My Entrepreneurship Story

Entrepreneurship was never a prominent idea in my life. I grew up in a divorced household where my mother encouraged me to be whomever I pleased, while my father stressed his old-school ‘Asian’ values. He aimed for me to chase job security through a career as an engineer. I was torn between two worlds that made theoretical sense but didn’t seem likely to coincide.

What piqued my interest in entrepreneurship was the show “Shark Tank”. I started watching in high school, and although I knew that public television is often highly edited to entertain the viewer, I was keenly interested in the concept of creating “something from nothing”. And by nothing, I meant a single idea.

I never really capitalized on this interest as I felt I did not have the potential, creativity, or drive to come up with something that would really work. I had negative thoughts; “Everything’s already been invented already, hasn’t it?” and “Well, is this really going to even catch in people’s minds?”. A lot of doubt going through my head made me numb and eventually careless about the potential of an idea.

With this mindset, I entered college with somewhat of an idea of what I wanted to do. I started as a chemical engineering major with the pre-med track (ambitious, no?). The first year was a breeze and I focused on social development rather than academic. Once classes for engineering started building during my second year, I realized it was not a major I wanted to pursue. However, with my father paying for my tuition, I blamed the medical side of my desires. I dropped chemical engineering and pre-medicine in order to focus solely on mechanical engineering. After another year of stress, anxiety, breakdowns, and a loss of sleep, I had had enough. I started thinking more of what I wanted to do as a career, rather than what I wanted to major in. I looked into ideas of vlogging, travel, and small businesses before realizing that I simply wanted to create a life that was based around me to help others, rather than being controlled by them.

The premise of this class appealed to me. “ENT3003: Principles of Entrepreneurship”, a fresh start where I could express my ideas and creative thoughts with people to hopefully create a spark to fuel my fire. I am hoping to be able to creatively think and foster the birth of new ideas and concepts. I want to be able to inspire myself and others, and I want to learn as much as I can in order to fulfill my dreams.