Exploring is A Lifelong Journey

I started college with many ideas of what I wanted to study. However, these were only vague ideas, I had no idea what I wanted to do as a career. Most of my ideas were based on high school classes I enjoyed. Unfortunately, I enjoyed most of my high school classes, which meant I had quite a few majors to rule out once I got to Northeastern.

In my first year at Northeastern, I took full advantage of all the resources available to me as part of the Explore Program. Whether I was at the “Meet the Majors Fair” or informal, group lunch sessions with students and professors, I tried to talk to as many people as I could about classes within a certain major, co-op experiences, and plans for after graduation in order to get a feel for what that path might be like. These resources were invaluable in helping me learn about the options available to me, but I knew I couldn’t make a decision based solely on the experiences of other people; I needed to try something out for myself before knowing if it was the right fit for me. For me, that meant taking a wide range of classes until I found something I loved.

My first semester consisted of four classes, spanning three of Northeastern’s colleges. One of those classes was an Intro to Business course, which soon turned into one of the best experiences in my college career. In this class, our semester-long project was to create a business plan that would be presented at the end of the term. All aspects of business had to be thought through: the product, the supply chain and logistics, the marketing plan, and projected three-year financial statements. I loved it. It was a great way for me to explore all aspects of business in one class. It quickly became something I was passionate about, and I noticed myself prioritizing perfecting this business plan over my other homework. I declared Business with a concentration in Marketing at the end of my freshman year.

Though I had declared and was technically no longer part of the Explore Program, the skillsets I learned by being undeclared, such as open-mindedness towards all opportunities, stayed with me as I continued to narrow down specifically what it was that I wanted to do. In the fall of my third year, I completed my first co-op on the Retail Partners team at Wayfair. One thing I noticed while I was at that co-op is I tended to ask for work that positioned me more towards analytical aspects of my role, particularly those that corresponded with the Finance class I had taken the semester before. I was already considering adding Finance as a second concentration, but that realization cemented the decision. To follow in the spirit of needing to try something to see if I liked it, I did my second co-op in a Finance role on the Treasury team at Alexion Pharmaceuticals in New Haven, Connecticut, which I really enjoyed.

As I neared graduation, I had reached another decision point. This time I needed to decide whether I wanted to pursue Marketing or Finance as a career. When I looked back over my two co-ops and my classes, I found myself leaning towards Finance. I really enjoyed my experience at Alexion. It had everything I liked about my Finance courses, but was in the real world. However, Finance is a broad area and I still wasn’t exactly sure what in Finance I wanted to do. Luckily, I accepted a job at Johnson & Johnson in their Finance Leadership Development Program, which was a rotational program that allowed me to get a breadth of experiences in a short amount of time, similar to the Explore Program. I started in Irvine, California doing sales reporting for one of J&J’s Medical Device companies. I have since completed the rotational program, am now in Minnesota doing profitability analyses for new products and sales reporting for another J&J Medical Device Company, and am so thankful for the incredible experiences I’ve had thus far.

While I may have eventually found my way to the career I’m passionate about doing, it may have taken longer had I not had the structure and skillset from the Explore Program. I would have felt more pressure to decide quickly and might have initially made the wrong decision. Instead, I learned it was ok to take the time to gather information, explore and try things out at my pace. It’s a process I still do today, because even though I’ve long since declared a major and have now graduated, I’m not done exploring yet.