My Take on Business Students
It may seem like I am being contradictory when I say that, in my opinion, business is the best study, and I simultaneously acknowledge that business students are at a disadvantage. Why do I think this? Well on the one hand side, I believe business is the best study because if you know business you can explore infinite areas and are not limited to any field. There is business everywhere, after all, and whether it is technology or art or medicine, there is always a business component involved. On the other hand, this is the very reason that makes me think business students are at a disadvantage. They have an understanding for business itself but they must go the extra mile to figure out exactly where they will use it.
To clarify this point, compare a student of computer programming with a student of business. The former knows exactly what he is good and, let’s assume, enjoys it. He spends his entire collegiate career practicing the same skill and by the time of graduation, is extremely well-versed in it, allowing him to place in top companies. The business student, however, only knows how business works in general. While he may know a lot about his field of study, he does not have an entire collegiate career’s worth of experience, as does the computer science student, and this is where the disadvantage lies; because from the business student, top companies don’t have any hard proof of abilities; he has no portfolio of previous works, per se. What I am pointing out is that the study of business is not a hard skill; it’s a knowledge base, the framework for a way of thinking, and it must be combined with something more.
There is however, much more positivity out of this whole phenomenon. Continuing with my comparison of the two types of students, I will comment on their career in terms of their maturity. The computer science student has decided to go into his study only at the age of seventeen or eighteen. He has not yet lived away from home or, as is the most common case, been exposed the world beyond his childhood up until that point. On the other hand, the business student has the benefit of being away from home and getting a feel for the real world before he must decide what it is exactly that he want to do. Meanwhile he learns about business. He has more time, in that case, to figure himself out and find what his so-called passion is. It is not to say that every case is this way; that every computer science student, or any other type of student for that matter, takes the path I am suggesting, but in a general sense for purposes of comparison, I believe it is like this.
As I enter my third year of college as a business student, I reflect on the grand possibilities that are open to me and I occasionally get anxious, as business students often do, about what it is that I will be doing in just two years. But I know that my education, and its consequent effect on my way of thinking, will help me find the supplement to my business knowledge when the time comes.