Junior @ T20 Ivy League in need of advice.

Happy holidays everyone – I feel like I am stuck in my career and am in dire need of assistance. If anyone is willing to give me advice I would greatly appreciate it. Here is some context on my situation:

I currently study finance at a top 20 school. I joined a few business clubs during my freshman year and planned to recruit IB my sophomore year – instead I started a business. At the time I felt overwhelmed from doing both and decided to focus on the business, which turned out pretty profitable as the business generated $200k+ between December 2023 to June 2024.

Around June I began feeling very anxious about my future because I felt as if I had made a mistake not recruiting. The business, although profitable, is not something I see being something I can sustain as a career. I sometimes feel that not securing a job would undermine the purpose of my decision to attend college. Initially, I hadn’t planned to pursue higher education because my family couldn’t afford it. However, after being accepted into my school, I took a leap of faith and committed to finding a way to finance my education on my own. I also admit that played a role in this feeling was seeing all of my friends with job offers from banks.

This past semester I recruited for consulting because that aligned with fall 2024 along with other finance roles that were available but have had little success. Now back for winter break, I am reflecting on what I did wrong and what I should do moving forward, because I need to get a job or I feel like I've wasted my time and parents trust, because going to school was something I didn't originally planned on doing and took a lot of trust from my parents to let me do.

The reason I am posting this thread is because I think one of the mistakes I made coming into this school was not being open to mentorship. After some introspection, I think my upbringing with both of my parents being very uninvolved in my life taught me to be independent, bearing a lot of positives and negatives. I think one of these negatives being not reaching out for guidance when needed. Coming into school I didn't know what to do in any aspect, but believed I could just figure it out. This trickled into my campus involvements, because I never fostered connections with upperclassmen and never reached out for mentorship which I really needed. Looking at my friends who were successful in recruiting were very active and had mentors to help them. Realizing this, I am writing this thread to reach out for advice.

If you've made it to the end of this note, thank you. Sorry if this message comes off as very deflective, but I promise you that I am not blaming anyone or anything except for myself. I know that my shortcomings are due to my own inadequacies and am so grateful for the institution I attend, the opportunities I have, and the people I have met. I know at the end of the day, that things will work out – the only thing between that time and now is the hard work I need to put in. 

If anyone is willing to hop on a call or have a chat with me through other means, please let me know! I would love to share my resume/more details.