Hi everyone! It is so great to be back and writing our first blogs of the spring semester. Today, I realized how close I am to becoming an upperclassman. While I love being taken under the wing of so many amazing role models I’ve already met, I am excited to step into this sort of guidance for other people. This semester, I am involved in the same type of things, but I think with more time and responsibility, I am feeling energized for what’s to come. Since we last blogged, I had a wonderful holiday season and relaxing break. Since my busy fall semester, all I wanted to do was just chill and get some light work to put things in order.

My sister came home from San Francisco for the holidays, and I did not realize how much I missed her in my own way. I haven’t mentioned much about my family before, but family is the most important thing to be and the biggest value I try to carry with me. Writing about my family feels intimate, but I love to share about them. My sister is two years older than me, and we are extremely close. She is my best friend, and she has always been my best friend even when we fought badly when we were younger. I guess she was my first role model and really instilled in me how much I loved having someone to look up to, since I always did look up to her and her friends.

Even with how much I admire my sister, there are some things I had to fundamentally disagree on. My entire family is involved in computer science and engineering, and they had pushed me into the STEM field since I was in elementary school. They would have liked for me to become a doctor, engineer, or computer scientist. While my sister excelled at coding, I disliked every first experience and classes later on I had in computer science. I thought it was awesome to be a woman in coding, but I knew that it wasn’t a fit for me. Still, my mom fought me quite hard on this, and I’m pretty sure she’s still displeased about it today.

When my sister went away to college, majoring in computer science of course, I still had no idea what I wanted to do. However, all my lessons and extra courses in STEM did teach me what I didn’t like. I found myself gravitating toward the humanities. I had always loved reading and writing and decided to get more serious about it junior year. This was when I first dabbled in poetry and short essays. After taking journalism and being a part of the school newspaper, I knew that I only enjoyed writing enough for it to be a hobby for me and eventual goal to become a published author in the long term future.

I’m sure most of my peers know now how much I love finance. Finance has been my greatest academic joy and outlet, because I have finally discovered a love of learning within a subject. My high school having no business courses allowed me to explore most other broad subjects, and I feel confident that finance is what I can love studying and working in the most. I think this and my family background have allowed me to become passionate about the field, because I so desperately wanted something of my own to enjoy and love thinking about, which made my explore and fully dive into deepening my interest at Smeal.

From now on, I will try not to blog so much about finance. I love telling this story in my professional settings and will try to tell more of my stories on here. I am excited to be in more of the leadership positions for my finance organizations this semester and help other students discover a similar excitement in their studies.