Conversational Partner #1

Prior to meeting with my conversational partner, I was anxious as to how the conversation would carry. I didn't think much about what I would talk about because I honestly had no idea what to expect. All I knew about him was his name, which is Hussain Ali. I did not know where he was from, how old he was, what he looked like, or what any of his interests were. We had traded a few emails and texts, but they were all focused on when and where our initial meeting would be. I tried to play the potential conversation through my mind and I failed to form any sort of plan for how to approach it. Leading up to our initial meeting, all I did was hope that the conversation would flow and that I wouldn't experience an awkward conversation.

I decided to have my first meeting with Hussain at Union Grounds in the BLUU. I figured that during our first meeting we should just talk in a low pressure environment, so that we can learn a little about each other. He showed up a few minutes ahead of when we were supposed to meet, we shook hands, sat down and began our conversation. Our conversation was relatively brief, only lasting about 30 minutes, but covered a wide variety of topics. To begin, I asked him to tell me a little about himself. He explained that he was 22 years old, and was from Saudi Arabia. He explained how he had attended school in his home country for a few months, but did not enjoy it and decided to work at a few different companies before moving to the United States. Our conversation flowed for some time and while he talked I picked up on a couple things. The first thing that I noticed was that he seemed nervous whenever we first began the conversation. He was fidgeting a lot fingers and looked down while he spoke. Another thing that I noticed was how well he spoke English. One thing that I was apprehensive about prior to our meeting was that I would have a hard time understanding him because of prior experiences with people whose primary language was not English. This was not an issue at all while he was talking, and I was impressed with how he talked. Our conversation continued with a lot of back and forth questions about each other's respective lives. I hadn't thought of many questions prior to our meeting, but was able to formulate them as the conversation transpired. He talked about his family, which includes him and six other siblings. One of the questions that I gained the most insight from was when I asked what it was like in his home town of Saudi Arabia. Hussain began describing how the dynasty that currently ran his country was not fair to him or his people. When comparing their political situation to the United State's democracy, he said that "it just seems more fun here." He described how the women in the country are not allowed to drive and that they must wear particular clothing. He described how there were two groups of Islam that were constantly fighting, and continued by saying there was a lot of "racism" that ensued because of the fighting groups.

There was more too our conversation, but I wanted to highlight a couple things that stuck out to me. While talking about his family, Hussain described how his older sister moved to Ohio for college 10 years ago, and that he has not seen her since. The way he communicated this to me was surprising, because it seemed so matter-of-fact that he had not seen his sister in a decade. Another thing that stuck out to me was his disdain towards his country. This let my imagination run wild about what it would be like to live in a country that was ran by a king that I did not agree with. These thoughts are probably not unfamiliar to most people, but were something that I had never really considered.

Our first conversation was enlightening, and I look forward to the next encounter. 

Learning Experience #1

In the first few weeks of this semester, I have had a revelation of sorts. But before this revelation, I had to go through a few trials and tribulations. Prior to choosing a major for my college career, I was clueless as to what I wanted to do with my career. Throughout my life I had always enjoyed mathematics, and I had just finished a full year of calculus, which I found to be enjoyable. Based upon the recency of calculus and my inclination towards math, I declared my major to be mathematics without putting much consideration into my career beyond college. While enrolling for my first semester in college, I didn't have much choice of what classes to take because of my status as a freshman. I decided to get some of the core requirements out of the way, and was ultimately successful in that aspect. Despite this success, I didn't find much interest in any of the classes I took and I survived the classes by focusing on maintaining a good GPA. During this semester, I was desperately searching for something that I was interested in. I was contemplating changing my major to something that involved sports because of my extreme interest as a fan. I started looking at the classes required for a Sports Broadcasting major without doing much research into careers in the field or what the classes actually involved. Whenever it came time to pick classes for the spring semester, I was adamant on taking on this new major, and filled up my schedule with new required classes such as History of Broadcasting and intro to Sports Broadcasting. Within only a couple weeks of these new classes in the spring semester, I realized my mistake. I jumped into a major that did not revolve around my interests at all. The classes offered subjective content, and was taught with little enthusiasm by the professors. I quickly realized that any career in this field would offer little intellectual challenge, and was focused more on how you build your way up based upon work experience and opportunities. These opportunities were not necessarily based on merit, which was an immediate let down for me. I am a person who is goal-oriented and I enjoy having a clear set of tasks that lead to a goal, and that type of working environment did not appeal to me at all. After quickly realizing that this field was not for me, I was once again sent scrambling to find something of interest. I decided to utilize the resources that were available to me at TCU, and I spoke to a career counselor in the Careers Services office. The counselor suggested that I take an interest inventory survey. This was an extensive questionnaire that focused on my interests and strengths, and ultimately provided me with some potential career paths. The potential career path at the top of the list was accounting, which is what set off the beginning of the aforementioned revelation. After doing some research about accounting, I realized how its tasks were very goal-oriented and was, obviously, focused on numbers, amongst other things. These things played in to my strengths and led me to do some research about the accounting major at TCU, as well as the notable Neeley School of Business. After discussing my future plans with my academic counselor, my parents, and countless other people, I decided to apply to the business school.

Flash forward to now: I am in my fifth week of my fall semester as a sophomore. I am in the business school and am a Neeley Fellow. And, most importantly, I am very interested in the classes that I am taking. After a few weeks of classes, the full revelation has set in. I have quickly realized how much doing what you enjoy can change your perspective on school and the future. I have been actively looking for careers in accounting, as well as internships that can open doors for me in the future.

I guess the bottom line is that I have learned how important knowing what you want to do in the future is for college so that you can stay out of a seemingly helpless rut.   

Commenting on Chad Watson's first blog

I read a couple of people's blog posts from our Lit and Civ II class, but after reading Chad's I decided to write my response. In his blog, Chad talks about how his studies are beginning to tie in things that he learned from his intro classes. All the lessons that he learned his first two years are tying in to what he is currently learning, which is creating an exciting learning experience for him as he begins to take significant steps in his studies. While reading this, I couldn't help but think about how this feeling would be for me whenever I begin making these same connections. Although our majors are completely different, I believe that the introductory steps of accounting that I am currently learning will be the foundation for lessons to come. I believe that I will have the same experience that Chad is having, and I am already anticipating the excitement that Chad is feeling. Chad's blog excited me for future studies, and was enjoyable to read.