Students of the Future: senior Elliot Olsen

The business industry is an ever growing and ever changing market. Businesses are both important to the federal as well as the local economy. This is the second in a series of articles shining the light on extraordinary CFHS students who continue to push forward for the future. This article will be focusing on senior Elliot Olsen’s plans to jump into the real estate industry; here’s more about him and his plans.

“What I really want to do is to go into ‘property appraisal,’ which is basically going into commercial buildings and evaluating the price tag to put on there,” Olsen said, “so let’s say there’s an abandoned Walmart building. I go in there and I say this building is worth $15 million. I put that price tag on there due to constructional damages, cracks in the ceilings, bad flooring stuff like that.”

As well as planning to double major in both real estate and finance at the University of Northern Iowa, he is also preparing for his future by taking some more business focused classes here at the high school as well as educating himself more about the field he plans to go into. However this is not what he always wanted to do. When he was younger he planned to go into architecture but he soon realized that was something he wasn’t really interested in anymore.

“When I was younger I wanted to go into architecture and be an architect, but I realized I hated math. I did not like geometry or trigonometry so I was like, ‘Well, I like finance and working with money, so how can I combine those two?’ Then I realized real estate combines both of those things, and so that’s kind of how I sparked myself into it,” Olsen said.

Even though Olsen doesn’t know exactly where or what he wants to be in the future, he said he hopes to be financially stable later in his life and maybe even travel around the world as he hasn’t ever left the country before. He also wishes to see more of the world in a general sense and hopes not to get stuck in an office job; rather, he wants to be out and about with his future job. 

His advice for dream chasers is “just go for it. Don’t care what other people think. If you really want it, you’ll go get it. If you really want it that badly, you’ll go and do it.”