Important Detours From My Four-Year Roadmap Accelerated Learning Resources

Important Detours From My Four-Year Roadmap

This New Year brings a sense of accomplishment as well as worry for the future. Honestly, it’s a little hard to decide if I want to revel in the joy of the past achievements or brood over the time I lost in hunting for a job. Winter break has provided me with the much-needed break to reflect on the academic, professional and personal growth I experienced last year. At the same time I am concerned that I haven’t spent enough time on my job search.

Senior year started last semester with a lot of excitement and many new responsibilities. I took on several leadership positions along with a time-consuming senior thesis and four other classes. Knowing that this would be the last opportunity to take courses in any discipline that I wanted to, I decided to make the most of it. Similarly, I led several campus organizations and organized events throughout the semester. While most of this added work wasn’t exactly the resume-builder type of work, I learned a lot about my interests and found new ones. One of the most important accomplishments of last year has been the realization how varied my interests are.

I remember having a four-year plan when I started out as a freshman and mapping out the classes I would take and the activities I would engage in. It was a classic roadmap to the career in finance that I once set my heart and mind on. Being open to new ideas and opportunities has steered me in a different direction since then. For example, I decided to study abroad in Russia even though I had no prior experience with the Russian language or culture. Following my passion for Russian literature, I set off to explore something completely different. The study abroad experience turned into a minor and a greater interest in Russian politics and policy-making. That experience was vital in securing an internship with Chevron Corp. the following summer, where I took my interest in policy making as a professional interest.

Even though I will be graduating with a degree in economics, I have explored many different career options because I followed my interests. Was this a result of a liberal-arts education? Perhaps it was, and I am glad I decided to diversify my interests. At the same time, this wasn’t a Jack of all trades, master of none sort of experience. I pursued all my interests with equal passion and learned as much as I could. Fortunately, one opportunity followed another, which granted some coherence to my academic and professional pursuits.

So moving on to the next semester, my regrets are few. Except that in the midst of all these activities and the classwork I found it hard to devote a good amount of time to my job search. I have applied to two jobs this break and devoted my 100% to it. Next semester will unfold new challenges and hopefully offer many new opportunities for the soon graduating class of 2011.

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