According to the NCAA, 95% of athletes go on to pursue a career outside of sports after graduation, and this year’s graduating group of Hillsdale seniors holds a wide variety of post-graduation plans.
Four seniors, Catherine Voisin, David Graham, Joey Humes, and Ryan Zetwick discussed their post-graduation plans that range from humanities to sciences.
Voisin, a swimmer, said she always wanted to compete at the collegiate level.
“It was a goal of mine throughout high school and definitely served to push me through high school,” she said. “I had four years to prepare, not just in the short term, but in the long term for after high school.”
Although Voisin knew she wanted to swim in college, she didn’t decide to major in Latin until her Great Books class.
“I really hated languages, and then Hillsdale proved that teachers can make a great difference,” Voisin said. “I had an amazing professor coming here who really invigorated me and showed just how much was written in Latin and how many things I really wanted to read.”
Voisin plans on continuing her classical studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
“They have a Greek and Latin program,” she said, “and Semitic languages and literature. I’m hoping to do that to get a masters there and maybe go somewhere else to get my Ph.D.”
As a football player, Graham is pursuing a degree in exercise science.
“Exercise science is my major and I guess I could say that football has inspired it,” Graham said. “I’ve played football since I was in about 4th grade and ever since then I knew it was the sport I loved and wanted to continue as long as possible.”
Football at Hillsdale has greatly influenced Graham in his decisions. Graham plans to work in medical device sales or possibly nursing or health care where he can help “as many people as possible.”
“Athletics, besides my parents, has made the single greatest impact on my decision-making,” Graham said. “Everything I do revolves around sports and has since high school. I knew back then I had to stay out of trouble and do things the right way if I wanted to achieve my goals of playing collegiate sports.”
Athletics has developed his decision-making and focus, he said. Playing football has taught him to go with his gut feeling, which is something he carries over into other areas of his life.
Although Graham won’t pursue any sort of professional level of football, it challenged him to find passion in other things after graduation.
“Eventually I have to stop playing football and figure out what I like to do besides football,” Graham said. “It’s really going to be an adventure figuring out what I truly love to do.”
As a golfer, Zetwick found a passion in finance through his team.
“A lot of the guys on the team are in finance and they were taking classes that they were interested in and told me how interesting it was,” Zetwick said.
Zetwick interned for a wealth management company and plans to work with internal finances in the future, but he will still hold onto his golfing career past graduation.
“Golf is kind of special in a way versus football where you can do it well into retirement,” Zetwick said.
Another collegiate athlete, cross country runner Joey Humes, has been running since 7th grade and will still be able to do so after graduation. As of right now, his plan is to attend graduate school for chemical engineering to pursue a master’s degree.
“I’m lucky enough to have one season of cross country left, so I could run at another school for just one season,” Humes said. “Right now it’s between the University of Michigan and Purdue University, and I could be in a spot where I could be in their top five, which would be pretty cool just to say I ran for their program. Even if it’s for one season.”
With graduation sneaking up on the seniors, it is impossible to have every detail planned out, but Humes summed up the necessity of carrying one’s passion into post-graduate work.
“I can recognize I’m not a professional athlete, and as far as post-graduation goes, I think that’s a really big factor,” he said. “I can look to the future and say this is where I want to be, this is what I want to do, and I’m going to find any way I can to get there.”
