NUMBERS?

Since the day I received my first Crayola marker collection, I knew I was leaning towards a CREATIVE path. I would spend my afternoons sorting the colors into the rainbow spectrum so I could choose more precisely when drawing.  I was never into numbers, so I didn’t really look into that route. Therefore, ever since, I continued to FOCUS on my creative side; I’ve explored different areas, until I found my niche, MARKETING. 

The IA has SHAPED me into who I am, it has allowed me to EXPERIMENT, and DISCOVER things I’m passionate about. Before the IA I was doing work for the sake of doing it, but here I’ve learned to do work that is PURPOSEFUL, work that has VALUE to me. If I wasn’t motivated to do it, then it wasn’t beautiful work. Here I realized that marketing was my perfect match. The IA gave me the opportunity to explore marketing from different perspectives, so I was able to analyze it skeptically. Finally, I was able to intern in a revered marketing firm where I realized this was the road I wanted to follow. 

When we did the economics documentary and I entered a completely DIFFERENT world—to the one I had envisioned for myself all these years—I was blown away. I fell in love with MICROFINANCE, and found this NUMERICAL world interesting. Through research, interviews, and dinner table conversations with my dad I discovered another area I was passionate about, so when the Math IA’s came around, I had no doubt about doing it on microfinance. For this project, I ended up creating a mini version of a program that determines the probability of default of a client, my model worked with only four variables. Through the IA I got the opportunity to deeply explore microfinance, and see the more numerical side to it, and I concluded that even with those horrible numbers I still enjoyed it.  The math used in microfinance is completely different to the one in school, there is no trigonometry, every calculation makes sense, and all the numbers COMBINED can give you tons of information of a client. For me it was the people and working with entrepreneur’s HUNGRY to innovate that truly awaked this passion.

When internships came around I was determined to look for something CREATIVE, like marketing. When I talked to my dad and looked into different options he told me that I should give finance and accounting a try. I wasn’t very convinced at first because even though I really enjoyed microfinance, and the little I knew about it, I never really thought of focusing on those areas. I gave it a thought. As I reflected upon my future, I began to think about college, where I was going to start a business career, and giving accounting and finance a try could OPEN UP new interests in the business world, so I decided on taking the offer. Together we designed what areas I wanted to explore, and then I EMBARKED on this internship.

After a month of working in a bank and exploring the NUMERICAL world I can say that it was been a wonderful experience, nothing like I imagined. I never thought that I was a numbers person, but after processing invoices with the accountants, analyzing the 17 Peruvian banks and their performance in 2013-2014, and just experiencing the financial atmosphere, I can say that I want to continue learning more about this. As the accountants thought me how they control every transaction I started to make CONNECTIONS with Blendz, I though about how we could implement their system in our business. These connection where telling me something, if my brain was processing everything that I learned so deeply it meant that I was INTERESTED in it. Even though we did some of the basics in accounting it did gave me an idea of what it meant to be one, and some of the jobs that I could have upon college graduation.   

Usually we do internships alone, but this time I took on the internship with two of my friends, Gonchi and Pedro. The fact that they were both there truly ENRICHED my experience. I not only learned from the environment, listening to the long expert talks, processing transactions, and working with excel, but also from my friends who where a step ahead of me in FINANCE. They would clear up my doubts and during the talks with the experts they would ADD VALUABLE insights and questions to the conversation. 

We had little ACTION, lots of CONTENT, and many MEETINGS, but I was still able to take a lot from this experience. The purpose of the internship, for me, was to learn about finance AND accounting, but also to FIGURE OUT if this was something I was passionate about. After finishing with the internship, I’ve realized that I might want to minor in finance, aside from being interesting; I find it extremely vital for any job I might encounter in the future.

I know, thanks to the experience I had in the internship, I’ve been able to give my future a better DIRECTION. Therefore, now that I enter college I have a better PERCEPTION of who I am, and what I want to get from my studies.