A little background on me; I’m from a small town originally and lived there all my life until I left for college in NYC two years ago. I decided to pursue a Finance degree to eventually launch my career in corporate finance, but I’m really starting to have anxiety and a sense of doubt about this choice. To be honest, I’ve always been interested in business and just chose to be a finance major because it seemed like the most logical business major to choose. Basically, I went where I thought the money and the jobs were.
The truth is, deep down I just want to work for myself. I loathe the thought of the corporate agenda sucking away every last bit of life that I have in me, wasting away the prime years of my life. Now, I know everyone and their mother seem to have ambitions like this these days, but I just really can’t see myself doing anything else. Nothing else interests me except starting my own business.
The reason I’m mentioning this is because I know it’s easier said than done, becoming an entrepreneur. This is why I know I need a career path as well because I plan on working a steady job before I really get serious with starting my own business. As many of you probably know, however, corporate finance can be a bit of a burden when it comes to working long hours and overtime which wouldn’t leave me any time to start a business on the side. Honestly at this point, I would rather work a grueling manual labor job for 40 hours a week than spend 70 hours a week in a cubicle like a robot wasting away my existence.
Now here is my dilemma. I’m in my second semester of my sophomore year, and by the end of it I’ll have taken all the business core classes and such. The problem is, if I want to switch majors there is absolutely no way I would be able to graduate on time. And I’m in no way willing to spend more than 4 years in school. I just won’t be able to do it financially. Plus, I would have no clue what major to choose because I still have no idea what I want to do. On the other hand, I could transfer schools to something cheaper, but I don’t want to waste all my hard work and leave all the friends I made here because I’m not great at meeting new people and starting over per se.
I mean, if I stay in finance am I doomed to live the corporate life forever? Are there other things I can do with a finance major that doesn’t require me to work grueling hours? I just need some guidance, reassurance, or anything to get my head on straight here. I’ve never been more anxious about anything in my life and I feel overwhelmed. I hate having to decide my fate for the rest of my life as a clueless 20 year old just trying to get by. Please help.
I am not too sure what your problem is. Your post is one big non-sequitur. Let me explain.
I get that you do not want to enter the corporate world. I also get that you would rather start your own company.
The part I do not get is the concern over your major. It seems you do not understand or know that if you start your own company your major is irrelevant. No college major teaches you what you need to know to run a business.
A company begins as an idea for a product or service. It is up to the founder to build out the company based on his vision. No college major can provide or teach either the idea or the build-out vision.
Therefore, major in whatever you want, but just remember that to start and to build a company you do need a viable idea and a plan to execute said idea.
If you want to work for yourself, why not just go and do it? Start your own company. You seem to want to work for yourself but you don’t seem to have an idea.
Although some finance careers do include long hours and the risk of getting the life blood sucked out of all but the strongest…not all jobs are that environment. Not even big corporate jobs are all - and only -mercilessly unpleasant. Your worries are rather like the hs juniors/seniors who think their life is over if they don’t get into a particular college.
In most companies, you do your work, build your expertise and rep, feel the satisfaction of a job well done and gain some authority from that, make friends, have some reasonably predictable hours- and if you aim in the right directions and are wise about your spending, you’ll make a paycheck that meets your needs. You may even be involved with a product or service that intrigues you. Or fills a need you believe in or helps the needy. Not everyone is out there selling bogus investments to widows or hawking bars of soap. And if company X doesn’t suit you, you pay your dues, then you look for the next, better environment.
Glass half full.
There’s so much one can only learn about business by being in it. You have miles to go. Head for your career center or do a little research and see the variety of profit and non-profit, large and small businesses out there. And realize that you can be mighty entrepreneurial using your talents in someone else’s new start-up where everyone on the team is working to launch the venture.
As for entrepreneurship, there are huge responsibilities that come from being your own “Mr Man.” You wanna try it? Find something to sell on Amazon or Ebay. Or even just look at Amazon’s pages of expectations of seller standards, performance and reactions. And then needing to anticipate the market’s needs, endure the ups and downs in sales, and deal with the issues.