How to Unleash Your Full Potential: 4 Tips to Choosing a Major

Choosing the right college major/career is a baffling subject.  Sometimes it feels like a lonely walk down a deserted road that leads to nowhere.   I myself traversed down that road through college picking a major my first semester and changing it almost every semester thereafter until my junior year. How does one select a major that will yield a satisfying career for 30+ years after only being exposed to the subject matter for 4-5 years at best?

In the end, there is no one right way for picking a college major, but by coupling your interests with the following tips, you will find yourself looking at college majors in a much more objective way.  This objectivity can provide you a much more meaningful career that keeps your interest throughout the longevity of it.  I hope the result for you is looking at college majors in a more thoughtful way that will yield the best path for you.

1. Find your Passion.

In my opinion, this is the most important attribute a college major must have for you.  By having passion on a certain subject, it allows you to spend more time thinking about how you can become better at that subject.  This automatically gives you insight, excitement, as well as creativity in your major.  Since you are able to study this subject matter without getting bored out of your mind, you will find ways to solve problems in ways that others will not be able to.  This will translate well at your future position in your career.

2. Couple your Interest with Unrelated Interests.

Sometimes, the answer to the passion question is not always located in a particular major or career.  That being said, don’t be afraid to branch out and find things that appear to be completely unrelated to help you find your passion.  For example, before becoming an accounting major, I was a graphic design and architecture major.  Therefore, it came as a shock to people when I informed them of my decision to go into accounting.  These are unrelated fields to be sure.  However, this tip did not dawn on me until a professor I had told me “you will be one of the most creative accountants I have met.” 

That’s it!  I immediately saw that I had a gift in being creative that I could bring to a major/career that is stereotyped as having limited creative juices flowing.  That is when I started to combine the art skills I learned with the accounting skills to create my passion.

Bottom line:  if you are afraid that you are coupling unrelated interests, don’t be.  You are probably heading on the right track.  Just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t make it wrong.

3. Have a Reason for Being in Your Career.

Whatever your initial reason for picking a college major, eventually you will want to discover the underlying reason for being in this major.  Having a vision for your career helps.  Is your vision to help others become better at something?  Maybe to entertain and bring laughter to others?  Or, it could be another meaningful reason for why you picked your major.  The key to having a reason behind your selection of an eventual career is that it centers on others.  If the reason for picking a major is based only on satisfying yourself, your career will run its course and eventually pique.

Pleasing yourself is something we are all good at, in fact it is something we learn as toddlers.  However, being able to assist others provides a growth inside of us that fosters the ideas mentioned above and allows us to continue to grow and improve in our school work and careers.  Making ourselves the centerpiece for our majors, and careers will not provide the satisfaction of continual growth that others can provide when they are our vision and focus for our career.

4. DON’T Make it About the Money

I was hesitant to make “money” even appear in these tips because of how it can interpreted.  All I will say is this:

Make your college major decision based not on the money you expect to earn.  Don’t get me wrong, college education does cost money and therefore you must select a combination of major(s) that provides you a way to make money in the future.  

However, once picking a career that provides for you (with a job at graduation), focus on applying the first 3 tips above.  If you focus on applying those 3 tips, then I do not need to speak any more about money because I am confident that money will continue to come your way if these other tips are followed first.

To Your Success,

Introduction to Financial Accounting Concepts

Accounting.

This word is viewed as a GPA breaker, a four letter word with no respite, a class that should be purged from the business school’s curriculum.  Basically, this is a class subject with very few positive rumors.  Just mentioning accounting concepts can have students heading towards the exits.

However, with rumors and background aside, this class is required by every business student to take regardless of their major.  Marketing, Finance, Entrepreneurship, and of course Accounting are only a few of the majors inside American business schools that require accounting as a class.  There is a reason for this apparent madness. 

Frankly put, accounting is the language of business.  Everything that occurs within business, regardless of the business segment, is recorded via accounting.  Since it is the common language, for any individual looking to have a successful career in business, accounting must be understood and spoken.

The purpose of this blog is to provide additional clarification for accounting to business students who struggle with accounting concepts. Also, it is for those students who may have not been a business major in school but wish to take charge of their financial condition and succeed as much as possible.

The following lesson can also be viewed on our YouTube Channel if you click here.

Many think accounting is hard and full of math.  If you are taking an accounting class, it is common to hear these two descriptions of accounting by outsiders.  The problem is that this is a great misunderstanding of the academic subject of accounting.  First, accounting is not hard, it is just different from any other class that is offered in schools.  Whereas most classes can be easily mastered by simple memorization, accounting must be understood and concepts practiced instead of memorization without knowledge of the why behind it. 

Second, accounting is not full of math; anyone can succeed in accounting with only knowledge of the four basic mathematic functions. Accounting is a classification of items (called transactions) that occur within the course of business. 

