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alicelee
Spring 2012 Columnist headshots Credit: Alice Lee , Justin Cohen

This column is for those of you who are sick of the Penn mold.

It’s for those of you who are scared that one day, you’ll wake up and realize you hate your job. It’s for those of you who are not doing things that you love, because you are either too frightened by the risk of failure or don’t know where to start.

And if you know you won’t be passionate about a job in finance or consulting but plan on joining the 52 percent of Penn graduates who go into these fields anyway, this column is also for you.

Or maybe this isn’t you at all (but I hope you still find value in this column).

This time last year, as a sophomore, I was a mess of nerves as I attempted to navigate the annual maze that is On-Campus Recruiting for finance and consulting internships. I dropped my resume with pretty much every firm on PennLink due to a combination of peer pressure and my desire for financial security.

At the end of the process, I was exhausted. Why wouldn’t a company want to give me a first-round interview? Was I really that uninteresting and inferior?

So I said: screw it. Why am I driving myself crazy? I started to seek out freelance jobs as a photographer and designer. Then I took a semester off to explore the world and pursue these passions wholeheartedly (more on that later).

On the way, I found the answer. Or at least, one that works for me.

If you’ve got a passion, pursue it. Relentlessly. In this digital age, there are infinite resources available to us — online, in books, through people, at conferences. Don’t be afraid to forge your own path and learn things on your own when they’re not offered via traditional means.

For instance, 2011 Wharton graduate Tony Wang, who is pursuing a master’s degree in Bioethics at the Perelman School of Medicine, taught himself how to sew in high school. He now runs a popular fashion blog and consults companies like Gucci and BCBG under his self-made personal brand.

Wang worked at McKinsey last summer — a stint he earned through OCR — but he’s since rejected an offer to return and is continuing to work in fashion.

“People ask me this question a lot,” Wang said, “They say, ‘Tony, I think what you’re doing is really cool and I would love to do something like that. But it seems so daunting. So I think I’m going to do banking.’ And I say to them: you have to do what you love. Thinking about it isn’t doing it. Read more about it, take a class on it, go to conferences. I miss school for Fashion Week and it’s definitely worth it.”

Because the paths laid out for us at Penn are so structured and unyielding, we develop deep-seated fears toward taking any major or unusual risks. As a result, we rarely do something completely unique and on our own.

“Insofar that you can pay for your happiness by making the minimum amount (like you need to eat), the tradeoff is then not of more money or less money, it’s for time and your happiness,” Wharton junior Patrick Leahy said.

Leahy, who worked on Wall Street last summer as an investment-banking intern at Citibank, has since shifted his focus to computer programming, a longtime hobby turned new career direction.

“At the end of the day there’s no way I can investment bank for 45 hours straight, but on the other hand, I could do that with programming,” he said. “Even now having programmed for seven hours a day for the past four weeks I’m still happy. There’s not a moment when I’m like, ‘Crap, I hate my job.’”

I really believe that finding success by following your own passions and forging your own path is more than possible. As a bonus? You’ll probably be happier, too.

Wharton senior Andrew Sun, who’s concentrating in Operations Management, but hoping to work as an architect or music producer, puts it best. “If you have the drive to do it, which sounds so cheesy — you can really do anything you want.”

So take a risk and do what you love. If you have a passion, there is no need to jump through traditional but unnecessary hoops to get to your dream. They’ll call you crazy at first, but when things work out — they’ll call you genius.

Alice Lee is a Wharton junior from Cupertino, Calif. After taking an eight-month leave of absence from Penn to work at Foursquare she is back on campus.Her email address is leealice@wharton.upenn.edu. Through The Looking Glass appears every other Friday.

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