We're about a week into our Washington DC seminar and I've been doing a pretty good job of doing a balancing act between getting my work done for the seminar and watching the Olympics late into the night. Today I made an excellent presentation on the health care system in the England AND watched the U.S. women's beach volleyball team win the gold medal. While my achievement is obviously more monumental, I still would like to acknowledge that winning a gold medal is probably just as difficult of a task as a twenty-minute presentation. Well, ok, perhaps being an Olympic athlete is slightly even more demanding than this seminar. However, I think there's something to be said about how all these world-class athletes got to where they are today.
Everyone knows becoming a successful athlete takes an incredible amount of hard work and practice. Sure, there's the factor of individual talent, but if Tiger Woods, Cristiano Ronaldo, or Kobe Bryant never practiced, they'd be playing on the weekends and following hopeful career paths during the week like the rest of us.
The same is true of almost all truly successful people. I think there is a misconception that if you simply go to college and get good grades you'll eventually get your dream job and live happily ever after. I know that two years ago, my thinking was similar to this.
Some people realize that they need to practice their careers early on, and they are the people who have killer resumes and get the jobs they want out of college. It takes some people a little longer to realize how much hard work and experience is needed to become truly successful in your preferred field. Clearly, everyone who is here in DC realizes the importance of gaining experience in your field and that already puts us ahead of much of the competitition.
We received our internship assignments this week and I've been assigned a position at UK Trade and Investment in the sports division. Awesome. For me, it doesn't get much better than this. It's an international business position and that's what I'm most interested in. I'm also obsessed with football (soccer) and will be going to quite a few matches in London and hoping my position will have something to do with the sport. Anyway, now it's up to me to absorb and learn as much as I can from the people around me while I'm there and I'm excited to do it. This is an opportunity to work with and learn from international business professionals. It's just like a once in a lifetime chance to train with the U.S. woman's beach volleyball team, well, at least it would be if I played volleyball, lived on a beach… and if I was a girl, but anyway, you get the point.
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