and it can be one of the most life giving experiences.
“Ultimately you are responsible for everything, so if you don’t know how to do it, you have to figure out how to do it,” Lane said. “So that’s the cool part is that every day I learn what I don’t know and then if I’m lucky, then I get to learn whatever that is that I don’t know.”
Lane’s passion for Origami Day is expanding further as she is looking to grow the retail growth and her client base to nationwide clients like the University.
“UT is a forever relationship, and it should be,” Lane said. “It’s just a matter of figuring out what are the different ways that that relationship evolves and grows over the years, but it’s not ever anything that should end with graduation.”
