Finding My Way: Side Jobs to Career Aspirations

Stepping Stones to Success

During high school, my education was my priority during those 9 months. My job was school, and then during the summers, I had a job or two so that I could build up my resume for my college applications. I tried out a lot of random jobs throughout those summers like being a camp counselor, being a hostess at an Italian restaurant, and even selling Cutco knives. I definitely learned a lot from each job, but none of those job opportunities really led me to figure out what I wanted to do or even had anything to do with what I was going to college to study.

My sophomore year, I was researching business majors at Elon University, which was my top college choice, and I decided to settle on International Business. Five years later, I am a rising senior at Elon with a double major in Marketing and International Business. I took a couple detours until finally landing on this combo, but I feel like these two majors truly represent many of my career interests.

In high school, my jobs were focused on filling my resume, but this changed when I got to college. Yes, I had one odd job of working as an office assistant at a lash and brow salon, but that same summer, I also started delving deeper into the world of social media marketing for the first time..

Little “Side-walks” Could Lead to Big Discoveries

My childhood best friend’s mom was starting an organizing business and needed someone to run her social media for the summer, so I created Facebook and Instagram posts for her business accounts as well as curated the look of her pages. I also had the opportunity to run the social media accounts for a truffle business out of Dallas for a family member. I did this work for little to no pay, but experiences like these are so much more valuable because it gives you real world experience in your field of interest. At the time, I don’t think I realized how truly valuable these work experiences would become for me.

I think it is important to get experience in multiple industries because you truly don’t know what you like until you try it whether it is being hostess and learning that you enjoy the customer service industry or selling knives to learn that sales may not be the career path for you. However, if you have little mini passions on the side that started as “just a thing to do”, try to turn that passion into a job. If you like to paint houses, start a painting business. If you like to cook, start a meal preparation and delivery business. There are endless possibilities and options when it comes to your passions in life. Some may turn into big things and some may be side projects, but that’s okay as long as you enjoy what you do or in some cases, maybe even learn what you do not want to do.

There’s No One Path to College and Your Career

At Elon, I was a Business Fellow, and there are expectations for all of the fellows in the program. We have a four year schedule created for us with which classes to take, when to have internships, when to go abroad, etc. Because of this, most of the classes that I took during my first two years were introductory classes to some of the majors in the business school. Having a background in all business majors is extremely useful; however, none of them really piqued my interest. I liked my Principles of Marketing class, but it mainly focused on the numbers-side of marketing like Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click.

I only started to realize what I was interested in doing when I studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark this past fall semester of my junior year. I took several global marketing classes, including a media one, that made me realize how much I like the media and creative side of marketing like social media, advertising, etc. I never considered media and social media marketing as a career path even though I had had experience in it for at least a year and a half by the time my semester abroad ended. I had run social media accounts for two separate businesses by that time and then I took over the social media pages for the dance team that I am now President of at my school. Despite that experience, I never connected the dots that I genuinely loved it and could do it as a job. This realization is why I decided to start my own company. Most people my age want to jump into the corporate world and get experience in that way. However, through the process of looking and applying for jobs, I just could not find a job that spoke to me. So, I thought since I could not find a job that I wanted, I decided to create my own. At 22, this was definitely a leap of faith, but I feel like I have never felt so strong of a call to do something.

While I am still figuring everything out, I am so excited to be able to have my dream job while being able to help other people. For some people, marketing is a drag. However, marketing speaks to me.