Waldron Career Conversation with Charlie Vasbinder ’19 and Thanas Kountroubis ’19: Chicago Field Studies
This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Charlie Vasbinder ’19 and Thanas Kountroubis ’19, who both participated in the Chicago Field Studies Program interning at Barnett Capital and currently work there today after Graduating from Northwestern.
Charlie and Thanas share stories about the Northwestern Experience, the value of different majors, changing majors, Chicago Field Studies, working at Barnett Capital, and the value of an Arts & Sciences Education!
Timestamp Details for Alumni Speakers:
1:00: Charlie’s Northwestern Experience
5:20: Pivoting From Econ to History
7:40: Thanas’ Student Experience
14:15: Struggling through Northwestern Coursework
16:10: Chicago Field Studies
20:00: The Value of CFS as an Extracurricular
26:00: Arts & Sciences at work Today and Not Being Afraid to Fail
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Weinberg in the World podcast, where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. This episode is brought to you by the Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program, a resource in Weinberg College where we help current students explore career options through making connections with alumni.
Cassie:
Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Charlie Vasbinder and Thanas Kountroubis. Charlie and Thanas both graduated from Weinberg College in 2019, charlie with a major in history and Thanas with a major in economics. They both participated in the Chicago Field studies program where they interned at Barnett Capital together and both landed full-time roles at the company upon graduation as associates for the firm. Thanks so much for being here with us today, Charlie and Thanas.
Charlie Vasbinder:
Yeah, thank you for having us, Cassie. Appreciate it.
Thanas Kountroubis:
Yeah, absolute pleasure.
Cassie:
Yeah, and we're excited to hear more about what you both are up to at Barnett Capital. I know you guys both mentioned at the time of this recording, you've been on the road and been busy this summer, which is great. We like to start our episodes with your student experience and what you were up to when you were on campus. If you could tell us just a little bit more about what were some of the impactful classes, internships, extracurriculars, things that impacted you in your postgrad path, and why don't we start with Charlie.
Charlie Vasbinder:
I grew up in the western suburbs. I grew up in Wheaton, Illinois. I got into Northwestern and started in the fall of 2015, started as a economics major and very quickly found that that was not the path for me and decided to pivot. One of the great things about Weinberg is that you have distribution requirements and they make you take classes in English and history and sciences and took a couple history classes. I took an American history class that went particularly well, had a TA that I really enjoyed, wrote a couple papers that were interesting. I truthfully didn't want to get worked by the curves in economics for the rest of my college career and I found it to be more interesting studying history.
There were other paths at Northwestern via business institutions or entrepreneurship and other class opportunities that I felt that I could kind of do on the side of ancillary to a major. I didn't feel kind of the obligation to major in economics or statistics or mathematics in order to go into business. I had a couple mentors that were upperclassmen that were going into business with English majors or going into business with biology majors. I never felt the sort of pressure and I wasn't cut out for it quite the way Thanas was able to take all the economics classes and be a student athlete.
Anyways, I studied history. I had a really great experience studying history. I found it to be academically engaging and kind of sought experiences outside of it, knowing that I wasn't going to be a historian or probably wasn't going to go to law school. I sought experiences outside of school that would bolster my resume, for lack of better way of putting it, and give me some hard experience to then go and interview with various consulting, investment banking, real estate, you name it. At the time, I think when you're 18 or 19 years old, you have no idea what path you want to take. Everyone says, "I want go into business," but they don't really know what it means.
Anyways, I did CFS and did it in the spring of '17, so I was a sophomore, and CFS was super impactful. I did it with Barnett Capital. I'm not sure how into that we'll go later in this conversation, so I'll just gloss over that. Yeah, I did CFS the spring of my sophomore year with Barnett Capital and actually did it again the spring and summer of my junior year, and I did that with Thanas. The timing and the circumstances at the firm were, it was perfect. Thanas and I kind of joke that we've hit a six leg parlay with where we're at today and leg one of that was the circumstances at Barnett Capital in 2018, 2019 that ultimately allowed us to end up with full-time jobs working for the Barnett family. The rest is kind of history.
To bring it full circle, studied history, loved it, enjoyed every minute of it. I did CFS. I took some of the economics classes that I didn't find particularly engaging, and did the entrepreneurship certificate, which I found to be more engaging but less applicable to what I was doing at Barnett. CFS was the primary vehicle for me to explore what life after school would look like, and I'm eternally grateful for it.
