“How Majoring in History at LU Has Prepared Me for a Career in Sports”

It’s no secret nowadays. A lot of undergrad students set out with the goal of making it in the sports business world one day. That is great! It’s just important to understand what that goal entails. Taking a larger view, sports represent just one portion of the entire entertainment industry in our country. And it just so happens that specific portion remains one of the most competitive career fields today. Thus, it doesn’t really take too long to understand the predicament that so many college graduates run into once they earn their degree in “sports management” and get into the thick of the job hunt. It can be broken down using simple supply and demand. A finite amount of jobs exist for an abundant supply of talented candidates to fill those few positions.

That’s why what we have at Lawrence is so special. Lawrence coursework has refined me. It has grown my oral and written communication skills and developed my ability to think through and solve problems, which will serve me for the rest of my life. I’ve been able to major in something that has always intrigued me and dive deeper into that lifelong interest of history in my time at LU. More than anything, my ability to think critically and write with clarity has blossomed as I have put into action the mission of the LU History Department: actively do history. The whole time, I’ve learned how to learn! I will walk away from LU with the most important, versatile skill-set, now it’s just the technical side of things that I need to grasp… the actual application of my skills in the world of sports. But that’s the easy part! No matter what fields we Vikings head into, we carry that liberal arts pursuit of knowledge with us. The spirit of my education is not defined by whether or not I can locate a job in sports upon graduation. Rather, the spirit of my education is defined by continuing to learn as I grow in all aspects of my life.

To conclude with a career thought, I’d like to share one great piece of advice that I received from one of my mentors, Scott Myers ’77, as I began my search for internships in the sports business world. A lot of people our age choose to pursue opportunities in the world of sports business and rationalize their decision by thinking about the fact they love playing sports, so why not continue that love through a career. The allure of interaction with the athletes is equally enticing, and many of the same individuals just desire to be affiliated with their favorite teams. What they don’t realize that sports business is exactly that…. a business! Therefore, in summer internships or other experiential opportunities, focus on discovering and pursuing the function of business that interests you. Accept the fact that out of school, you may not get right into the sports world. Who cares?! Pursue your function of business outside of sports business. The experiences in business that you gain outside of sports will carry immense value down the line if the world of sports later opens up and interests you.

GO LAWRENCE!

It’s been quite evident to me over the past 8 weeks just how clearly my internship experience with the NBRPA connects with my academic experience at Lawrence University. For starters, I came into the summer prepared to be active in several departments and juggle my time wisely between the many responsibilities at my site, and I believe that feeling can be attributed to the important skill I have acquired at LU: time management between three courses per term, a college basketball schedule, and the host of extracurriculars I am involved with on campus. Also, the work ethic that my Lawrence studies have instilled in me translated right over to my approach to this tremendous summer opportunity. I came to the organization that first day prepared, reminiscent of how I would get ready for a rigorous course up at school. More than anything, the mentally stimulating and engaging coursework at Lawrence made me ready for this summer opportunity and has made all the difference as I have begun to experience the sports business world. Similar to my studies at Lawrence, I have been challenged this summer to think outside the box in our events department and come up with innovative strategies to reach our members via social media platforms. Finally, my summer experience, which is rooted in interacting with one of the premier American professional sports leagues (NBA), represents an opportunity outside of anything that I could be a part of on campus or in my studies at LU. I’ve talked with several alumni and friends, and I believe that point deserves further consideration. While Lawrence does not offer any sports business classes, that does not mean a career in the business of sports is outside of the realm of possibilities for any LU student interested in the field. I look forward to touching on that point more in my next blog post. To me, it was my academic experience that played one of the most significant roles in qualifying me for this opportunity. My Lawrence education provided the tools, emphasized the value of learning how to learn, and instilled the work ethic. It’s the liberal arts at work, baby! ​

