The Education Nobody Puts on a Syllabus

My first real estate experience wasn't an internship — it was managing exterior maintenance for 20+ properties in Boulder, coordinating work orders, and eventually designing and executing a full landscaping remodel that increased rents by over five percent. Before that I was doing general construction on multifamily apartments. I didn't know it at the time, but I was learning real estate from the ground up — literally. What those summers gave me was something no classroom could replicate: a firsthand understanding of what a property actually is, how tenants experience it, and what it costs to keep it running well. The NAIOP Research Foundation consistently points to operational fluency as one of the most underleveraged skills among young CRE professionals. I stumbled into it by accident, and I'm glad I did.

The experiences that shaped me most in college weren't always the ones that looked the best on paper. Serving on three executive boards simultaneously while at the University of San Diego — including VP of the Real Estate Society and VP of Women in Business — taught me more about managing people and executing under pressure than any course I took. And my current internship with CBRE's Healthcare Real Estate team in San Diego pushed me to slow down in ways I didn't expect. Healthcare tenants — physician groups, surgery centers, diagnostic providers — make real estate decisions that affect patient access and clinical operations. Understanding that context before presenting solutions is what separates a good broker from a great advisor.

I'm finishing my last semester at USD with a double major in Real Estate and Finance, a minor in Entrepreneurship, and a clearer sense of what I don't know than when I started. That last part, I've come to believe, is actually the point. The skills that compound fastest aren't always the technical ones — learning to communicate clearly, to follow through consistently, and to make people feel like their time was well spent opened more doors for me than any specific credential. If you're a student entering commercial real estate, my advice is simple: take the placements that make you go deeper, not just faster. Show up before you're ready. The rest follows.