Erica Park, COL ’25, Fairfax, VA
Going into sophomore year, I knew I wanted to go into the business field. After the chaotic freshman year when I could not decide my career path or my major, I finally decided after researching for hours on end. It is okay not to know what you want to do but the constant pressure was weighing my shoulders down.
It was around March of 2023 and I was on spring break with my friends. I have been going to every networking event, reaching out to upperclassmen for advice, doing interviews, and submitting applications. After all the months of putting in effort and not receiving any results, I got lucky because I realized my friend backpacked in Europe and done a consulting internship. I also wanted to travel in the summer of 2023 and go into consulting. I reached out during spring break laying on the beach but deep down stressed. And soon immediately, the company reached out to me and I got an interview. I met the team and absolutely loved the energy. They are the next-gen market intelligence firm focused on helping financial services firms find important signals through the noise of market and competitive information. Going into this internship I had zero knowledge of the finance markets.
As of writing it is August now, 2 days left before my internship is done. I have gained so much knowledge in the commercial banking and FinTech world. With so much that changes every hour, it eventually builds up and that got my curiosity going. I cannot wait for next summer to work in a similar field.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2023 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here.
