Why am I aBusiness Major?

Business is mesmerizing to me because it has the power to connect people and create something that actually makes an impact on the local and global community. It’s about organizing people with different skills into their best positions and bringing it all together into something really special.

I started to get the hint that I liked business during the pandemic when I created a Minecraft YouTube channel. I was embarrassed to tell my family and long-time friends, but in reality, it was something I should’ve been proud of. I found myself very lonely and without many friends during the lockdown. Partly from a social need for human connection and partly from a love of Minecraft, I started organizing community events where 80 to 100 kids my age would join and build whatever they wanted in 12 hours. I taught myself to edit in Premiere Pro and made my thumbnails in Photoshop. I ended up garnering a pretty large 700-person following from it, too. It was unbelievably addictive to watch all these people connect and build insane structures in Minecraft. I was very devoted to organizing events on my YouTube channel and spent many hours beforehand reflecting on the game design and ideas that would be a hit.

In later years, my drive to create connections found new bounds in my film club. We came together to make films around campus and collaborated on ways to improve our editing. I loved watching everyone chat in our meetings, and it gave me such a rush to know I put it together. I discovered my love of skiing and backpacking through connections I made in the film club, too. I couldn’t get enough of the Olympic Mountains to my West and the Cascades to my East, and then my dad introduced me to fly fishing, and I never really used my PC again.

In college, I found myself lonely again. This time, however, it wasn’t social isolation but rather a lack of people who shared a deep connection to the things I did, like skiing. I had a lot of friends, but I didn’t feel like I could connect with them as easily as I did with friends back home. Once again, my proclivity to make connections and organize new creations kicked in hard. I tried to apply to the UO ski team and got rejected, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The rejected applicants were dumped into a large group chat. I saw a need for a larger ski club with a more inclusive and social focus. In response, I created a new group chat called “UO Snow Rejects.” I recruited a few of the more vocal members to form a leadership committee and ultimately founded a new club called “Elevation Oregon.”

We used school classrooms for our meetings and interest sessions. In our second year, we’ve raised almost $10,000 in membership fees and are partnering with Dave’s Hot Chicken and Track Town Pizza for additional fundraising. As a leader, I’ve worked to align team members’ strengths with roles within the club. Our team has evolved the club from a few trips up the hill with events on campus to organizing several bus trips to multiple mountains and social events on the hills.

The ski club has also allowed me an entry into my second passion: helping the environment in my community through fundraising. We have shifted some of our fundraising to support environmental issues locally. It’s this connection that flourishes into something powerful, capable of significant change, which makes me so passionate about creating organizations and businesses.

I’ve had the opportunity to apply what I’ve learned in business classes, including my financial accounting class, to our day-to-day work at the club. For example, we incorporated as a domestic nonprofit, drafted our articles of incorporation and bylaws, and maintained spreadsheets for all our transactions.

I am finding that the business knowledge I’m learning is a powerful way to enable my love of connecting people to work towards a common goal. I have a passion for bringing people together and building great things, and I think business will be a great learning companion to help me along the way.