Chloe JinChloe Jin is a Class of 2024 student majoring in Canfield Business Honors, Finance, and Plan II. Chloe’s interest in research started in high school, where she conducted and published research on Native American culture. When Chloe isn’t exploring her passion for research, you can find her on the water with UT’s sailing team.
Chloe’s most recent research project, her Plan II graduation thesis, is focused on career and life satisfaction. Chloe wanted to learn more about how people’s passions and career interests aligned and how choosing between a passionate or a lucrative career affected people’s lifetime happiness.
The research was specifically focused on individuals who graduated from Texas McCombs. Chloe recognizes the Canfield BHP alumni network for their assistance in her research. She was able to connect with alumni from the program and use them as her sample. Chloe noted that the alumni network was extremely supportive of her work and pointed her to other alumni who could be appropriate for her study.
Through her research, Chloe found that everyone in her study was generally happy but had different personal definitions of happiness. She found that people who worked in a field that had elements of passion and practicality were the happiest. She found that happiness peaked when people met their own definition of a balance between passion and practicality, and that balance varies from person to person. Some participants of the study weighed passion significantly higher than practicality and were able to achieve their highest form of happiness. At the same time, others on the end of the spectrum highly favored practicality and were able to find happiness from their successes in that area.
Chloe has some advice for students looking to conduct research in the future: “Having people around you who can support you is key. Getting to know and having good advisors is very important. I would recommend doing research on your professors and finding people who have a similar research background and can support you throughout your project.” When talking about how she found her research participants, Chloe stated, “Use your community to reach people, meet people at events, and use those connections as a resource.”
Chloe would like to give a special shoutout to her advisors, Dr. Jordan Conwell and Dr. Kathleen Griesbach, and her research participants for making this project possible. She was honored to win the Plan II Model Thesis Award with this research project.