“Yeah mom. I’m totally going to become a CPA when I get out of college, grab a high paying job, and live the life. I love accounting! It’s so interesting, and I could sit at a desk and do it forever.” – Young, Naive Angela
Well, that dream is over.
Applying for colleges as a senior, I was dead set on majoring in accounting. I took an accounting class, found it pretty easy, and even landed myself two internships in accounting during my senior year of high school. It was the life! The numbers matched up easily, accounting made sense, and I didn’t mind sitting in a desk continuously working in silence. Just me and my computer full of numbers.
But you know what? Life changes, and you never know it hit you… until you start hating the idea of what you planned your future out to be. Coming in as accounting, I talked to some of my accountant friends and found that their lives were dull. They worked a 9 to 5 “whenever they finished their work which was late at night most of the time” job, and barely had time to spend with friends or family. Having not even taken an accounting class in college yet, I was afraid and wanted to switch out.
Freshman year was eye opening. I hated college. I didn’t like the people I met, and I didn’t like what I was doing. As I’ve written before, it was my study abroad that changed my life. I met a great group of people who were from very diverse backgrounds, and I discovered that there are some awesome people out there; I just hadn’t been meeting the right ones. This changed who I was because I was finally happy with college as I entered my second year. I decided to rush, meet new people, and start my college experience over on a clean slate. The result? A new perspective on what I want to do in life.
Going abroad made me want to see the world and actually make an impact. I wanted to do something exciting that I fully enjoyed for the rest of my life. Accounting? BORING. So I chose to switch over to finance. I could still be working with the numbers I loved so dearly, but I could actually analyze them and do so much more. After talking to some people who followed their careers on the finance pathway, I once again found them hating their lives. Everyone had a different story based on what they did with finance, but I knew that I wanted to do something different. So I was at a point of confusion. Where do I go from here?
My friend Carolyn told me about her online marketing internship at RadiusOnline where she worked in marketing. I personally had never considered marketing as something I’d do as a career, but she made it sound like Radius was open to allowing her to learn more than just the basics of marketing. Curious and hungry to learn more about this area, I applied to a marketing intern position for the spring and gratefully accepted the position.
Marketing was a new world. Even though I did work on a lot of blogging posts, I loved that I was able to apply technological skill because everything was done online. I loved the feeling when I got to post up all the blog posts that I had edited onto the actual eDentalImage website. Marketing was something that I had no idea I was interested in, but I found a soft spot in my heart for it. Radius helped me cultivate this new-found interest in the area of marketing.
Am I majoring in marketing? No. I’ve actually chosen operation and supply chain at school because the aspect of it intrigues me. I will say that the idea of committing to one thing for the rest of my life is hard, which is why I’m going to try to learn everything about anything while I can. I love efficiency, and I’m hoping that my new choice in what I’m concentrating in helps me fall in love with it more. Marketing is still something I’m very involved in, and I just accepted a VP of Marketing position in the Students Consulting for Nonprofit Organizations club! The abroad program I’m deciding on for this summer is also a 50/50 chance that it will either have to do with marketing or consulting.
Radius has allowed me to be flexible in the experiences I have, and now I’m in the IT sector. I found that I loved working with technology during the marketing projects, so during my mid-term analysis, I switched over. I’m happy that I’ve finally found things that interest me, and there’s only more experiencing and learning from here on out!
Don’t ever settle. Go for more. Explore! Going abroad for half of the summer is something that Radius has promoted, and I will be returning right after. So love what you do, and keep searching!