Business vs. Pleasure

It has taken me a few days to process one fact: August 5^th, 2016 will forever be known as the day I signed my life away (for the first time). I accepted a full-time (read: big girl) job. So here’s a story for you:

Twelve weeks ago, I began an internship with a wonderful company. I was working as part of an all-male IT Network team. The learning curve was set exponentially high and I was thrown into tasks that I had barely even studied in a classroom setting. I’ve been told that the best way to describe the IT industry is trial by fire, and that’s scarily accurate so far.

The week before last, the rest of the interns and myself had been given the task of giving presentations to the executive suite of the company. I was practically a wreck when presentation day rolled around. We were locked away in a room, surrounded by men and women holding titles of great authority, each of whom were waiting to watch so many twenty-somethings explain what they had learned in stammering, shaking voices.

When it was my turn to discuss my experiences, I began with what has become my normal introduction:

“My name is Stephanie Strickland. I’m a native of Hendersonville, North Carolina, just a few short miles outside of Asheville. I will be graduating in December from Appalachian State University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration in Computer Information Systems and a minor in music.”

I droned on for what felt like an hour and a half. I told them all about the projects I had worked on, the wonderful people who had taken me under their wing, and how I had been an asset to my team. But I’ll be damned if the first question I got after I concluded wasn’t, “So you studied music? What instrument do you play?”

Keep in mind, I had been prepared to answer all sorts of questions. Particularly those pertaining to the OSI and TCP/IP models, how I felt about decisions to upgrade hardware, and if I was a true believer that students in the millennial generation were ready to step into the workplace. But this one question really surprised me.

The two years I’ve spent in the business world have changed me in so many ways. I now own more dress pants than fraternity letters. My padfolio is more used than my mouthpiece. It has become more common for me to read a financial plan than a piece of music. It’s been a shocking transformation, and I don’t think I realized the extent of it until that day, when the CEO of a wonderful company wanted to know what instrument I play.

And the funniest part of this situation to me was how natural the answer came. I had practically studied, hoping that I would be able to impress the executives with a technical answer to any question they threw my way, and instead, I got an opportunity to share with them my very first love – music.

It seems so perfectly timed that my internship would end the same week that Drum Corps finals begins. Everyone has begun changing their Facebook profile image to an action shot of them participating in an organization that they love, and I’m fortunate enough to be able to do the same thing. But now I’ve got more “action shots”. The difference is, instead of holding my instrument, these action shots show me shaking hands with people in business suits.

I guess the moral to the story is this:

Just because you leave something, doesn’t mean that it ever leaves you. I may have chosen a new path, but I’ll never wander away from my love of music. I’ll always feel a pang in my chest when I’m listening to Vivaldi, and my fingers will still tap out the familiar rhythm of the first solo I ever studied. All the while, I’ll never stop wanting to delve deeper into this new, exciting world of technology.

I’m part of two very unique fields, both of which I love deeply. And somehow, it seems that they’re both finding ways to love me back. How lucky am I?