Dylan Davis
aboutDYLAN
Hello, my name is Dylan Davis and by August 2020, I will be a graduate of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania holding a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Sport Management. I have had a deep-rooted passion for sport and physical wellness my entire life, and I am excited about the opportunity I have to build a career in an industry that embraces those passions. During my college experience at Slippery Rock University, I have had the pleasure of exploring the sport and fitness industry at many different levels from a variety of roles. Throughout this portfolio, I will highlight those experiences and explain further who I am, and what value I can contribute to a sport organization.
CAREER PLAN
In the short term: By August 2020, I plan to be a graduate of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania holding a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Sport Management with above a 3.5 GPA. In order to achieve this goal, I plan to spend at least 10 hours per week reviewing my notes and lectures from each of my remaining classes in order to properly absorb enough information that it is feasible for me to obtain an A or B in all those courses. This allocation of my time would then lead to me finishing my undergraduate degree with a 3.5 or higher. Additionally, I plan to accept an internship working in the field of sport marketing for a reputable sport organization or University. In order to achieve this goal, I will continue to search for internships for the Summer and Fall of 2020 in this field and apply to at least 3 a week until I finally am ready to accept one offered to me by April 27th, 2020. Throughout the duration of my internship, I also plan to be searching for an entry-level position working in a sport organization’s marketing department, so that I can have a job offer I am enthusiastic about available to me by the time I officially graduate in August 2020. In order to achieve this goal, I will search job postings every night when I get home from my internship, and I will apply to at least 3 jobs per week throughout my 12 weeks of interning. Then, by the Spring of 2021 I hope to be working in a marketing department for a sport organization.
The Medium Term: Once I have worked in my entry-level marketing position for a year, gaining valuable, real-world experiences working in the sport industry, I plan to apply to graduate school to get a Master’s of Business Administration, Sport Management, or potentially another career-relevant graduate degree. Throughout this year of working, I will research graduate programs and what prerequisite classes they require, that way if I have not fulfilled a prerequisite, I can take that course at a community college or online prior to applying for graduate school. Then, in order to get through graduate school, I plan on applying for a graduate assistantship at the University I will be attending in order to help offset some of the costs of schooling, as well as providing me an opportunity to further boost my resume and gain even more experience in the field while I am completing my graduate degree. In addition to gaining more knowledge and experience throughout graduate school, I will make it a priority to network with my fellow classmates and the faculty of my graduate program in order to gain more valuable connections to people that will most likely hold high-level positions in the sport industry in the future. Throughout my final year of graduate school, I plan on applying for positions as a marketing director in many sport organizations, preferably for an organization whose mission is to provide a space and environment for athletes to go to train and perfect their craft in preparation for athletic competition.
In the Long Term: In the long term, I plan on obtaining an executive role overseeing the marketing and community outreach sectors of a large athletic training complex, where athletes can come to train, compete, and develop their skills for the highest level of competition. I plan on reaching this prestigious position by working my way up through similar organizations holding roles such as Marketing Director or Director of Community Relations to gain the proper business knowledge needed to successfully manage an entire department. I understand that reaching this high-level position is not easy, and that is why I will stay dedicated to my goals, build a widespread professional network, work in as many roles as I can within sport marketing to gain a wide understanding of how organizations can function healthily, and stay vigilant when looking for my next opportunity to ultimately lead me to a position where I can work in an environment that embodies my passions at a high level.
Self-Reflection
As a young college student glaring into the horizon of what my future may hold, I have realized that I am in the midst of one of the most confusing times in my life. Where I am today has been a culmination of all of the actions and decisions I have made throughout my lifetime, and where my life will go will be sculpted by those decisions along with all future decisions I will choose to make. This is a lesson that I hold near and dear to my heart, especially when facing times of hardship and uncertainty. I believe it is important to remember that no matter how hard things may seem, or how bleak my situation may appear to be, it is the decisions that I am faced with in the present moment that can lead me out of the confusion and into the life I have always envisioned for myself. However, as life progresses, many life decisions become harder to make as they will oftentimes have an increasingly larger impact on my life, and it is in those most perplexing times that I have found reflecting on my past can provide me with insight into who I truly am, and how I have worked through similar situations before to achieve my goals. Therefore, for me to address where I want to take my life after college, it only seemed logical that I had to reflect on how my life brought me to and through college.
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When I was just a young high school senior spending my nights filling out college applications, I looked forward to what my life in college would be like. I envisioned myself going to a new campus, making new friends, building a life for myself, and starting my journey towards a career that embodied my passions of sport and wellness. After researching school after school for months, my father and I finally took a visit to Slippery Rock University, which at the time was not at the top of my list of college choices. However, when we took that visit something just clicked for me and I realized I was home. I decided that day that I would enroll at SRU and I initially declared myself as an Exercise Science major heading toward a career as a Physical Therapist. Throughout my freshman year I believed I was in a place where I could achieve the goals I had set out for myself. I was making friends easily and I loved the campus I was living on, but it was not until the Summer following my freshman year that I realized the biggest decision I had made heading into college was the wrong one. That summer I was playing semi-professional football in Denver, Colorado and I suffered a gruesome injury where I tore multiple ligaments in my left knee. This injury caused me to be bed ridden for months and required multiple surgeries which forced me into a situation where I had to miss the Fall semester of my sophomore year. This was devastating to me at the time because I had just felt like I was finally building a life for myself and I was being pulled away from it before I could even really start it. However, this circumstance put me in a position where I was exposed to tremendous amounts of physical therapy which I believed at the time to be what my future career was heading towards. It was in those months of rehab that I realized what physical therapy truly was, and that it did not encapsulate the parts of sport and wellness that I was actually passionate about. This revelation led to me researching other majors at SRU as I was feeling skeptical about the future I was building towards. It was through this research that I found Sport Management and I instantly switched my major and never looked back.
When I returned to campus I felt as if I was returning with an entire new experience ahead of me from the first time I arrived at college as a freshman. And it was in those early moments of returning to a school I had become so familiar with, but barely recognized at all that I realized both my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. My weakness is that I tend to make decisions quickly and recklessly sometimes because I assume that I will always know what is best for myself. I chose a major too haphazardly, chose a school on the whim, tried to revive a football career that was already dead, and switched my major without even stepping foot in a classroom or speaking to a single faculty member or student in the program. Needless to say I have had a history of making major life choices for myself with reckless abandon, however, it is within my weakness that I found my greatest strength, perseverance.
No matter what situation my decisions dropped me into, good or bad, I had the strength and the will power to know that I can always push through and come out the other side of any hardship as a stronger version of myself headed towards my goals. I did have to miss a semester and switch majors after a full year of schooling, but I fought through and I am now set to graduate with a degree in a field that better suits my interest in the same semester I originally planned to graduate in when I first enrolled. I fought through the rehab to heal my knee when my doctors said I might not be the athlete I once was ever again, and I currently feel better than I ever did before. I have been given assignments throughout my schooling where I did not plan ahead well enough, or I did not choose my partner wisely, or I chose the first topic for a presentation that I saw. All of those decisions may have been too sporadic, but in the end, I was always able to address the situation I was facing head-on and succeeded no matter what it took. And it is that tenacity and dedication to be great that has gotten me through college and through life, and it is also what will lead me to a life I will be proud to have built for myself in the future. So as I look ahead, creating a vision for where my life is going, I know that I cannot possibly predict my future, and I may make some imperfect choices along the way. However, I can live with the solace of knowing through past experiences that I am resilient, hard-working, and dedicated, and I would never let anybody including myself stand in the way of achieving my dreams.
MY WORKS
Expereiences In Sport
