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| Real-Life Monsters 
The vast majority of my life can be characterized by a distinct lack of outrage. I tend to read about the large issues of the day not to find a worthy cause of subscription, but out of simple curiosity. Beyond basic recycling, I am no staunch environmentalist. I occasionally give to charity out of basic human concern, rather than a burning passion to right the world's injustices. Even the widely denounced Daily Princetonian parody of Jian Li failed to provoke a large sense of indignation.
Apathy? Maybe partially. I'd like to believe (and perhaps this is just positive spin) that there is some benefit gained from evaluating situations without the influence of strong emotions.
Then again, it's not entirely impossible to get under my skin. While waiting for "Letters of Iwo Jima" to begin yesterday, I couldn't help but notice the person behind me. For one thing, it seemed clear that his only interest in the movie stemmed from his desire to see "the Americans fuck up the Japs". There are many things wrong with this statement, including the racially offensive vocabulary and its aggresively insensitive tone. Mainly, he was oblivious to the prominent point of the movie, essentially that war is ugly and its heavy emotional toll is culturally universal. Granted, he may not have been entirely serious. Fine, whatever.
Another interesting trend. He sat in a row of four people, who he did not seem to be familiar with. Literally, the first thing he asked his neighbor was whether or not he was a legacy. I'm not entirely certain what this is supposed to reveal...if he is a legacy, is he implying he didn't get in by his own merits? Is he trying to deduce his family's wealth? In any case, it seems a pretty inappropriate and odd question.
While conversation in the row began innocuously enough by talking about the movie, it quickly degraded into a conversation revolving him. From his words, he was clearly fixated only on money and status, and possessed the tasteless arrogance to match. He brashly proclaimed he was going to be in Ivy or nothing at all, because no other club was worthy. He proudly bragged about saving up for a Lamborghini soon. He admitted his GPA was not so great, but that he would rather be a flunkie from Princeton, then a 4.0 at a state school; the respect the University garnered was superior to any other factor. Finally, he declared he was heading straight to Goldman Sachs after graduation (keep in mind this is a kid who is at the oldest, a sophomore).
Then he committed arguably the worst sin possible in a theatre: an inconsiderate kick to the back of my chair every 5-10 minutes as he shifted around his seat. I think the only time I would be OK with this is if Yao Ming or Shaq were sitting behind me and simply didn't have enough legroom to avoid my chair. However, he was no taller than me. I was about to confront him about this, but a few things stopped me. First, I was pretty ticked off at this guy already, and I don't know how the situation would develop. Second, I didn't want to be talking during the movie, especially in a room of other students who would likely recognize me. Begrudgingly, I ultimately decided to do nothing. I ended up spending a significant portion of the movie stewing about this pest.
I have never been so thoroughly annoyed with somebody I didn't even know.
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| Decisions, DecisionsDearest friends,
It is official.
I will be working in the Quantitative Trading & Analysis Program at Citigroup in NYC after graduation. Like all major decisions in life, it is one of healthy compromise, instead of absolute correctness.
It has certainly been a chaotic job application season, certainly not helped by a midway change of heart to consider quantitative finance jobs instead of only technology positions. After some deliberation, I had eventually narrowed down the choices to a Software Developer position at Microsoft or an Analyst in the Quant Division of Citigroup. I chose Citigroup mainly because I was interested in working on finance problems in a real hands-on fashion. While I had an awesome experience this summer working in the MSN Money team, one of my personal feelings was that I longed to delve more into the finance problems themselves, rather than the technical issues of how best to present the financial data and/or improve the website. In short, I wanted to be an active player, instead of observer, in the financial world.
There's an interesting point in all this, and I think it goes back a bit to my last post. I still believe that the environment has more influence on your interests and likes/dislikes more than people often give it credit for. I, for one, had zero interest in finance before coming to college. After two years of C++ programming, I had my heart out on working in the tech industry, and was determined to spend life after college back in California and working in Silicon Valley, or something like that. After all, the West Coast is the stronghold of of the tech industry, and I am convinced that California is, bar none, the best place to live in the United States. It seemed my future was already set in stone.