Cassie:
Yeah, that's great, Charlie, I really appreciate that. We'll definitely get into more of the specifics on the Chicago Field Studies, but I'm curious as a follow-up to you, pivoting from econ to history, did you get any questions from people, like maybe your parents? How did you handle that pivot with some of the people who were invested in your success?
Charlie Vasbinder:
I did. Yeah. Look, I'll be fully transparent. My parents worked very hard to pay for my education. The deal that I had with them was effectively that they would pay for my education and whatever I wanted to do with it or make of it was up to me. I am a very serious person. I take myself pretty seriously and take my life pretty seriously. They never doubted that what I was doing was not good enough or not in line or that it wouldn't work out. With my parents, it was always, "Hey, knock yourself out. If that's what you want to do, and you'll figure it out. Make sure you're taking care of business and treating people the right way and things will work out." I'm very lucky to have parents that are uber supportive in that regard.
I mean, anyone else invested in my life wasn't invested in quite that sort of way, and they made fun of me for flipping on it, but that's okay. I think that in many ways, I don't know, I think that the history major is a very useful tool for a bunch of other reasons. I think that every, it's super cliche, but any major that you kind of go down, if you take it seriously and you make something of it, you can derive from it a skillset that will ultimately be super useful, whatever it is, like economics, biology, history, whatever in Weinberg.
Cassie:
Absolutely. Absolutely. That's great to hear Charlie, and especially from someone who landed a really interesting job in finance after school from history, hopefully this encourages students to really find that major they're excited about. Thanas, for you, it seems like econ was the thing you were excited about. Let's hear a little bit more about your student experience and some of those impactful classes and extracurriculars.
Thanas Kountroubis:
I was a student athlete at Northwestern, I swam. I grew up in Philadelphia. I'd never been to the Midwest before. I took a recruiting visit out here by myself, met the team, met the coaches. They were kind of just like, "Yeah, this is the last spot that we have to fill and we've got a couple of guys that are interested in pulling the trigger. The sooner that we can know the better. Otherwise, we're not going to be able to hold this spot for you." It was effectively a decision that I had to make, not on the spot, but within a very short amount of time. Being a senior in high school, I wasn't really equipped to be making that decision. I knew that it was a great school. I knew that my parents were really excited about it. It was like right place, right time, right recruiting class, all the stars kind of aligned, if you will, in terms of me finding my way to Northwestern.
Yeah, it was a grind of a freshman year. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew that finance interesting to me, but I knew that Northwestern also didn't have an undergraduate business program, so economics just kind of seemed like the next best thing. I had parents like Charlie that worked extremely hard, didn't have all the opportunities that were afforded to me growing up. My dad grew up in a very small village in Greece, and he moved here when he was in high school, didn't speak the language, didn't have a dollar, and just ended up going to college because his guidance counselor told him that it would probably be a good idea, ended up being a very successful guy.
To that end, I didn't really have a ton of guidance from my parents in terms of what a successful career path would look like, what a good major would be. I had an idea and I of course had an idea what interested me, and it was kind of just driven by whatever I could do to make them proud because we're extremely close. I'm not just saying that because I have parents with lofty the expectations, but I knew that they wanted the best for me and I knew that if I was going to be a plane right away and be living a life independent of them and independent of their guidance, I'd have to lean on people within a close proximity to me to make the right decisions.
I didn't really know what econ was, to be honest with you when I walked into my first class. I think I got a 35% on my first exam and I was like, "Oh my God, this school's nuts," and just figured it out. We were afforded a lot of opportunities as athletes. We had access to a lot of tutors at no cost to us. Although it was a full-time, 30 hour a week job, no free mornings, no free afternoons, no free weekends, they made it possible to succeed, I guess.
With that though, the expectation was that you're there in the summers and that you're training, and it wasn't super conducive for internship opportunities. I was introduced to the Chicago Field Studies program from, not an alumni at the time, but I think I was a freshman and he was a senior and he had interned with this office through the field studies program. He was like, "Hey, man, I don't know what your thoughts are in terms of doing something for credit, but if you want to put off some of the distribution requirements, you can knock out a few credits by doing this in your off season," when you're not required to practice 30 hours a week, but you're only required to practice eight. I was like, "Will right, well, we'll see how it goes."