Okay, we have determined that accounting is a classification of business items but what sort of items are we classifying?  The point of this post and this blog is to demystify accounting and the world of finance as much as possible by thinking about what laymen know about accounting.

Let’s think about a regular store that we shop at on a daily basis that buys goods and resells them to customers (you are welcome to call it Wal-Mart, Target, or any store you prefer).  What is the purpose of the store, or any other store for that matter?  

The goal is to make money.  

These companies are able to achieve this by buying goods and selling goods to customers at a higher price for what the companies paid for them. Good, this is the type of simplified breaking down of accounting that we are pursuing through this blog.  What other activities might this company partake in that we able to classify?  We have already named the first two.

• ·        Buying goods to sell to customers.

• ·        Selling goods to customers.

• ·        Purchasing buildings and vehicles.

• ·        Borrowing money to fund the business.

• ·        Selling stock to investors/shareholders.

• ·        Distributing dividends to shareholders.

• ·        Buying other businesses to grow.

Here is a graphic if you like learning through a visual channel:

**Study Tool** - Click to Download This Graphic

We are able to classify these events (transactions) into different categories (let’s call them accounts) where we can separate the different transactions as they come into the business and tally the amounts.

All businesses have many accounts and many of these accounts are used by businesses regardless of the industry or type of business.  The name of these common accounts include:

• ·        Cash

• ·        Accounts Receivable

• ·        Inventory

• ·        Plant, Property & Equipment

• ·        Accounts Payable

• ·        Bonds Payable

• ·        Common Stock

• ·        Retained Earnings

(Don’t worry about understanding all of these accounts right now or how they are classified, the important lesson to take away is that many business utilize accounts titled the same regardless of the business or industry.) 

These are just a few of the main functions and accounts of running a business that come off the top of my head.  These are concepts that can be understood by those not engaged or learned in business but have not had any accounting jargon applied to them and therefore are “clean” of confusing words.

Through the subsequent posts on the accounting learning page of this blog, we will dive into more detail of these topics and more that describe business through an accounting lens.  As we progress, the dividing line between laymen and accounting depictions of business so that we will learn the language of business (accounting) in a way that incorporates learning and not memorization of this different subject. 

The next lesson we discuss will depict more ways of how accounting classifies business transactions into these accounts.

To Your Success,

How to Visualize Your Way to Success

Have you ever wanted to accomplish a certain task but were afraid you would fail? 

Have you ever attempted a project or presentation already knowing you were probably going to fail?

Have you ever made yourself so nervous about a given task that you couldn’t concentrate on the task and ended up not doing as good a job as you know you were capable?

If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, then you are not alone.  Being nervous, feeling inadequate, or being afraid of failure are natural thoughts that can creep into our brains if we allow them to.  Many of us experience these on a daily basis as we attempt to go through our day, at our jobs, or at school.

These thoughts can limit our experiences and accomplishments if we do not keep them in check.  The more we dwell on a certain outcome, the more our body reacts to this event as if it has already happened.

For example, if all you can think about is how nervous you will be about giving a speech in front of your classmates, your body will adapt to this thought by increasing your heart rate as the time to the speech draws near.  Sweaty palms might also be a symptom as your brain has communicated to your body that the chance of success is slim and therefore your body has prepared for the humiliation that goes along with failure.

All of this was started by thinking and dwelling on the fact of how nervous you were about standing up and giving a speech to your classmates.  Doesn’t sound like a recipe for success now does it?

Try this instead.

The next time you have a presentation (project, test, etc.) that is important to you accomplishing it, think and visualize what a stellar presentation looks like when it is complete.  It is important that you see yourself completing this presentation.  

If visualization is hard for you, try watching a good speech that has been on the news, or other media.  Then, close your eyes and think about that speech, except pretend that you were the one who gave the speech.  

Especially notice what it feels like when your brain has communicated this success to the rest of your body; you should feel a sense of calm (perhaps even excitement) after finishing that presentation.  The feelings you experience are what you want to aim for.  

If this visualizing exercise is done correctly, you can see that the nervousness you had is conjured up by your brain in response to a fear you have.  The goal is to suppress that fear through visualization of your eventual success and convince your mind of this.  

It is equally important that you do not visualize yourself without going out and making strides to accomplish your goal.  Visualizing about giving a presentation without actually practicing the presentation is no more helpful than psyching yourself out before giving the presentation.  Neither will prepare you to deliver the results you desire.

The important idea is to:

• ·        Visualize your success

• ·        Suppress the fear within you

• ·        Go out and attain the results you are capable of achieving

Since we talked a lot about presentations in this blog post, I think the next one will talk about what makes a good presentation and how to incorporate today’s blog post into presentation tips that will distinguish you from the rest of your classmates and coworkers.

To Your Success,