Regardless of the type of career that is chosen, it is almost certain that a certain level of business understanding will be required. This is unique with respect to business; as it is universal and touches on almost every aspect of the world we live in. This, among other reasons, is the primary motivation that I have for studying business and seeking a major in it.
One of the main reasons why I am interested in business, beyond recognizing that it impacts on nearly every aspect of life, has to do with a formative experience that I had while I was in high school. Realizing that the stock market was volatile and fortunes could be won or lost over a relatively short period of time, 3 of my classmates and I pooled our money and invested $2,000.00 into various stocks. The hope that we all had was that we had “bought low” and could “sell high”. Obviously, our collective lack of knowledge meant that we were just hoping for the best and engaging in the whole process based on incomplete information. Nevertheless, we had what one might call “fool’s luck”; earning $40,000.00 in just over two years - on that initial $2,000.00 investment. As one might expect, this interested me greatly in the way that the stock market and the broader business world operates. Accordingly, this experience motivates me to understand business to a deeper level and encourages me that I can make a positive contribution to the realm of business; especially if I am able to accomplish a deeper understanding of what motivates the market and how profits and losses are engaged.
The experience was also foundational for me in that it encouraged me to recognize the power that leadership could have on the types of decisions that the group made. There were many times during the course of the two year period that we were collectively invested in the stock market that various members of the group wanted to call it quits and cash out of the market. This was either the result of the fact that they believed that the market was taking a turn for the worse and our investment would not recover and/or the fact that they were satisfied with the money that they had already earned. The basic problem that I faced nearly all the time was that certain individuals within the group would encourage the rest of us to make a decision to withdraw our money; at a time that I believed it was premature. As a function of my incessant encouragement and calming, they eventually relaxed and allowed the money to stay in the market; up until the point that we had increased it by a factor of 20. Although a sense of finance and understanding the swings of the market is of course of primary importance, I also recognized that the ability to change people’s opinions was of extreme importance. Throughout the random market swings, I was continually encouraging my fellow team members and promoting a sense of calm that allowed us to make more money on the collective investment that we had; at least as compared to the type of earnings that we could likely have earned if we had simply approached the stock market separately. The impact of my leadership within the group was an essential element that allowed our group to experience such success.
Although the experience related above is indicative of a highlight in my life, success, optimism, and happiness are not themes that anyone can expect to last forever. !
