When at first you don’t succeed…

What does it mean to have an about-face in one’s life? To answer this question, we must first delve into the meaning of identity. Even in today’s society, one’s identity goes much further than his or her Facebook profile. Identity is about who you are inside, and what makes you different from the millions of others around you. When you have an about-face, who do you become? If you change into someone new, does your old identity get lost forever? How many identities can one truly have until they all unify into what we recognize today as a “bipolar” personality?

Many of these questions lingered in my mind two summers ago as I considered my life plans and what I wanted to work as when I grew older. Even thinking about applying to college was difficult for me because I was not sure what I wanted to do with my life. I have always had an exceptional talent for technology and computers, but my AP Physics class revealed that I had a natural talent for physics as well. Lastly, I was attracted by careers in investment banking because of the mind-blowing salaries the field offered. Everyone says that you should not dedicate your career only for money because you will hate your job. I understood this and tried to keep away from applying to colleges that focused on business and finance.

The time came to apply to colleges and I decided to go into engineering. I loved math, physics, and technology too much to give up going into a career in that field. I applied to seventeen colleges, most of them being top schools, and a few like Baruch and Fordham, which focused on finance. Coming from a Tech school and having a very strong background in computers gave me a sense of “being ahead” and I already felt easier with my choice to go into engineering.

I was shocked and devastated when the last engineering school that I have been waiting to hear from, Cooper Union, rejected me off its waitlist. After spending a great amount of time deciding what I wanted to do in life, planning it out, and actually applying to the engineering schools, the road that I planned to take reached a dead end. I had no other choice than going into finance, a field that I do not necessarily dread, but one that came unexpectedly into my life. Having absolutely no prior experience working in the financial field gave me a feeling opposite to that of engineering. I felt like I was already falling behind the fast-moving financial world and needed to work twice as hard in to catch up.

One thing I realized from this experience is that one’s identity is about who he or she is inside – not what he or she works as. There are plenty of people in the world who, like I, (will) work in a field completely opposite to their interests and they are no less unique and distinguished than the people who do what they like. A word of advice to those who have faced an about-face in their own lives – you are still the person everyone knows as the nicest, funniest, coolest, smartest, and most social one around and nothing will ever change that; not even if you turn around a million times.