Mt. Cardigan and Accounting...
The Sunday hike to Mt. Cardigan organized by the Outdoor Club was great. It was a short hike (just over an hour each way), but the view from the top of the hill was breathtaking. Fall is coming closer and the leaves are just beginning to change color.
The hike also gave me a chance to connect with some second years. So far, I have come away enriched and fascinated after each interaction I have had with a fellow Tuckie, and this set of people was no different. There was an exchange student who told me about the hiring scene in London for the specific jobs in the finance sector I am looking for. Then the conversation shifted to medical devices with a Tuckie who did an internship in that industry. Healthcare is an area that fascinates me. There is so much of innovation taking place in the sector and it impacts lives more directly than any other area of science. A few minutes later I was discussing the power industry and the American experience with deregulation. Texas has had the best experience and everybody knows what happened in California! Apparently, the in the windiest (?) places of the US, cost of generating power through wind turbines is rapidly approaching the cost of gas based power.
At the summit I casually asked another guy what he did in his previous life. He was a professional gambler. That got me really interested. Given my affinity to the markets, we had a conversation that went from how the sports betting industry is changing in his country to avoiding bias while betting. While most people think gambling is a vice, my view is it is just another place where you can apply game theory. This does not mean I have gambled/like gambling.
This morning we had one of the most fascinating classes I have attended so far. We studied motivational factors and how they were a function of different stages of adulthood/indivdual context. From the exercise it emerged that there are lots of dissimilarities between hopes and fears of men and women. Also, married/engaged men tend to think very differently from single men. Everybody who is single had getting a suitable life partner as a top hope and not getting one as a fear No 1. For the married folks, their hope was that the marriage would work. Single women seem to have this huge fear of loneliness. And single men between 26-28 seem to want 'strings-free sex'. Jokes apart, the analysis of how we pass through different stages of adulthood (from 22 - 65) and how our priorities change over this period was very interesting. That is one subject I would love to understand more. Self awareness I believe is the key to being happy.
Company presentations have been continuing without a break. All these days I was sure that I don't want to go into consulting. But, I just may make an exception for The Firm and drop my resume + covering letter. Some aspects of company presentations I find extremely stupid. Like how firms try to say that visiting a place is same as seeing a place. In my pre Tuck life, I did some serious travel on work - and have learnt that all you see when you travel on work is the inside of airport terminals, the route from airport to office and the office. Now, that is not seeing a place!
Before coming to the US, I was unsure on how I would continue to be connected with my friends. Thanks to technology and timezones, that isn't an issue. An upside is that I am able to reestablish close contact with the horde of friends who are on this side of the globe. Good friendships survive more on faith and don't require constant contact to remain strong. This belief of mine has been vindicated further now. The other day I was chatting with a friend I haven't seen in 6 years. After lots of discussion on credit derivatives and merits of working on the buyside vs sellside and prospects for markets in India, the topic shifted to marriage. The best thing about desis is that most of us rest easy on the knowledge that there is safety net called arranged marriage and sometimes don't even try to help ourselves! Whereas in the US, pple who aim to get married by early 30's start looking out actively at mid 20's. And the fear of remaining single s huge. As an observer, it seems quite stressful
Have an accounting mid term tomorrow. Some collaborative work has resulted in a good page of notes. A review of the last year's exam and I hope I am ready to take on the test.
posted by Tagad_Tale @ 9:34 PM
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