“Congratulations on committing to Rice, Lana!”
“Thank you, I am so excited!”
“What do you want to do in the future?”
“I really want to study finance and have a career in investment banking.”
There you go. That’s my answer to one of my most frequently asked questions. According to me on the surface, I want to do finance in my future because it truly fascinates me, and my many experiences in this field have solidified my decision to pursue it as a career. However, every time somebody asks me this question and I present my scripted answer, I feel as though I am lying to myself. If I think about pursuing anything else, though, my mind fills with chirping crickets.
How about I consider my other potential career options. Do I want to enter the medical field? I cannot handle the risk of making a mistake and costing someone’s life. Do I want to do engineering? I remember how I would stare blankly at the board in my physics class while my classmates nodded in understanding. What about computer science? Absolutely not.
It isn’t that I despise finance. There are aspects to the field that I am very interested in. For example, I truly enjoy my accounting class. Although, staring at millions of numbers on spreadsheets and rows of assets and liabilities for endless hours sounds like a nightmare to me.
Hoping to find the answer to this question myself, I have often asked the successful people I know if they enjoy their job. More often than not, they tell me that liking your job is unimportant if it makes you a lot of money. On the outside, it is easy to label them as happy. They are certainly happy when driving their nice cars to the supermarket, and they are definitely enjoying life when going on luxurious vacations to Europe. But what about the time they spend at work? Does that not count as a part of their life as well? I can picture them happily entering their office with their perfectly pressed suits, but then slouching at their desks with eyebags nearing the floor when the work-day begins. If the hours of my life between 9-5 are spent hating my job, counting down the seconds before I get to go home, am I really truly happy?
Despite the crisis I seem to be going through, I realize the privilege I have of being a freshman through this time of confusion. This is my developmental stage, and I am given the opportunity to explore different clubs, switch my major a million times, and really identify what I am the most passionate about. I believe that a person can find success in anything they do, regardless of how unconventional. Who knew that someone who loved baking chocolate chip cookies would generate 1 billion dollars in sales from their cookie company (Crumbl Cookies). I am sure that the founders enjoy their lives as they turned their hobby into their job. What allowed for such success? The founders loved what they were doing. Although being an investment banker would make me successful, working on something I truly love will motivate me to work harder, potentially leading to even greater success and greater life satisfaction.
One thing I have always loved doing is helping people in fun and creative ways. For example, my favorite community service act I organized was a book drive with a little spin on it. I taught children with disabilities how to ballroom dance, and in order to “pay” for the lesson they had to bring in at least one book. Watching the smiling faces of my students coupled with knowing that I was helping underprivileged communities with the book drives had made me happy at that moment. Thinking back to this experience, I realized that I was putting myself into this routine of going to class, applying for internships, and studying for exams, and I was forgetting to focus on the things that I love to do.
So, I don’t really know what I want to do in the future. But I do know that I want to follow a path, not fueled by money, but one fueled by interest and passion. I want to create a journey filled with risks and uncertainty if it means I do something I love, rather than taking the safe, conventional path, if it means I dread coming to work every day. My future is now, and what I plan to do now is develop new skills and understand myself better to get closer to what truly resonates with me. I want to embrace the twists and turns that come with discovering myself. Whether that leads me to community service, starting a cookie company, or something I never would have imagined (like computer science), I want to make sure that every single step that I take will lead me to a life where I wake up excited for what’s next.