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by Emma Parsons, Queens Varsity Rower and Senior at Brooklyn Technical High School

Throughout my high school career I have constantly thought about going to college in the abstract. The idea of attending college has been omnipresent since day one of my freshman year, as a constant expectation of my parents, my school, and Row New York. Still, it was not until very recently – this January, to be precise – that that idea in the abstract became a concrete future, as I applied to colleges and realized – I’m going to college. I am going to graduate high school, go to college, and then be a real, live adult and, here’s the thing: that’s terrifying. With this realization I knew that I needed guidance, for someone to tell me the future is unclear and that’s okay. As such, now was the perfect time for me and my fellow seniors to listen to a panel of professionals, who are at least mostly established in their adult lives, discuss how they got to where they are. This was a Career Panel at Goldman Sachs that Row New York provided for Varsity seniors.

The day was snowy and cold, but we joined our panelists in braving the weather and transit issues to come down to Goldman Sachs so we could learn about professions in the financial sector. Our host was Lindsay LoBue, a partner at Goldman Sachs. She started the evening off by telling us how she came to be employed in the financial sector and what her job entails. After her presentation, we had dinner, and then the panel began.

Our panelists were Lindsay, Katrina Huffman, Director of Programs for the non-profit Youth I.N.C, Heather Gershen, the V.P. of credit and real estate at the nonprofit merchant bank SeaChange Capital Partners, Elizabeth Angeles, a recent graduate of Columbia University, Michael Kohlhaas, who works in BNP Paribas’ corporate finance office – and rows with RNY on the Harlem River!, Robert Jones who is Senior Manager of GSD Strategy and Operations at AOL Inc. and also rows with RNY, and lastly our moderator Andy Bettag, who is the Senior News producer of the Japanese Network, Fuji TV.

Mr. Bettag, as moderator, asked our panelists about their experiences in college and in their career, and how they got to be in the place they are today. For the majority of the panelists – essentially those that were not recent college graduates – their careers had not started on some singular path the second they stepped off the stage at their college graduation. Most of them came to be where they are today by chance and exploration. They told us that we do not have to know what we want to do with our lives by next year, or even necessarily in the next four years, that it’s good to have an idea of one’s future plan, but to never think the future can or should go in only one direction.

One of the key points that all of the panelists made was finding what you love and what you have a passion for while in college – that that is what you should major in, not whatever major you think you will find work in. The panelists emphasized the fact that if you major in what you love and have a passion for, you will do better in college and learn more. The panelists did not get to where they are because of their college major; it was through the choices they made and the interests they found in themselves and in their jobs.

This panel, and the professionals on it,  “untaught” me an assumption that has weighed on me since this January – that the choices I make now, or in my sophomore year of college, will set me on one singular path for the rest of my life. It is a relief to be shown that the major I pick when I am 19 does not necessarily have to coincide with the job I have at 49. I learned a lot at Goldman Sachs, and I am glad for the experience. Hopefully the seniors next year get a similar opportunity, and get to realize the full reality of their youth as I have. The seniors of Row New York owe Goldman Sachs and the panelists a great deal of thanks, for telling us we are full of potential, and that we need not fear the future as much as we think we should.

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