This is the second post in what is my delayed response to a new year resolution to write more. It’ll mostly be random fragments of whatever’s on my mind.
UCF was my 5th choice. In high school I’d thought I wanted to work in the film industry, so I’d applied for (and was accepted to) USC, Emerson, RIT… and I can’t remember the 4th. I find it hard to apply myself when I’m not interested in the subject matter, so my high school grades were decent but not scholarship-decent. Emerson was my first choice but money was going to be a significant challenge; room and board alone cost around as much as a year’s tuition at a state school, and then private school tuition was a lot on top of that. As an undergraduate with no meaningful portfolio, USC passed on accepting me to film school. RIT is in Rochester and it is very cold there. So I headed to Orlando.
Once there, it started to become clear to me that film wasn’t going to be my thing. I wasn’t one of those kids who created little movies with friends around the backyard. I didn’t know the ‘language of film’, and I didn’t feel particularly motivated to learn. Fortunately, I realized this while I was still taking general courses, so there wasn’t a penalty in pivoting to something else.
Why did I choose Finance? I honestly can’t remember now. Business school seemed like a fit for me, but I didn’t want to do Accounting or Hospitality Management or Economics or Marketing… maybe it was just through process of elimination? That’s hilarious and sad… I can’t remember how I chose Finance. Anyway, made it through the program and did OK at it — I was legitimately interested in some of the courses, which helped, and being in a business fraternity was hugely motivational.
As I was nearing the end of my Finance degree, I started browsing around for jobs, and not liking what I saw. Like high school, my grades were good not great (1), which took some of the traditional Finance Major options (consulting firm, the big accounting firms) off the table.
(1) — part of this is due to starting a business in my junior year which was a colossal time suck. Lots more on that later.