The Road Taken LESSON SHARED
Don’t allow culture to define
A M A N D A
M c M A S T E R
which road you should take. Figure out what success means to you personally. A lot of money, a nice house, a nice car— these are extremely narrow ways of defining success, and they do not provide fulfillment in themselves. Put your family first.
Sticking Close to Home In the fall of 2004, accounting major Amanda McMaster gave birth to her daughter, Brianna Mendoza-McMaster. “It totally changed my priorities,” she says. “It’s not about me anymore. Now I’m making decisions for two.” Between midnight feedings, McMaster studied hard to complete her senior-year academic requirements and graduate on time. McMasters first learned about Nichols when she took an advanced placement course in high school taught by MBA alumnus Karin Orbon ’93. From there, she attended Clark University as a pre-med major, but felt disconnected. She transferred to Nichols to pursue accounting and thought a small campus would be a better fit. “If you miss a class at Nichols,” McMaster says, “your professors will hunt you down! Of course, I mean this
in the most affectionate way. It’s just that everybody knows your name.” She considers herself especially fortunate to have studied under Professor Jack Armstrong. “He’s been like a father to me,” she comments, “constantly advising me on my accounting career.” Armed with that advice and the positive feedback she received from mock interviews at Nichols, McMaster secured a job at the Boston public accounting firm of Feeley and Driscoll, PC, in January. The offer was considerable—a starting salary of $48,000 plus a $7,000 sign-on bonus, four weeks vacation and health care benefits—but it was the flexibility that sold McMaster, a single mother, and satisfied her desire to put family first. The firm assigned her to a client in
Worcester County so she can stick close to home. Twenty-five years down the road, McMaster, who is currently enrolled in the Nichols MBA program and studying for the CPA exam, hopes to make partner at Feeley and Driscoll and hopes that her daughter is happy becoming “whoever she wants to be.” She knows she’s lucky to have a job and offers sage advice to fellow graduates who have yet to hit their stride: “You have to do the leg work and then fate takes it from there. In the end, everything works out the way it’s supposed to be.”
SUMMER 2005 ● NICHOLS COLLEGE MAGAZINE
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