My work with Hurar Investment Group is one of many paths that can be pursued with a background in economics, and it is allowing me to develop hard skills in business and finance that I wouldn’t be taught during classes.  I am an economics major with a focus on sustainable development, so most of the material I study at Lawrence is economic theory and case studies, with less emphasis on basic business and technical skills.  My academic background provides a great macro-perspective for the work that I am doing with Hurar, and has provided me with a foundation of soft skills that have been extremely useful. Economics and business require distinct sets of knowledge, but throughout my time at Lawrence I have been able to develop both through coursework, extracurricular opportunities, and jobs.  I am very interested in the theory behind economics, and the framework for analyzing interactions in the world that it provides; however I plan to pursue business after graduation.  My work with Hurar Investment Group provides an in-depth look at sustainable development in action and my Excel skills and financial knowledge have increased significantly. An added bonus is all of the practice I’m getting speaking Spanish in both formal and informal settings, which will help advance my Spanish minor as well!

In my time here I have realized how important government legislation is for sustainable development to be practical and cost-effective. Once it is mandated that alternative energy sources be used to meet a certain portion of a building’s demand, the interest in investing in new technologies or studying new methods of implementation increases immensely.  Macroeconomics discusses the large-scale impacts of government legislation, so I am eager to apply these ideas to what I have seen in practice in Spain and to predict the impact that similar legislation would have on the United States’ economy after I complete the course this year.

Well time to take a good deep breath in celebration of a crazy week. This will definitely be long because this past week was incredibly busy. Although the previous weeks were no joke either, I will only talk about the conference week otherwise this will go on for pages.

The 2nd conference and 1st festival for Deep Listening is complete. The work for the past month has really paid off and the participants loved the whole experience.

The whole conference started with a pre-conference workshop with Heloise Gold.

Heloise is a T’ai Chi/Qu Gong instructor from Austin, Texas that has worked with Pauline for many years and she has incorporated Deep Listening into her T’ai Chi practice. I got sucked into the opportunity very last minute because Heloise needed someone to pick her up from the bus station, I was available and I ended up getting invited to participate in her workshops.  Doing T’ai Chi for 6-7 hours a day was very refreshing…Having to wake up at 6:30 every morning was not as refreshing but definitely  a nice kick in the seat of the pants.

Here is where I get to tie in how attending a conservatory has made other non-musical adventures significantly easier. There were some complications between RPI’s summer outreach office and the participants and so some complications came up with how the housing and meal plans worked with the pre-conference workshop.  This situation ended up being a good warning for future events like the caterer for breakfast sleeping in one morning and all of the sudden a conference for 100 participants doesn’t have any coffee or food to eat in the morning.  But fortunately in both situations I moved fast and communicated with all the participants the best I could and all of the problems were solved. So the life after Lawrence lesson of this week was that no matter how much work you put into making sure your part of a project goes smoothly, there is always a chance that someone else might mess up and you have to be ready to make the adjustment.

Another highlight of the conference and festival included assisting Leaf Miller with the AUMI workshop.  Although the program was originally designed for people with disabilities, it was a lot of fun to get a bunch of adults improvising with AUMI and drumming together.  Leaf is also such a pleasure to work with that the whole experience with her was such a blast.

My favorite performance of the entire festival is probably not too much of a surprise. In anticipation of their new album coming out, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Jesse Stewart, Johannes Welsch, and Jonas Braasch joined together to present Sonic Gems. All of their musical decisions seemed perfect and fit into each other so well that it was hard to tell it was all improvised. Some true deep listening and great musical minds working together that night.  It was also cool to see a 5 foot gong. Carrying that gong was a different story.

So now it’s time to focus on Pauline’s next book. I will read all of the articles and speeches to be included and then will settle on a good order! It’s strange to say, but I think I actually might be good at this sort of thing. This will take me back to my old high school days with drama and speech team.  I’m normally pretty good with finding the main spine of each section and then tying it all together to one meaningful whole. We’ll see how it goes with this!

I’ve also been going  to New York consistently and got a lesson with Chris Lamb, principal percussion for the NY Phil, played with Samba New York, and went to the one year anniversary of Thursday night rumba led by Roman Diaz. All of those experiences were very inspiring and have kept me practicing plenty.  It’s pretty hard to find the time I need to make the progress I want in all of these musical styles, but I just have to trust that small chunks over long periods of time will pay off somewhere down the road.

So thanks for reading, and I hope this is exciting prospective students as much as I want it to. I don’t feel like I would be getting these opportunities or meeting as many great people if I went somewhere else for undergrad.

Greetings again from Chicago! As I begin this brief update on my exciting internship with the National Basketball Retired Players Association, I cannot help but marvel at how quickly the first month of my summer with the association has gone. On second thought, this feeling can probably be attributed to the heavy, engaging workload that I have been assigned. I guess you could consider me a unique intern as this summer represents a rotational experience with the NBRPA, which means I am getting a wide array of experience in several departments. Thus far, I have been quite active in Operations, Special Events, and Membership Benefits & Programming.

I have learned many different things about the NBRPA, the NBA, sports business, and my career interests thus far, however I would like to touch on one specific thought right now. It has become quite apparent to me early on here, and it represents a bit of classic intern wisdom that deserves some true consideration. Do the “little things” well. Sure – it’s cliche, and it’s obvious. But it’s also the truth, and its value transcends the business world. Over the course of my first month at the NBRPA, I have updated and re-organized our organization’s chief file cabinet, worked the telephones, sorted through a storage unit, and done a host of other small tasks. While surely that is not all I have done in my first four weeks, I have taken a special liking to knocking out tasks like those. By accomplishing the day’s small tasks efficiently and effectively, one becomes reliable, dependable, and trustworthy in the eyes of the staff and higher-ups in the office. As a basketball player, I am beyond compelled to use the hoops analogy here. Give me the team that is fundamentally sound, talks on defense, always knows score/time/possession, sets screens with conviction, makes crisp passes, and does the rest of the “little things” well, and I’m telling you we are winning the ballgame. These “little things” may not always be the most glorious or enjoyable activities, but from my experience embracing these duties, I can assure you that they are a worthwhile use of your time and just might represent your golden ticket to new responsibilities.

Realizing that I am wrapping up my first month with Hurar Investment Group, I can’t believe how time has flown. I have been involved in a wide variety of activities around the office, getting glimpses of the design process and architectural elements of the hotels as well as getting some hands-on experience in finance and industry research.  One of the most important stages of work here is the estimation of income and expenses for the hotel once it is up and running – this determines the return on investment that the investors will receive and predicts how profitable the property rehabilitation will be overall.  I participated in this process for one of the company’s hotels. My supervisor created a cash flow statement predicting the profits of the first 10 years of operation, and the hotel manager also created a cash flow statement with similar predictions.  However, there were significant disparities in their estimations. I was given the chance to compare the two statements and discover where the fundamental differences were in incomes and expenses.  Once I found these, I presented them to my supervisor and created a cash flow statement that combined elements of both of their predictions.  It was very interesting to see what huge effects certain numbers could have on the entire cash flow statement, such as occupancy rate for the hotel.  If you increased the occupancy rate just a few percent each month, it wouldn’t appear to be a drastic increase, but it increased profits considerably.  The goal is to be conservative, yet accurate with these predictions so that people understand the risks and potential rewards that come with their investment.

I am now working on industry research, looking at hostels and hotels in the Malaga area to compare prices based on the time of the year.  It surprised me that there were so many hostels competing at similar prices in the area, but they sell out regularly so the demand for tourism here is clearly increasing.  Hostels are popular in Europe for student travel and young adults because they offer cheap, centrally located accommodations and often have a very social atmosphere.  There are fewer hostels in the United States, so there is less direct competition between hostels and hotels there. One interesting thing I have noticed is that due to the prevalence of hostels here, many hotels increase the amenities and free benefits of staying with them –as well as focusing on factors such as silence, cleanliness, and air conditioning- to draw in customers. So far I have learned a lot about this industry, and having a chance to improve my Excel skills, get hands-on experience with financial statements, and conduct bilingual research will serve me well in the future.