A Year Of Progress. Reflections of my Second Year at UIC

With my final year at UIC fast approaching (final because I’m planning to graduate a year early), I decided to stop and take a few moments to reflect on my second year within UIC Business. I wouldn’t lie to you: it’s been a year of ups and downs, but thankfully more ups than downs. Certainly, I feel like I’m in a good place right now, so I wanted to share a few of my highlights and the things I learned this year.

My Major

This year really gave me a better sense of direction as to what I want to do with my career. I decided to switch my major from Accounting to Marketing, and thus far I have been happy with my choice. This wasn’t one of the easiest decisions I had to make, so here is why I chose to do it:  I am a people person, I am both creative and analytical, I have a passion for communication and writing, I wanted to be able to travel, and I learned that there is a positive job outlook for the future—hence, I was sold—Marketing it was. After taking my very first Marketing class, I learned that there are many aspects of marketing that can help me in my career and I got to taste both the creative side as well as the analytical side. As a marketing major, you can do a lot with your career too. For instance, you can go into public relations, advertising, branding, and product management—all areas that I am quite interested in.

Time Management/Free time

This semester was quite hectic for me because I was taking 21 credit hours—that is seven classes, and I am so proud to say that I did it! I will admit that this wasn’t an easy task because I had to balance my part-time job, my extra-curricular activities, and my social life. I really believe that by doing this I learned to manage my time better and I do not regret doing this one bit. Now this may sound cliché, but I want you to know that you can achieve anything you put your mind to, and I knew that doing this would allow me to be one step closer to my degree.

My Classes

I took a lot of interesting classes this semester and had a lot of great professors. Some of my favorite classes were BA 200, Marketing 360, and Management 350. BA 200 was my favorite class out of these three because this is a managerial communications class that allowed me to brush up on my presentation skills and helped me communicate effectively. I learned so much from the projects that we did, and I think it is great that all students are required to take this class since it definitely taught me a lot!

Business Scholars

The Business Scholars program allowed me to network with some amazing people this semester who came in for our Speakers Series. I am really thankful that we have this as a part of our business scholars curriculum because I believe I am able to learn a lot from the speakers and their experiences. This year, I was also the Vice President of Peer Mentor Relation within the Collegiate Association of Business Scholars—and this was very fun! I got the opportunity to host some very fun events for the incoming scholars and go the chance to learn about their dreams and help mentor them in areas they needed help with. I am excited to see what next year brings!

Now, looking back, I continue to feel an incredible amount of gratitude for getting to live, laugh, and study at UIC. I feel like I’m in a great place for the beginning of my final year, with some really interesting classes to prepare for and some incredible opportunities ahead.