Blog #2- Journey Mapping

Kyle Campbell is a sophomore finance major in the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Along with finance, he is also majoring in BHP (business honors program), economics, and math. Most of these additional majors serve as extensions of his main focus, finance.  As I learned more about Kyle’s career path, I developed a 5-stage process that highlights his turning points.

The first stage is labeled “when I grow up,” which is a common phrase people use today. Kyle first thought of his future aspirations when he was a little kid. He dreamed of being the stereotypical professions for that age such as a firefighter, policeman, or a doctor. Along with these professions, he also showed interest in being a lawyer. The biggest influencer of this sparked interest was his father, who was lawyer himself. Due to his young age, Kyle had little confidence in most decisions he made and a future career choice was no exception.

The second stage in Kyle’s journey was “prior to college.” As he began to become more knowledgeable and understanding of the value that a career can have on one’s life, Kyle began considering the field of chemical engineering. With this as the primary interest at the time, law was demoted to a secondary thought. The influence behind this change came again from his dad, who studied engineering as an undergraduate student at Texas A&M University. In high school, Kyle enjoyed science and math, thus leading him to believe this field would be a perfect fit for him. At this stage in his life, he was only somewhat confident that this was the career field for him. This confidence completely evaporated when he participated in a chemical engineering research project at A&M between his junior and senior year of high school and absolutely hated it.

The third stage we have is the “freshman fall.”  When applying for college, Kyle wanted a stable job that he could depend on and loved working on group projects with teams. After hearing about the success and great reputation that the McCombs School of Business had, Kyle decided to change his career focus to business. The main influencer of this decision was himself and his personal interests. Along with being accepted into McCombs, he was also accepted into BHP (business honors program), which allowed him to have small class sizes and an honors curriculum. Due to his success and happiness at the time, Kyle was somewhat confident that business was the route he wanted to take.

The fourth stage was “freshman spring.” It was during this semester that Kyle began to think of possible specializations and major options. He desired a field that did not involve much abstract thinking, as he enjoyed math and logistics. One of the key deciding factors was his interest in how money controls people’s lives and changes their perspectives on certain things. This ultimately led to his decision to major in finance. He also added a major in economics, after thinking about it during his freshman fall semester. This was intended to help enhance his fiancé skills even further. Some key influencers in these decisions came from his friends, Emile Gerard and Ryan Crestani, who were senior finance majors that became mentors to Kyle. At this point, Kyle felt very confident that he was making the right career choice.

This brings us to present-day. We are currently within our final stage, “sophomore fall.” Along with his other three majors, Kyle recently decided that he wanted a fourth major in math because he just finds it fun. Though this balance is hard, he finds the course work interesting and hopes it will help his business and finance career in the future. He is currently 100% confident that finance is the right major and focus for him. Since graduation last year, he has already found a replacement mentor. Neha Vaidya is a senior finance major that helps mentor Kyle in finance and extra curricular activities, such as Student Government.

Those are the 5-stages that Kyle has gone through, in order to develop his career path. While going through this journey, he has had many different influences and levels of confidence about his potential career and future. Everyone has their own story to how they got to where they are today and this assignment has helped me evaluate my own personal career path and the long, but rewarding journey that it has been.