I didn't plan to do HR. I found my way to it.
I was a teacher first. When I left the classroom, I took a job at a computer science and engineering school. For the first time, I was the person people came to with HR questions. I liked the work. I was good at it.
For years I was doing HR informally: handling the questions, solving the problems, writing the policies nobody had written yet. My background was in education, and I assumed HR required its own degree. Turns out it doesn't. I took Rutgers certifications, passed my PHR, then did the same for my SHRM-CP.
Ten years in, I've worked across a range of company sizes and industries, including time on a five-person HR team inside a 200-employee company, and running HR solo for a 60-employee one. Both kinds of seats teach you different things. The solo seat, especially, taught me what small employers actually need, which is almost never what the big-company playbook assumes.