I was just kind of in the middle of the grind for the first couple, I don't know that this is going to be aligned with some of the individuals that are going to be listening to this podcast, but for me, it took two solid years to understand and get comfortable with the rigor of Northwestern, let alone some of these economics classes, which I found to be extremely challenging. At that point, I was like, "Okay, it's probably getting to the point where I should start being serious about what I want do." I had friends that were getting investment banking internships and things like that in Manhattan freshman year, and I was like, "All right, well, I'm not really in a position to be doing that right now, but we'll see. I'll do my best and I'll figure it out."
I got introduced to the Chicago Field Studies program by a senior teammate of mine and ultimately ended up pulling the trigger on that my junior summer, or excuse me, my junior spring. Did that for credit, trained in the morning, worked all day, just kind of rinse, wash, and repeat, and fell in love with it. That winter, I started interviewing for different positions in different parts of the country for the proper junior year internship, if you will, that kind of sets you up for what you want to do after you graduate. Fell in love with the CFS program, fell in love with the office, effectively told them, "Look, guys, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to be successful here. I'm willing to put off whatever we have planned to stay if you'll have us in the summer."
Ended up coming back, as Charlie mentioned, in the summer of 2018, and then at the conclusion of that summer, they offered us full-time jobs. I am extremely fortunate, it wasn't really planned, which I think people think most things are when you look at it retroactively. I do think that so long as you stay motivated and so long as you stay engaged, you create opportunities for yourself purely just by being engaged in what you do. The rest, as Charlie mentioned, is kind of history, but it's been great thus far.
Cassie:
Yeah, that's great. Thanas, I don't think you're alone in the fact that it takes time to get used to the rigor of Northwestern and getting familiar with how quickly the classes move and how experienced classmates are and all of those things. It definitely takes time. I think that'll be really nice for our current students to hear as they're listening to your podcast, is just they're not alone in feeling those things and things work out in the end.
Thanas Kountroubis:
Yeah, I think that if there's anything that everyone that's listening to this podcast knows that's kind of taboo to tell people, how you struggle through coursework there. Regardless of what you do, I could have never written some of the papers that Charlie wrote and I figured out a way to get by in some of these 400 level classes that we were taking. It wasn't ever really something that was super acceptable to discuss among classmates. It was like, "You're going to struggle on your own and you're going to figure it out and you're going to lean on your superiors for help and lean on classmates to study," and things like that.
I don't know, it was never really something that was talked about. For whoever is having a hard time, regardless of what they're doing or what they're studying, you're going to get through it, you'll figure it out. Looking back on some of the things that I worried about, super easy for me to be saying it in the position that I'm in right now, but you're going to forget about it so fast. I couldn't even tell you one single question that I had on any exam for four years of my life, which really speaks to the fact that it really is a very small blip in time. Get through it, have fun, be engaged, meet very interesting people, and just do your best. If you're doing those things, those are all the right things to be doing in my opinion, and you'll be successful.
Cassie:
Absolutely. Yeah, very, very helpful. Thank you for sharing that with students and hopefully some of our students who need to hear that will get that message this fall when we launch your episode. I know you both mentioned the Chicago Field Studies program. I want to dive into this a little bit more. For students who maybe are not familiar with Chicago Field Studies, Charlie, can you share just a little bit more about what it is? Obviously you get to do some internship through the program, but can you share more about your experience? There's coursework involved and things like that, can you just tell us a little bit more about Chicago Field Studies?
Charlie Vasbinder:
My introduction to CFS, Chicago Field Studies, was also similar to Thanas. An older guy at the school who had done it with, I think Merrill Lynch, and the way that it was presented, in full transparency, was kind of a hack. It's a way to get academic credit, it's a way to get work experience. You do take a course, as you mentioned, and you have coursework to get work experience. There's a potential to be compensated, which is amazing if you can pull that off and I think you should be compensated, but that's a separate issue. Either way, it's a great tool to learn a little bit more about the workplace. These companies volunteer to take CFS, be a part of the CFS program, and they commit to taking a certain number of interns for a quarter. It fits into your schedule very similar to the way a class would.
