Shifting Perspective on My Intended Career Path Again... Again
For the majority of my life I wanted to be a physician and that did not change when I began my stint in Seattle. Not long after however, I have since changed my mind several times over and am still not entirely sure what to do. How can someone know what to do with the rest of their life? The answer is they probably don't and they are just doing something they enjoy and they could change to something else later.
While at UW my idea for what I will end up doing once I leave has been an ever changing fluid concept that I still don't fully comprehend. I was one of those people who come to orientation and hear the leaders speak about how they changed their major and thought it was something that would never happen to me in a million years only to find out not only would it happen, but my whole future outlook would change along with it. As I said previously, all I wanted in the whole world was to be a doctor, partially because I wanted to but also because I thought that is what my parents wished I would do as well. I was met with a rude awakening my freshman year and thus I was forced to make the decision to pivot away from medicine which at first was in the top three most disappointing things to ever happen to me, but I have since come to see as a blessing.
Because of this new frame of reference I had to contemplate opportunities that I could envision myself taking to set me on a new path that I hadn't considered previously. One of such opportunities took the form of my internship over the summer of 2022 in which I worked as an analyst for a Venture Capital fund specifically pertaining to companies that have a positive climate impact. The role, while appearing to be completely uncharted waters, ended up using the expertise that I have garnered in my coursework and previous jobs allowing me to function as a valued member of the team. Having done research in a scientific context and growing up on the internet, doing internet due diligence and collecting data to assess companies from an environmental stand point came naturally to me and inspired me to keep on the path that I have set myself on after being forced to relinquish my dreams of being a doctor.
This experience was valuable not only to showcase my skills but also to give myself the confidence to justify continuing on in an arena that I am less familiar with. The slide show above is part of a project that I worked on in which I analyzed the state of voluntary carbon markets in association with carbon offset generation that could be used by portfolio companies of the fund I worked with. I presented this to the managing partners where I received great feedback including that they would use some of the information that I pitched and consider using some of the methodologies that I brought up.
"But, now these days are gone I'm not so self assured. No I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors"