In contrast, at the student bar, friends made unprofessional toasts to my many, many final round interviews. Toasts were also made to my rejections. They were also made to my offer letters, as few and far-between as they seemed to be. My inbox was a constant back-and-forth between former supervisors, consulting firms in the midst of recruiting season, the occasional NGO, and the oft automated denial. At the very least, I knew that I wasn’t closing out the year with nothing: I could always return to an internship I had before or a part-time job I held at the college, if only to set more bullets down on my resume.

The end result of these cycles was that, throughout that final spring semester, I was always chasing a finish line. Chasing the morning matcha latte, and then chasing the end of the week, and then chasing that next stage of my capstone study, and then chasing the end of this interview round and that interview round, and then chasing this final term paper, and then chasing the end of semester, and finally, chasing the end of college. Perhaps it was more like a spin class in that it felt neatly chopped up into intervals, rather than one, long, mad dash.  

I’m more partial to spin classes where the instructor announces their plan in advance. For similar reasons, I was constantly itching to know what was coming next: even if my “next steps” were going to suck, at least I would have a sense of security.

Perhaps because of this, when Nia Atkins ’23 (the Fellow at Year Up United at the time) assigned me a case study for the final stage of the interviewing process, I took it in stride. I was almost ready to make a whole slide deck for the data that she had given me– of course, the one-pager I ultimately made was more appropriate. Within that same week, I was offered that position: a paid, data and research-focused fellowship at a leading nonprofit that was contracted out to July 2025. I decided to go with it.

Now, two years later, I’m out at the other end of it all, with another two years of growth to come.

I think it’s plain to say that I’ve experienced a lot of growth in the fellowship: it’s clear as day now that analytics much more aligns with my interests, talents, and motivations (and the whims of the job market). I had thought differently back in 2023, being under the impression that data analysts led infinitely more boring professional lives than we do in actuality. My time at Year Up United has shown me the ways in which data specialists are able to enact real change in their organizations, allowing me to shorten that gap between “insight” and “impact.”

Yet I don’t think I should discount the talents that I had brought in: a willingness to learn, a drive to demonstrate what I already knew, and the competency to combine the two where needed. My supervisor never failed to mention that, in a twist of irony for a nonprofit fellowship, my corporate experience made me stand out clearly among their candidates. In my mad scramble to figure out what was going to be “my thing” right after college– and I suppose “my thing” well after college– I had forgotten to adequately congratulate myself for finding that “thing” at all.

In recent weeks, the bog-standard gold-standard of program evaluation has wormed its way back into my head: the “randomized control trial.” The general premise is that you compare a population that has received a treatment (be it Universal Basic Income, a particular UI layout, or Year Up United’s programming) with one that has not over a given period of time, the latter thus becoming the “control group.” 

In that way, in my own, personal RCT, I exist as the treatment case. A purely hypothetical alternative, fellowship-less self exists as the control case. It’s not a very good RCT: the intervention effect is nigh impossible to measure, and “groups” by nature should contain more than one person.

Despite that, I feel like I’m staring at a difference-in-differences charted out, my trajectory having accelerated upwards after this two-year long commitment. Part of me worries that this is just sunk-cost fallacy: at least in a monetary sense, two years spent in the nonprofit field is more-often-than-not an opportunity cost relative to a for-profit position. Then again, it is arguably this experience that has earned me a full-tuition merit scholarship at Carnegie Mellon for the otherwise onerous cost of an advanced education in the United States. It is arguably this experience that has made me prepared for graduate education, and all the personal challenges that come with it.

As I move onto graduate school, relocation to Pittsburgh, and a continued analytics career to follow, I’ve come to appreciate the fellowship for what it was and what it is. Societal structural issues run deep, two years is often shorter than one thinks. Yet I know that I have made change, and that I have led it. I am not only a potential social impact professional: I am a data-driven and proven social impact leader. My experience as a fellow was not perfect— it never could have been. Though if I can’t work in the nonprofit space forever, I’m glad to have worked in it now. 

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the summer I have left in New York with family and friends and food. My supervisor once put it this way: “Avery, your 80% is more than some people’s 100%.” After two years, I’ve realized that I should take that comment to heart. In contrast to that breakneck final semester, I’m finally learning to take it slow, treating each and every day in the sun as a blessing. 

Whatever the industry I eventually land in, I refuse to leave my passion for social impact and the common good at any corporation’s door. It will be forever and always my guiding star. I’ll carry one fundamental value from Year Up United with me: lift as you climb. I invite every fellow, prospective, current, or alumna, to do the same.