The class, I think it was twice a week for an hour and a half. It was later, it was I think 4:30 to 6:00 Monday and Wednesday. It's a small group, and if I remember correctly, there were 5, 6, 7, 8 different courses that you could take that you could pair up with your internship. What I remember about the coursework was that it was very reflective. It had to do mostly with, you meet with eight other, 10 other students that are doing internships concurrently with the quarter and their coursework and their normal schedules. It was effectively a discussion based, reflection based class where you talk through what are you working on, what does your company do, how do you fit into the picture, what do you like about it, what don't you like about it? All the things that you subconsciously would do in a normal internship. You have an instructor that's actually proctoring a conversation and prompting discussion, I found to be very helpful. It was interesting.
Thanas And I always bring up the word, and it's been our mantra for the past five years, has been just engagement. You find out very quickly whether you are engaged in what you're doing and where you're working. To us, I'll speak for Thanas, that's the most important thing that you can possibly have. The course very quickly showed whether you were interested or not interested in what you were doing. That's really the purpose of doing internships when you're in college, if you're fortunate enough to be able to do them. You get to see immediately whether you are into it or not into it, and if not, what might be a better fit? Ultimately, that was the purpose I feel of CFS, was to figure out how you could translate when you're going to make the jump into the world, what you might like, what you might not like, and how to optimize for that.
Cassie:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's really helpful. I've heard that from alumni before where it's good to know both what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy, and having that opportunity to have internships to figure out, "okay, this is something I'm excited about, I'm engaged in," or, "This isn't, maybe this is a good place to pivot." I think that's really helpful, Charlie, to get a good baseline of CFS and what it was to you. Thanas, can you speak to a little bit just more about what you learned on the job? How was it valuable? How was Chicago Field Studies valuable in teaching you something in addition to the classroom?
Thanas Kountroubis:
Yeah, absolutely. I don't think that Chicago Field Studies as a program was much of a value add in terms of me understanding and contributing to my specific workplace. Like Charlie mentioned, what it was amazing for was the collaborative nature of the class amongst your peers that are going through it with you. For example, when we got set up here and we started working effectively like nine to five jobs for credit, it was like, "Guys, we understand that this is something that is for class credits, an internship, it's whatever Northwestern wants to call it, but this is a family business. This is a very wealthy family and we deploy their capital on their behalf and this is a big responsibility that you're taking on, so we're going to feed you to the wolves. It's time to go and it's real," which is what I very much appreciated about it because for me, the class was a time to reflect on what we did every day, but when we were in the thick of it, in the trenches with the people here, it was very much like all gas, no breaks.
When we got back to campus and we were able to collaborate amongst our peers and with the professor and talk about what we were doing, I noticed immediately that when asked questions about what I was doing and asked questions about how the experience was, I was very fortunate enough to be connected with a place that I was excited to talk about. I woke up every single morning, I can't wait to go into the office and work with the people that I'm surrounded with every single day. Coming back to a classroom that was less exam driven and less individualized I guess, and more collaborative in nature, listening to what some of my other peers were working on, it was very easy to pick out who was interested in what they were doing and who wasn't. It was only a good thing in either case because you got to listen to people explain why they enjoyed what they're doing or why they didn't enjoy what they were doing. They put it into their perspective on their current situation, their job, their employment situation through CFS, did nothing but add color to me personally.
I was like, "Okay, they just made a comment," or, "They had a 20-minute presentation on what it is that they were doing and why it is that they did or did not enjoy it," and I was like, "Oh, well, they didn't enjoy it for this reason. That's interesting. I didn't really ever think to approach that kind of a situation or that kind of a responsibility or that kind of opportunity in that way, and they didn't like it for that reason." It kind of opens up your mind to different pushes and pulls and different attractions to different spaces.
It's interesting, I don't think that the majority of internship opportunities throughout, let alone Northwestern, but throughout the country, allow you to be amongst your peers for a couple of hours a week in pure reflection mode. You ask your friends what they're doing and it's like, "Oh, I'm interning at an investment bank on Wall Street," or, "I'm working at a private equity firm in San Francisco," or whatever, and you ask them how it is and they're like, "It's great." It's like, "Okay, that sounds good, but I don't know anything about it and I don't really know what you struggle with every day or what you're good at," or whatever.
