Risk


I’ve thought about how my current decision affect my future since I was in high school. Since most universities are looking for people they think will succeed at their school, and since I wasn’t a genius, I knew that I needed to be a well-rounded person to get into a good university. That being said, I tried to have decent grades ending high school with a 3.5 GPA. I then played multiple sports for my high school as well as travel teams. I did enjoy playing on those teams because it allowed me to be active every day, but it was a huge time commitment during those 3 years. Besides school and sports, I was part of 2 clubs and worked two jobs. I was in Rotary interact club because it was a volunteer group and I thought having that on my application would help me in the long-run. I then was in a Spanish club because my teacher offered extra credit if we attended, and I thought it would be a good way to raise my grade and another thing to put on my college applications. I worked two jobs because I knew I needed money to go away to college and have spending money. I pay for college with grants and loans, but since I did not plan on working in my freshman year, I decided that I needed some money for spending. I sacrificed spending time with family and friends in order to create a successful image of myself for colleges, and by doing so will get me into an excellent university that will give me the best education possible. All of this was secure a decent paying job for post-college.


Thinking more about my college career, I still think about how my actions in college play in my future. I started off studying computer science and linguistics at UIUC. This was a degree that would teach me 2 completely different subjects and diversify my knowledge of technical and physical science. My parents loved the idea of their daughter studying to be an “engineer” and to be honest, I did as well. However, after my first year, I realized that the path I started wasn’t one I want to finish. I didn’t really enjoy learning linguistics and coding wasn’t something I was passionate about. That is when I decided I wanted to work towards the econometrics path. If I was going to change my major, I wanted to pick one that I knew I would like and want to stick with, and since I took AP micro and macro in high-school and enjoyed both courses, this would be the safest thing to do. On small decisions that will not impact my professional future, I tend to be more risk-loving, but in others that have a significant influence, I am more risk-averse. 


Since I am the first in my family to attend college, I have examples of someone not attending college, and I also have cousins that completed college, so I have seen many outcomes. No matter if you attend college or not, the salaries vary and depend on the career you strive for. My father is a salesman who earned about 65,000 for a while until more recent years. He decided to find a sales job that allows him to make more commission and benefits. Since he doesn’t have a degree, there are some jobs that probably do not look at his resume, but experience in the field may surprise employers and allows him to stick out of the crowd. I also have a few cousins that graduated from college. One knew he wanted to attend medical school, so he started school at a community college, then DePaul, and went to medical school in Kentucky. He now works for the government as a doctor for the VA. Choosing this career path costs a large amount of time and money, but doctors and surgeons are in demand (and are paid a pretty penny) therefore securing him a job post-completion. I have another cousin that studied communications at EIU. She had a difficult time finding a position post-graduation that would pay her enough money to live on her own. She’s been a manager at a salon for a while now and is considering going back to school to do interior design. I think this might not be a good choice because it is a career with very limited job opportunities and since she is almost 30 and living in a small town, it will be hard to create a portfolio and receive clients. I think a better idea for her if she wanted to go down the design course, would get her real estate license and stage houses for showings. It's hard to predict what the future holds for each individual because everyone has different goals and aspirations. One of my cousins is making six figures while the other is barely scraping by. Just like any investment (such as money, time, education, etc), there is risk involved with each desicion you make. 

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanOctober 21, 2019 at 8:47 AM

    In a previous post you talked about turning down some scholarships at other schools for playing softball. Sometimes knowing about the alternatives is sufficient. Other times, it would help further to understand whether this was a tough choice or comparatively easy choice to make. Here you mentioned how much of a time commitment playing softball was. Given your comments about working, before your freshman year in college, I wonder if you could explore with the reader some why you stuck with softball as a senior in high school. It's okay to say that it was enjoyable, but evidently there was an opportunity cost to the time you spent doing it. So you might want to work through that specific choice.

    Many students in our class seemingly started out in some Engineering field and then transferred into economics. So you are not alone that way, though the linguistics in addition is novel to me. I wonder how your parents would have felt if you started out in Economics immediately. Or put another way, was at least part of your choice of major done to please them? I think there is nothing wrong with trying to please your parents, unless doing so means entirely denying your own wants.

    Regarding the last paragraph and the successes and failures of your relatives on the job market, I wonder what lessons you draw from them. My only observation is to note that income is not the only variable by which to measure success, but if you don't make at least some minimum level of income then that can dominate any other consideration. Once over the minimum, however, then satisfaction with work, having a decent social life outside of work, and some balance between the two all do matter. You didn't discuss the social life part in your post, but you might consider it. Or look at it as time with family versus time away from family. That's work-life issue that many people confront, but it remains a challenge.

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  2. Susan Athey Econ 490 Fall 2019November 10, 2019 at 3:08 PM

    I think everyone thinks about what they want to do, but not what they need to do in order to achieve that goal. It's not just income that I wanted to focus on, but how some people go to school and then take a career path that doesn't require any higher education. In a way, she paid a lot of money and put in many years to graduate, but in the end did not really utilize her time wisely.

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