Princeton changed my mind. Like Stanford is close to Silicon Valley, Princeton is the closest Ivy to NYC and Wall Street, and the extent of influence of the major investment banks on student's career decisions here is large enough to almost be unfair. Every time there is a career fair here, students tend to flock to investment banks first, consulting firms second, and then maybe a few major technology firms. Anything else tends to get discouraging little traffic, and this not only makes the company feel like it's not worth coming here at all, but reinforces among students the focus on these narrow sectors. Where the hell is Intel? Yahoo? AMD? Motorola? AT&T? Sony? Honeywell? Panasonic? Dell? HP? Genentech? Pharma firms? The absence of companies such as these along with the little to no representation of other sectors is, I think, deplorable. Whether it's the fault of Career Services or simply a result of the environment is certainly debatable, but it does rank as one of my least favorite aspects of the school.
Even still, finance drew me in. After taking several courses and joining an investment club, I am now interested in working full-time in the field. While finance is definitely one of the most exciting and challenging industries to work in, it just interesting to think that had I enrolled in a west coast engineering school like Berkeley, I would never have given a finance position a chance.
Decisions influence future decisions; the more you go through in life, the more what-if's you end up accumulating.
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| Conversation of the Week, Follow the Money
M: Oo so did you get haircut?
zeroth07: never
zeroth07: i refuse
M: uhoh
M: do you shave?
zeroth07: uhoh your face!
M: u REFUSE???????!
zeroth07: yes
zeroth07: for ethical reasons
M: what ethical reason?
zeroth07: well I've sorta gotten myself more attuned with
nature and stuff
M: hmm ic so you're not getting
haircut and eat organic food and stuff?
zeroth07: and distancing myself from societal "rules"
M: Oo interesting
M: wear skirts! and we'll meet up
zeroth07: =(
zeroth07: so yup
zeroth07: no shaving
zeroth07: no haircut
zeroth07: showers only when I start to stink
M: Ooo
zeroth07: and I've been starting to wear like sorta more
natural clothing
M: what was the cause?
M: natural clothing?
zeroth07: like they have these certain stores that sorta
make things out of a natural weave
zeroth07: and it's not like all factory produced
M: aren't those expensive?
zeroth07: it's cool cuz microsoft has no dress code really
zeroth07: so people come and go however
M: really??
zeroth07: well it's true
zeroth07: but that money gets usually donated to a
charity or environmental organization of some sort
zeroth07: that's how these businesses usually run
M: hmmm so why did you start this?
M: i can't imagine scruby alvin 'natural
clothing' cuz i've only seen you in tuxedo XP
zeroth07: hehe
zeroth07: I've even learned how to like interact with
animals and stuff better
M: how??
zeroth07: like you know how most animals sorta run
away from you if you even walk near them?
zeroth07: squirrels and birds
M: yea
zeroth07: I mean most of the time it's just how they're
conditioned
zeroth07: but if you demonstrate to them that you're
friendly
zeroth07: you can actually like sorta communicate with
them it's cool
zeroth07: like squirrels will start to trust you
M: but if they run away u can't show
them anything!
zeroth07: lol yea
zeroth07: that's the hardest part
zeroth07: but if you get past there and you treat them
well
zeroth07: they're actually very cool =)
M: Oo
M: wait how did you learn all this?
zeroth07: well part of it is from other people
zeroth07: like some of the people that run the clothings
store are like old hippies and stuff haha
zeroth07: books, the web, and just groups of people you
know
zeroth07: ?
zeroth07: it does take a lotta practice and adjustment
yea
zeroth07: but it changes your view of the world
M: icccccc i'mma start practicing
communicating with animals now
M: do u feel more
M: hmm.. more natured?
zeroth07: haha yea
M: u know this is really interesting
coming from a computer guy
zeroth07: I haven't started for that long
zeroth07: yea it's a change lol
M: Oo if i start getting into
programming that'll be my change except i'm
incapable of that
zeroth07: lol aawww
zeroth07: I can teach you that too haha
M: you SHOULD
M: except i'm afraid u'll get annoyed
at me cuz i won't understand
zeroth07: psh
zeroth07: if I can charm 2 squirrels and a pigeon
zeroth07: I can teach a human being programming
zeroth07: thank you very much
M: LOL
Note: I was kidding about the above haha
Random (potentially obvious) thoughts ahead:
China is almost universally touted as the great economuc superpower of the future. For me, I've always been fascinated about the interplay between (what I've concluded to be nearly indistinguishable factors) interest and money. Nowadays, the American public has a large fascination with Eastern culture, language, and lifestyle. Look at the unprecedented number of asian movies being released these days: Fearless, Ong Bak, House of Flying Daggers, etc., even adaptations such as The Departed. (btw, Curse of the Golden Flower seems to be quite a promising flick...question: can Jay Chou really act in a serious large-production role?) How about all the Mandarin classes being started up in High school, and just look at how many people are studying Chinese compared to other languages at universities! But probably the clearest "handwriting on the wall" comes from just how much money we invest in China: Net foreign investment is over $5 billion/month!