These professors, they sit you down. I had a three-hour class once a week, and it was like they forced you to talk about it. When you're forced to talk about something regardless of whether or not you like it or not, you really get to learn not only about what your classmates are doing, but what motivates them and what gets them excited and what drives them to get out of bed in the morning. You really learn a lot about yourselves just by listening to someone talk about something that you know nothing about. That's true for professors speaking to material that they've studied for forever. It's the same in my opinion for one of your peers that works 40 hours a week at an office, that you don't have the time to work two jobs, of course, but you can learn a lot about a different space just by listening to someone talk about what they do every day and how their eyes opened up when they talk about it or not. It was very cool in that regard.
CFS is what you make of it. I don't think that if you're not interested in pursuing an internship opportunity and working and taking initiative to put yourself ahead, put yourself out there and take advantage of an opportunity, then it's not for you. The CFS program isn't going to help you advance your career. It's going put you in a position to make a difference yourself. That's what I valued out of it. I love the collaborative environment after the fact, but once you are in it and grinding, it's a full-blown spring or summer opportunity and it's either going to be serious or it's not. If you're not engaged, you're not going to get as much benefit out of it as if you are. I think it was probably one of the best resources, if not the best resource that Northwestern offered me for sure.
Cassie:
That's great. That's really helpful and I appreciate you both sharing just a little bit more about the specifics on the program for students who haven't heard about it yet or maybe considering it themselves, these are really good bits of information and advice on how to take advantage of it. My last question for you both is just a little bit more about what you're doing today. Charlie, we can start with you and just hear a little bit more about your work, like what you're doing day to day and how you see your arts and sciences background being an asset at work.
Charlie Vasbinder:
For sure. Yeah. I'll give the elevator pitch in a nutshell of Barnett Capital and then I'll explain what we do specifically for the office. Barnett Capital is a single family office, which means that we invest money on behalf of a family, a Chicagoland area family. They made a considerable amount of money in a hospital supply business here in Chicago. This Barnett Capital is the real estate investment arm of the family office. In simple terms, we have access to a lot of capital and a mandate to invest that capital into real estate deals. We do it in a certain way, which is we want to recycle capital very quickly and we're seeking opportunistic returns. We're trying to beat the stock market, we're trying to beat other investment vehicles that the family employs. In a nutshell, that's what Barnett Capital does. It's a very small team. There are probably 10 individuals in the office here that are actively managing that capital and putting it to work and making sure that it comes back and Thanas and I were brought into the office in a very general capacity.
One of the things that's interesting about the real estate business is for young people getting into it, they don't have clear cut roles with heavy value add. You kind of have to learn the business before you have an opportunity to add a lot of value. When they brought us into Barnett Capital, they thought and they thought, I think correctly, the easiest way to teach us that business would be to let us do single and multifamily deals in the Chicagoland area. In simple terms, again, we were fixing and flipping houses and small buildings with two to four units all across the city, and that was very person to person. It was gritty, for lack of a better term. It was crazy learning experience. It was amazing. With the intention of learn how money works, learn how deals work, learn how the real estate business works, closings and contractors and title companies and learn that, get the foundation, get the footing, and ultimately it would grow into a larger opportunity. That's really what happened.
We were fortunate, and getting back at my comment from the very beginning of hitting a parlay, the office got into a business capitalizing retail deals in commercial real estate. Think a standalone Starbucks, when you go and you get your latte and you go through the drive-through, we give people money to actually build those buildings. We got into that business as an office in right around covid in earnest, like 2020. They brought Thanas and I into that business to effectively sell money to those developers that are going around the country building for Starbucks, building for 7-Eleven building, for Panera Bread. That is in essence what Thanas and I get up and do every single day, is we have relationships with these developers across the country. It's a very fragmented business, which means there are a lot of people doing it, so there's a lot of people to talk to and a lot of people to sell money to. We're in the business of selling money on behalf of the office. The office has money that we sell to developers that then go and build these projects.
Thanas and I are in a hybrid role, I would say, between actually being a salesperson where we're out, again, I've said it like four times, we're out selling money to developers, but on the back end of that, we're also investors. We're in charge of making sure that the deals are good, that the deals are underwritten properly, that they're going to pay off, that they're going to hit the returns that they need to hit for the family. It's kind of a twofold role of, and there's certainly conflict of interest between the two that you have to balance and you have to play tug of war with, of making sure that you're upholding your fiduciary duty to the family, and at the same time you're doing as much good business as you possibly can.
