Posting this from Hayden Library at MIT. I just finished TCFA 2006 a few hours ago, and I have got huge amounts of notes that I need to transcribe to the blog. Tomorrow is FEA 2006, but I think that I’m going to skip day one and just attend day two and the banquet. Conferences are amazingly exhausting, and I need to do some sightseeing while I’m at MIT.
I learned a whole bunch, but the main thing that I learned was that I’m not doomed….
There was always the nagging feeling that if I didn’t do the right things that I would be doomed in finance. This fear was reinforced by the fact that my first contact with finance was through headhunters, and they strictly control the information that they give you about what it is like in finance, and also suggest that if you don’t take the job you are doomed. The fear that this is your one and only chance is a powerful emotion, but fortunately the main thing that I learned is that everything is probably going to work out alright for me. The main thing is that I’ve talked to enough people that I now see myself as on the “inside” of the finance community rather than on the “outside.”
