Class of 2024: The Collaborator
His four years at Babson took Joshua Kim ’24 everywhere from the water to space. The Southern California native has a college resume as vast as the distance between home and campus.
As he reflects, he returns to how each opportunity allowed him to connect with other Babson Beavers. Whether it’s sharing meals with his swim teammates, helping fellow students in the Writing Center and as an athletics tutor, or working as an operations assistant for the Hoffman Family Undergraduate Center for Career Development (CCD), collaboration is the defining trait.
“The community really helped me understand the value of not just accepting help but also giving and the importance of that exchange,” Kim says. “(With these opportunities), I would talk to people I normally wouldn’t. Hardworking people, amazing peers. The idea of teamwork is definitely one I’ll come back to if someone asks me ‘Hey, what was your undergrad experience like?’”
As for space, that brings him back to summer 2023, when he was an intern for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Because he lived nearby, JPL engineers were part of his community growing up. That connection coupled with Kim’s work with CCD, which had him number crunching for the undergraduate outcomes report, aligned the data-loving stars for him.
“I was a business analyst, and it was pretty much just working with numbers to solve business problems,” he says about the internship.
As he prepares for Commencement and what the cosmos has in store next for him, Kim hopes it brings both a healthy dose of data analysis and more opportunities to collaborate.
What are your post-graduation plans?
“I’m pursuing a master’s degree in data science, so I can equip myself better to crunch numbers. It’s a skill I plan to use a lot in my career, and I want to foster my growth there.”
What is your favorite Babson memory?
“It’s certainly collaborating and working in teams with my classmates and teammates. I really enjoyed learning how different people solve problems. Babson being such a community-oriented and team-oriented school, it just paved the way for me to talk to my peers and learn how they think and talk about their backgrounds.”
Do you have a favorite class or professor?
“Class is a bit hard because I had so many. Two professors that come to mind are Jonathan Sims (associate professor of strategic management) and Ira Farber (assistant teaching professor of science). They both helped me think about the bigger picture by asking the right questions. To have that guidance was incredible.”
How has Babson prepared you for your career/life?
“Babson taught me to embrace failure and just be OK with it. During Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship (FME) in 2020, we had a lot of setbacks. It’s an experience where you’re almost expected to fail. If you do well, that’s incredible. But the biggest aspect of that is the experiential learning. Babson taught me how to be comfortable with failure and how to use each failure as a steppingstone for the next big thing.”
Do you have any advice for first-year students?
“First off, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Second, be proactive. And then third, just enjoy each moment.”
What makes the Class of 2024 special?
“We’ve been through so much unexpectedness. I think this is the last year when we could use the COVID card, but I’ve seen countless situations where the resilience of the Class of 2024 has been shown through not only our resilience and perseverance but also our curiosity. I think those traits are what distinguish us from other classes. I’m just excited to see what my peers will accomplish because I’ve already seen so many good things.”
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