To bring that around to an arts and sciences background and why I think it's an effective skillset for doing what we do. It's obviously very person to person, so it's strong interpersonal skills, it's being able to have conversations, it's being able to sound smarter than you might be, and that's a very important part of the business. That's something that I think having a history degree or I guess taking courses at Northwestern that were more, I guess soft skill oriented, certainly helped out with on the front end.
Then on the back end, we have to convince the Barnett family every single day why they should be doing this and why they should be in this business. It's a lot of argument, it's a lot of persuasion. It's selling 101. A lot of the papers that I wrote at Northwestern, I mean, you're arguing a thesis, you're arguing why you should be doing something. It becomes clear quickly if you don't believe it yourself so you kind of have to be buying what you're selling. The skillset is really a perfect alignment with, it's not heavy quantitative. It's not heavy. Obviously we're not curing cancer or we're not creating the next vaccine for the new covid variants, but it's sales, it's selling widgets, it's selling money, it's convincing the money that they should be investing, and it's convincing the investors that they should be taking the money. It's a kind of perfect skillset for someone from an arts and sciences background. That would be my take on it.
Cassie:
Yeah, Charlie, that's great. That's really helpful. Thanas, for you, we got a good overview of what you all are doing and how that's evolved. I'm wondering if you can share just a little bit more. This was your first job out of school. Was it the perfect fit? How has it evolved in ways that have surprised you? Can you just share just a little bit more about how you see this impacting your career path from here?
Thanas Kountroubis:
I think that I got lucky from the standpoint of, I'm doing something right now that I will probably be doing for the rest of my life. I don't think that there are many people that are able to say that. I think that people are constantly looking for something that makes them feel the way that I do about what I'm currently doing. That shouldn't be a discouragement by any means. I do a lot of things every single day that I am either A, not comfortable with doing or B, that I don't enjoy doing. At the end of the day, globally, what I'm doing here and how I'm contributing for this office in a very entrepreneurial space with extreme responsibilities, is exactly what I want to be doing. If you would've asked me my junior year, my senior year of college, what kind of role I wanted to be in or what I would've wanted to pursue because I was that way, I would've told you that I didn't even know that I was that way.
There's a huge exploratory characteristic to being in the real world, if you will. College is kind of a sheltered place and everyone tells you that you're going to find what you love and it's going to fall on your lap and if you get good grades, it's all going to work out. I know a lot of people at Northwestern that got 4.0 GPAs and studied in the library until midnight and this and that and the other thing. You can be a C average student and find something professionally that you either love doing or you don't like doing, but if you're not engaged enough in your life to realize that you either like it or you don't like it, or maybe it's a mix of both and that you're going to go pursue another opportunity because this might not be a great fit.
You have to use college and use the first couple of years out of college to really find yourself, is a very cliche way of putting it. I don't really like saying that. I do think that a lot of people would, and a lot of people say, "Yeah, I'm going to take a year out of school to go find myself or whatever it is and figure out what it is that I enjoy by studying abroad," or something.
I don't know. For me, I don't know that that would've been something that would've helped me. I do know for a fact that what did help me was getting up every morning and going and surrounding myself with successful people and being in the space that at the time I didn't know was going to be a great fit for me, but ultimately just it kind of worked out. If it hadn't, because I was engaged every single day and because I wanted to come in here and make a difference and because I was kind of endowed with this responsibility of managing a wealthy family's money, I was kind of not forced because you're never forced to do anything, but in my case, I enjoyed it enough where I can say I was kind of forced in a good way to figure out real quick whether or not it was something that I love doing or not.
I think that is solely as a result of me dropping myself into the real world immediately after school and figuring out a lot about myself through an experience through other people. It's been a super exploratory couple years in the sense that I don't think that I would've been able to tell you, Cassie, that I am the way that I am and I'm enjoying what I'm doing, and I'm going to be doing this probably for the rest of my life, if it weren't for me being 22 years old out of school and not being afraid to fail.