I'm in no way implying that this is a bad thing. But how did all this "interest" begin? Beyond the purely economic reasons: huge potential labor force, growing businesses, globalization, etc. Do we become interested in a culture because it's just interesting, or because all of a sudden, it appears to be extremely relevant (or lucrative)? If it's the latter, does that interest really extend beyond the superficial and/or prudent? In more general terms, how many people decide to pursue something for the sake of pursuing it as opposed to financial reasons?
My opinion? Not really many. Think back just 5-6 years ago at the height of the high-tech bubble. Software companies and startups couldn't get their hands on enough Computer Science majors, ridiculous salaries and signing bonuses were commonplace, and the enrollment of majors was at all-time highs around the nation. Now that the economy has somewhat cooled down, salaries are more regular, and enrollment has plummeted.
However, I don't believe we're all just money-grubbing scrooges. It definitely appears that people decide to pursue certain areas for the sake of money. Check. But in learning about it, you can definitely acquire a strong interest in it as well. For example, I'm sure that the Egyptian culture and language are very interesting. But why don't people pay them any attention? Because it doesn't make that much sense from a business standpoint. If Egypt were a hot and rising economy, I'm positive that people would be willing to "adopt" a stronger interest in the country.
Perhaps this goes to show that the classic adage of career guides, "Follow your dreams", is not as clearcut or useful as it seems. (over 70% of the Princeton Class of 2006 works now in Financial
Services or Consulting Industries. I'll hazard to say that this is not their "dream job" from 5-10 years ago) Hey, at one time, I wanted to be a cowboy as a kid. But guess what? It doesn't appear to be so great of an idea anymore as a career . From my experience, many of our interests are certainly not set in stone, and can be as flexible as we choose them to be. Given this, it just makes more sense to align them with career paths that promise a wealthier future.
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People change. I’ve
realized that we fall for somebody not entirely for who they are, but what they
mean to you. Once they’re gone and all
you have left is memories, it’s sad to know that the person you’ve come to
known may not exist anymore. Time moves
on, people move on, and you end up thinking and wondering in the past tense.
SoCal is nice. At
least San Diego is. Palm trees, trendy-lookin’ folk, good
weather, and nice buildings. None of the
anciently styled, crowded, dirty, industrial look of New
Jersey. You
walk around there and you can’t help but think, this is the way all cities
should be. Open, clean, and genuinely friendly people. You try going to a Safeway in a major East
Coast city and see if they offer to carry all your groceries to your car! My only complaint, and I may be mistaken, is that
the place doesn’t seem to take itself seriously enough. L.A.
may be better, but I feel like people don’t have the killer instinct in terms
of business and innovation. Sure
Qualcomm’s there but when was the last time a great entrepreneur or
life-changing business idea came from that area? It suffers the opposite problem of New
York City, which has no sense of humor (too much
humor??).
Another school year.
If there’s such a thing as a school year resolution I’m declaring one
now: I’m going to make this last year memorable.
Tech or finance….tech or finance…tech or finance….
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| For this past week, I have been the unlucky victim of tendinitis in my right wrist and fingers. I have made acquaintances to pain, stiffness, and soreness. For a computer science major, tendinitis and other repetitive strain injuries are death knells. What the hell are we supposed to do if we can't use the computer?? We're fish outta the water. I suspect the culprit is my mouse. My index and middle finger are the only stiff fingers, and my right hand is so much worse than my left.
Typing is still pretty good I think. but I'm deathly afraid of my mouse, at least for now. Hopefully it'll heal within the next few days =P. *sigh* Damn | | |
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