One of my favorite topics in both its relevance to my life and ubiquity in the friends is what I like to call the finance hamster wheel. It goes something like this:
“I want to get into Harvard/Yale/Princeton so I can work at GS/MS/JPM and exit at a top tier private equity fund so I can go to HBS/GSB post”.
I’ve met some people who believed in this path since high school. Others (like myself) get roped in somewhere along the way.
Of course, as all generalizations go, this is not applicable to everyone, and I know some people in finance who I genuinely believe love their jobs and can see them being future partners of their respective funds. But for purposes of this, the core issue with this path I believe is around a concept of finding your identity.
Growing up in an Asian-American household, I too was told to get good grades, get into a good college, and find a well-paying job. I pursued a number of “hobbies” both in high school and college but at the end of the day what I always put first and valued most ended up being professional success. Where my identity became tied to how hard I worked, because I knew if I worked those extra 5, 10, 20 hours I would be able to maximize my chances for what my immigrant parents laid out for me as the American dream (compounded with the implicit pressure of what how my peers would judge me). And as I followed further down this path of professional prestige, the harder it was to divorce who I was as a person, to what 80-90 hours of my week was tied to. And despite being miserable, the scariest part about quitting my job wasn’t (thankfully) financial distress or lack of future employment, but rather forcing myself to existentially figure out who the hell I actually was if it wasn’t the “Tech Investor at XYZ Fund” shown on my LinkedIn profile or the 20th Instagram story of my Michelin star dinner or table at ABC popular nightclub.
It’s an insidious path to fall into because on paper and outside-in optically everything looks great. And truth be told even a handful of months post quitting, I still don’t have a firm idea of who I am or what my purpose is. But honestly, I think that’s okay because the scary thing isn’t being uncertain but rather being afraid to take that first leap of faith into the unknown. And waking up one day in your 30s wondering where your life went.
The steps you take don’t have to be big. They just need to take you in the right direction.
Random Musings 