I think that it's so important, I think that probably everyone listening to this podcast that is either on the heels of starting a new job or has just started a new job or whatever, will probably tell you it's scary to mess up and it's scary to make mistakes, and it totally is. Those mistakes are a lot smaller when you're 22 than they are when you're 24. They're a lot smaller when you're 24 than they are when you're 30. If you're putting yourself in a position to fail in a small way early, you're only going to be doing yourself a solid when you're six years, seven years, 10 years, 20 years down the line because you know what it feels like and you gain a lot of experience and you learn a lot about consequences before they really start to matter.
I don't know that this is going to be a shared sentiment above a lot of people, but I was told by a mentor of mine that you really can't screw up until you're 30, right? Don't take that as gospel, obviously, and make the right decisions and make sure that you're calculated with everything that you do. At the end of the day, if you're getting up every morning and you're trying to be successful and you're treating people the right way and you're being a good guy, you're of course going to hit snags. You're of course going to have to jump over hurdles that seemingly get larger as you get older. It happens to everyone. It's happened to me, it's not fun. At the end of the day, I'm in the position that I'm in because I wasn't afraid to take a risk.
I think that's the beauty of coming from a place like Northwestern, is that regardless of how you did, regardless of what classes you take, you graduate and you move anywhere around the country and everyone knows where you went to school. "Wow, that's a top 10 school and regardless of how you did, you got through it and I'm going to give you a shot." It's your responsibility at that point to decide whether or not you're going to give it a hundred percent or you're not. That's up to you, each individual student, to make that assessment as to what they want to do and how they want to move their life forward, push the rock up the hill, if you will.
I think that that is one thing that is independent of all of the low level stuff that Northwestern makes you do, whether it be classes that you take or clubs that you're involved in or after hour TA sessions or whatever it might be, don't take for granted the fact that you're graduating from one of the best universities, not in the country, but literally in the world. You're starting from a starting line that's miles ahead of where some of your peers at other universities are starting professionally.
So long as you capitalize on the experience that you had and you make a calculated push forward, there's no reason why A, you won't be successful, and B, you won't be able to figure out what you don't like and what you like quickly. I think it's only helpful. I think that it's important too, that people have lofty expectations for you when you graduate. It is what it is. They know that you're smart, they know that you're ambitious. They know that you're diligent. It's certainly scary, scared me coming out of college, getting thrown to the wolves and being told, "Ho make the family money or leave." It was that black and white, and it was like, "Oh my God, what am I doing?"
If you shy away from it, you're never going to know. If you don't and you fail, who cares? There's going to be the next thing all the time. I'd encourage people to start early, fail small, be ambitious. Don't be afraid to take risks, because I think that for me, if I was 25 and I hadn't decided to do what I'm doing now, I would've always wondered what if. I think that for me, I'll speak for myself, but for me, that's way worse than putting yourself in a safe position and going through the motions of life and just never knowing what something could have been that was too challenging and scary to pursue at that moment in time. I am extremely fortunate and very appreciative of the position that CFS put me in, very appreciative of the university for all the resources that they have and for the brand that ultimately stands behind my name, as a result of having gone to a school like Northwestern.
Everyone's going to be fine. You're all going to crush it. You're all extremely smart. 99% of you are probably smarter than I am, but ultimately, just be engaged, be excited. It'll come to a surprise to you as to how far you can get in a matter of a couple of years. I'm excited for myself to, for the next five, for the next 10, for the next 15, to just see the fruits of the past five years of labor or the past three years of professional labor, whatever it was after having graduated from a school like you all go to. I'm excited for all of you, Cassie. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on here. If there's anybody that decided to listen to this whole thing and would like some guidance offline, I'm happy to field any questions or hop on a Zoom or meet for a coffee or whatever it is, anybody that's local or not, doesn't matter.
Cassie:
Awesome. Thanas, thank you so much. I appreciate all the insights you just shared and feels like a pep talk for students to know that, to have that confidence in what they're doing and to really engage and be excited. I love hearing all of your insights and advice today. Thanas, Charlie, thank you both again for being here with us and as you both offered for students who are interested in being in touch, we will make some connections, happy to provide that network and build that network for Northwestern students. Thanks again for being here.
Charlie Vasbinder:
Cassie. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a great experience and I'm always open to chat or get coffee or whatever. It's been a huge value add to me and I'd be happy to pay it forward.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening. If you want to hear more of these conversations, links to the full videos and podcasts are below. For more information about Weinberg College and this podcast, visit weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron. As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Please email us with your thoughts on the program. Have a great day, and go cats.