Through the words of the song Life is a Highway, “Life’s like a road that you travel on. There’s one day here and the next day gone.” Time continues to fly as I travel on life’s highway toward the rest stop called “graduation”. While enjoying the ride, I love to look in the rearview mirror to see where I have come from or how I have gotten to where I am today.
For those of you who are ready to come to college, but have no idea what you want to study, this post is specifically for you. When I was an eighth grader, I took a career test to find out what career path I should choose. Because of my strengths in creativity and people skills, my results gave me two options: bus driver or interior designer. Therefore, I chose to pursue being a designer (maybe when I grow up, I can be a bus driver).
After completing three years of the interior architecture program at UW-Stevens Point, I started to panic because I knew that I loved the program, my professors, and designing, but that I would rather design as a hobby instead of as a career.
From there, I began by adding a minor in business administration, but I still wasn’t satisfied. So in my fourth year of college, I declared a business administration major with a marketing concentration. I realized that this choice would require me to be in school for an extra year, but it would be worth it. Now, with just over one month left of school to go before graduating, I know that I have made the right choice.
This has become evident through my most recent internship. As a marketing intern for the Boys & Girls Club of Portage County, we recently hosted our annual Wine & Cheese event that held over 700 community members and collected over $80,000. With the help of Kevin Quevillon, Jessica Stephani (my fellow intern), Carie Winn (Carie should be congratulated for recently accepting a new job at the College of Professional Studies, and she will be missed by me and so many others!) and the rest of the staff, we watched our “baby” project from this semester finally come into fruition. For me, this was one of the most exciting and rewarding moments of my time here at UW-Stevens Point as I finally discovered what I am truly passionate about: marketing and raising support for causes that I strongly believe in.
Therefore, the moral of my story is that you don’t have to come to UWSP with your entire life mapped out. It is perfectly normal to find or even change majors while you are here. Just be willing to take risks as these are the times that I have always been rewarded the most.
-Brittany
Brittany Melby is a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point majoring in business administration and interior architecture.