Finding Your Dream Career (When You’ve Never Heard of It)

Some people grow up knowing exactly what they want to do in life and stay close to a certain path. Some people grow up having very little idea of what they want to do, and then end up stumbling upon a path that becomes their calling.

I would say most people like myself are somewhere in the middle. It’s a big question — Americans on average spend 90,000 hours of their life working (or approximately a third of their life). And many of those aspiring to attend top universities and colleges do so in the hopes that it will open doors to their desired career paths. When you only have four years to figure it out before landing your first job after college, every decision from picking the school you’ll attend, the major you’ll study, and even the clubs you join can seem overwhelming.

I think if you would have told high school me that I would be an Investment Banking Analyst on Wall Street living in Manhattan, I would’ve cracked up laughing.

When my dad was diagnosed with kidney failure when I was in middle school, I was set to become a doctor so I could save him. And like many Asian immigrant kids, I wanted to pursue a path that would make my family proud while providing enough stability to support them.

But I ignored the signs telling me that this path wasn’t fit for me — I didn’t enjoy my summers spent in hospitals shadowing doctors, I didn’t enjoy learning about different anatomical systems, and the sight of blood almost made me want to pass out. However, I knew it was a relatively straightforward path that would bring happiness to my family and save my dad.

When it was clear my father’s conditions weren’t going to get much better, I took my freshman year of college to step back and self reflect and approached university as an opportunity to repave my path. I considered nearly every single major offered at my school, the University of Pennsylvania, as I hoped to find something in which I had genuine interest.

I thought about what classes in high school I enjoyed learning about, and one class stuck out to me in particular — AP macroeconomics. For me, it was fascinating to learn about how social and economic decisions we make on a daily basis, something so qualitative, could be explained and laid out by graphs and equations.

But it wasn’t very clear to me what I could do with economics in terms of my career, so I knew this was a path I wanted to continue to explore at Penn.

Luckily, I had access to all of the resources, world class professors, extremely motivated classmates, internship opportunities, and career counselors needed to explore economics. Penn is also known for its pre-professional culture, and I found out that a significant number of my classmates studying economics were aspiring for a job on Wall Street, and more specifically investment banking.

While it interested me, the world of banking still seemed mysterious and unattainable to me, as my high school never offered any finance classes nor did I know anyone in the field growing up. It was only until I took the time to talk with a Penn alumnus in the industry that I realized it wasn’t so unattainable and was something I wanted to pursue.

While it was at times stressful figuring out what path to take in my career while juggling the other aspects of college, I’m grateful that Penn, like many top schools, allowed me to learn about the world of finance and the opportunities that it could open up for me. But although I now have an idea of how my ideal career path would go, I also very well know it can and likely will change. It’s okay to take one step at a time on your journey of self-discovery, especially as a high school student, because there will be things you learn about that you may have never even known existed.

 — Mentor Ruby

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