Choosing
a major is an inevitable decision that a student must make in in his or her
undergraduate career. Not only are you choosing what you want to study, but I
believe it is also a test in identifying who you are and what impressions you
want to leave during your professional career. To some of us, this decision is
among the most difficult decisions to be made during our time in college. On
the other hand, some people know what they want to major in right from the
start. I interviewed my friend, Danesh, whom I met my sophomore year at UT in
MIS 301. We had mutual friends in the class and we worked on projects together
throughout the semester. Danesh and I became good friends after four
consecutive semesters of being in the same core classes; our friendship is the
result of working together on many group projects. Before this assignment, I
never really inquired about his academic experience. It is my job now, however,
to dig deeper and learn why he chose to be a Finance major. In order to
accomplish this I will employ the use of the journey map to evaluate his path
as an undergraduate in order to understand what drove him to make the academic
decisions that he did.
His freshman
year at UT was when Danesh first began thinking about college majors. Danesh
was in the middle of the spectrum of majors. Like all freshmen in McCombs, he started
off as an undeclared major, but he was 95 percent positive that he wanted to
study business, as science and math were his least favorite subjects in high
school. He just didn’t know what field to focus on. He really enjoyed the
material that was taught in each of his core business classes and this is
partly why Danesh declared his first major. After each introductory business
course, Danesh would change his major corresponding to that area of business.
For example, after taking Operations Management at the beginning of his
sophomore year (2011), he declared Supply Chain Management as his major. The
summer before fall 2011, Danesh had an internship in which he learned about the
supply chain world, so this also drove him to focus on Supply Chain Management.
The following spring, Danesh took Marketing 337 and enjoyed the course so much
that he switched his major to Marketing and registered for a marketing elective
for the fall of 2012. The summer before fall 2012 he took an internship that
was heavily finance-oriented at an oil company called FMC Technologies. In this
internship Danesh analyzed data to spot financial trends and used spreadsheets
to complete most of his tasks. The internship at FMC Technologies played a huge
role in Danesh’s decision to switch his major, yet again, to finance. Danesh realized
that he wanted to explore the world of finance further, so he registered to
take more finance courses during the semester beginning his junior year. Since
he was still interested in marketing, Danesh kept the marketing elective and
did not discard the possibility of it being his minor. One thing that had
always discouraged Danesh from being a Finance major in the past was
Intermediate Accounting and the horror stories that are associated with this
course. Even though his courses became more challenging, Danesh did well in the
end, so he was motivated to continue to learn more about his major. One thing I
appreciate about Danesh is that he acknowledges that having a degree in finance
can pave the way to a luxurious lifestyle, but starting salaries were not the
driving force behind his decision to study finance.
This
past summer, Danesh was an intern at the Walmart headquarters in the tax
department. Prior to beginning the internship, Danesh thought that he would be
dealing mostly with accounting concepts. To his surprise the job was actually
very finance-based, as he dealt with analysis and projection. The projects he
worked on challenged him and the excel spreadsheets were “quite intimidating”
at times. These challenges made it more rewarding for Danesh when he
accomplished a task at work. Interning at Walmart served as reassertion for
Danesh that Finance was, in fact, what he wanted to be studying. The internship
experiences helped Danesh realize that finance allows him to explore multiple
professional options upon graduation.
I have
never been interested in finance or accounting. In fact, those were my two least
favorite courses, so it is sometimes hard for me to understand why people
choose to focus on those areas of study. I used to question my finance and
accounting friends’ motives for choosing these majors. Do they really like it?
How can someone possible enjoy looking at spreadsheets and staring at a
computer all day? After interviewing Danesh, however, I was able to see that I
wasn’t the only one facing the challenge of determining a major that is best
fit for us. I learned a lot about my friend and saw that he has a thirst for
learning. He is also open-minded because he took the time to experiment with
several majors and took advantage of internship opportunities early on in his
college career. He is goal-oriented, takes on challenges, and faces his fears
in order to accomplish what he wants. Danesh is the perfect example of how one’s
experiences can strongly encourage you to pursue certain things— or to not
pursue. In in this case, Danesh’s internships and course work allowed him to
realize what he enjoyed doing and it helped him in determining which major was
right for him. Danesh is working hard to complete the Intermediate Accounting
course this semester and will be graduating this coming May.
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