The Wharton 4Y

D u ri ng the fall of my sophomore year I attended 17 OCR info sessions. Despite the fact that these workshops were geared toward seniors and that most of these firms didn’t even have sophomore programs and my suit jacket and pants were mismatched, I still dutifully showed up at each one (sometimes two or three a day) over the first two weeks of class.

The next week, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I had bags under my eyes, my acne was even more crazy than usual and one of my eyes was twitching uncontrollably. I was running myself ragged when I should have been enjoying my first few weeks living off-campus with my classmates. I immediately found my padfolio stuffed with postcards advertising Class of 2012 deadlines and ballpoint pens in various shades of corporate blue, threw it in the trash, and vowed never to set foot in the Woodlands ballroom at The Inn at Penn again.

Oh wait. No I didn’t. I didn’t do any of that.

Instead, after coming home each night full off of flatbread and edamame hummus, I bragged about my experiences to all of my other sophomore friends, who in turn started to get nervous about their own lack of preparation. Each day I carried my padfolio around in my backpack like I used to carry around my holographic Charizard a decade prior, and each night I slept well knowing that even some of my senior friends at the time were envious of the stack of business cards I had collected.

I proudly told this story to a group of senior friends last week over dinner, as we remembered all the times we had together. Fully expecting a round of applause, I was surprised when one of my closest friends, a burgeoning social media social activist, asked: “So were you really happy then?” “Obviously,” snapped another associate consultant-bound friend. “It paid off for him, he’s working in banking.” I just nodded my head in agreement and shot a look at the activist.

But I couldn’t (and still can’t) get her question out of my head. For the most part, I know that I am happy. Look at all of the people, from my parents’ friends to my creative writing classmates, who have ooh-ed and ahh-ed when I mention investment banking. Look at Wharton freshmen’s eyes light up at “M&A Analyst.” Look at the size of my “relocation stipend” that just came via FedEx Priority Overnight. How could I not be happy?

Happiness, I’ve always believed, is a feeling that is unlocked as success is achieved. For the past four years at Penn, I’ve grown to define success as finding an internship that would lead to a job. But not just any job — one with the Big Three or the Bulge Bracket, in Manhattan. So I set out from the starting gate in September 2010: I joined the right clubs, registered for the right classes, networked with the right people. And I’ve finally reached the finish line — in two months time, I’ll be settling into my cubicle on the 19th floor of an investment bank across the street from the Flatiron Building.

From my new perch, I can do something I couldn’t afford to do before: take a breath and look back. As with most races, it’s easy to get tunnel vision as you’re rushing along trying to beat the curve and taking 7 a.m. Acela trains to superdays. There’s no energy to think about bigger issues, like why did I join this race in the first place? Who defined the finish line? And is this a race that I even want to be running? The only direction to go is forward; professors, peers, and recruiters urging you on as you inch closer and closer to ... success?

I truly believe that I am a stronger, smarter person for completing this four-year marathon. But I do wish I had taken a few pitstops now and then. Not full stops, but pauses, to allow myself to check not only my GPA and GCal, but also my happiness and surroundings. I’ll never know what might have been hidden in the grass beyond the track marked with various shades of corporate blue, but I sort of wish I did.

Matt Williams is a Wharton senior from St. Louis, Mo. and a former Weekly Pennsylvanian editor-in-chief and news design editor of the DP. His email address is matthew.anish.williams@gmail.com.

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