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.