Quote:
Originally Posted by JCharles25
Well, I'd love to have a job that has to do with the NHL/NFL or video games (not a developer) but, ya know, I want to try to be realistic. 21 isn't old, but I don't have a lot of leeway here - I don't want to get my first stable job when I'm 28.
I could see myself thriving in a job in business, think I have the mindset for it. So I tend to lean towards that.
I'm mainly just waiting on getting a car (which I should be getting very soon - within a month or so) so I can get to school/work easily.
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One of my very good buddies just graduated from KU. His freshman year? The year KU football won the Orange Bowl and KU basketball won the national championship. 9 years ago. He messed up there for a long while. Took him to hell and back, but he got his life back together, has graduated, and is continuing to work in the AD for the spring semester with plans to move out to Colorado this summer. That's proof to myself even that it's never too late. Especially at 21, you've got options. If you believe getting a degree is your calling, then start there and find where you'd want to see yourself. Get some gen-eds done and see if there are any particular fields that interest you, which will come in time. I didn't know what I wanted to study specifically until I was done with my sophomore year.
As someone who has a little bit of experience in sports, I have learned some things that I can tell you about. I've been in marketing, but there are many other options that you can dive into whether it's facilities, technology, or even sales. One truth to working in sports is that the best way to break into the industry is at ground-level. It's very hard to get a job in sports with no prior experience within sports. This means internships are key, sometimes unpaid (which can suck, but it depends on the mindset and the organization). The positive in this is as much as free work sucks, there are plenty of open positions to start out and see if it's what you want to do. I have worked two unpaid internships, each with marketing. One with a very small university, and one with KU. I didn't care for my old school, it was boring work, the school had no money to spend on promotions, and I was one of maybe 7-8 interns IIRC. Never got to know any of the other interns and didn't feel like I had a place there. Told myself I was done working in sports. Then the summer came along and one of the full-time staff members of the KU AD I had been emailing back and forth with followed up from a previous conversation from months prior of me getting some information about their internship program. I was in Lawrence when he followed-up, interviewed with him the next day and before I knew it I was an intern in the KU AD "to see how it'd go" and it ever since then I have had the time of my life. A complete 180 from my first internship. All of the interns are all great friends, some are the best ones that I have, I get to work in AFH, the positives are endless, but I don't get paid. It's something I just have to live with for the time being. The key is getting that preliminary experience and then working your way up from there.
Some of it will suck, but every full-time staff member that works in the marketing office (including the head of marketing for KU Athletics) started in the same shoes that I am in now. They were all unpaid interns at one point. All of them. If you have a passion for the work, then you'll be just fine. It's a lot of fun, and the experiences are great.