Day 2 - A picture of you

 

Day 1 - Introduce yourself

Shall I do my typical “30-second pitch” when I network?

Hi, Vincent Chao; sophomore at Boston College Carroll School of Management studying finance and math. I’m an incredibly hard worker trying to find my way into the competitive industry of investment banking. Along with ambition and desire, I believe I possess the skills and stamina to succeed in such a tough position. I wake up every morning seeking new challenges, and it is these challenges that drives me to put forward nothing but my best effort.

…anyway. I don’t really say that to people. Just something along those lines.

What else is there to say about myself that people do not already know? I literally like to put myself in the  worst position possible and find a way to get out of it. You know that labyrinth story with the Greek god (or …man?) used string to help guide him out? I would probably have purposely not used string just to see if I can get out on my own. It digs me into holes every once in a while, but each failure is a learning experience for me.

Speaking of getting out on my own... I’m a fairly independent person. I never expect much out of other people, at least in terms of needing someone to bail me out. To me, asking for help is shameful and will only do so if absolutely necessary. As such, it annoys me a lot when people expect things of me. I expect that you have already tried everything in your power to figure a problem out before asking me, or anyone else for that matter, for help. Also, I am a very fair person. If I request something of you, I will absolutely without a doubt return a favor of equal value. The same holds true the other way around.

Being at college has helped me to discover my independence. When I got to college, I came to realize that almost everyone travel in packs. Want to eat? Must find eight other people to eat with. Going to class? Text to world to see who is traveling towards the same area. It goes on and on with the scenarios. I came to realize the absurdity of this and how time consuming being a part of a pack is. Not to mention, relying on others tends to lead to disappointment. I’d rather decide my own fate and make my own decisions. And thus my independence from society was born.

People can easily describe me as antisocial or a loner. I don’t blame them. I enjoy spending a lot of time alone and doing my own thing. It’s much more liberating and less restricting. But don’t get me wrong. I very much enjoy the company of those I care about. Being with people I care about is using my time with purpose. There are those with whom spending time feels simply like a waste of my time and there are those with whom time spent feels productive. That’s how I distinguish who I care about and who I don’t care about.

So what do I do with all this time I save by separating productive social encounters and wasteful ones? I’m a self-diagnosed workaholic. I love learning and the best way to learn is to dedicate time towards it. Also, my OCD-ness and perfectionism force me to get every detail as correct as possible, and thus taking quite a bit of time. I’m never satisfied with “just getting it done.” If it’s getting done, it’s getting done right.

One last comment. Even though I absolutely love playing tennis, baseball is probably my favorite sport. The reason for this is that I love the statistics involved with everything in the sport. Everything is based on numbers and while, as Sterling always says, “it’s impossible to predict baseball” (which is true in that you do not know when what event is going to happen), it is a game that can almost be modeled using these numbers. Tennis on the other hand is less entertaining to watch, but is definitely more fun (for me) to play as it involves finding a way to not only outplay your opponent physically, but to outthink your opponent strategically.

And with that, I shall conclude my “introduction” about myself.

Another Blog Challenge!

Day 1 - Introduce yourself

Day 2 - A picture of you

Day 3 - A picture of what you wore today

Day 4 - Favorite television program

Day 5 - Favorite form of exercise

Day 6 - A picture of your handwriting

Day 7 - A moment

Day 8 - What you wanted to be as a child

Day 9 - Something you hate to be asked about.

Day 10 - Favorite song of the week

Day 11 - The person you miss the most

Day 12 - Your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend/love/crush

Day 13 - A photo of you taken recently

Day 14 - Your day in great detail

Day 15 - Another moment

Day 16 - Something that upsets you

Day 17 - Your favorite song of the week

Day 18 - Someone that’s not in your state/country

Day 19 - Another picture of you

Day 20 - Name of your elementary school

Day 21 - A picture of you throughout highschool/middleschool

Day 22 - Links to all the websites/online profiles you have

Day 23 - List of all the places you’ve lived

Day 24 - A drawing you drew

Day 25 - Something you’re thinking of changing

Day 26 - An embarrassing moment

Day 27 - Screenshot you took

Day 28 - The recent text message you receive says

Day 29 - What you are looking forward to in the next month

Day 30 - Last moment

Again, I’m trying to be a more active blogger; both here and on my other blog (which has yet to get started). So, these things are always a good way to get going.

February 3, 2011

I’ve been getting really bored of life lately; even more so than normal. Having the opportunity to learn from some really great professors is awesome, but I hate this routine and the rigidity of everything. Despite my lack of time, I’m trying to think of ways to challenge myself further and stimulate some kind of interest. For example, taking an hour off a night from work to go to the gym has helped me get more energized. Another is to set aside a couple of hours a week to play tennis, particularly with a group of people as a social event. And most recently, I’ve issued myself a challenge of creating a stock overview and analysis report once a month. There needs to be more to life than going to classes day in and day out, repeating the same routine over and over again, and I need to convince myself of it.

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Taking four math classes and two finance courses in a semester is not really fun… I did not realize how much homework that would entail. I have really great professors though. I can say that 5 out of the 6 professors are very interesting and do not put me to sleep. At least that’s encouraging.

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It is so hard to believe how much snow we got over the past month or so. There are fifteen feet mounds of snow outside of my building. I’m at the point where I just groan when I look outside and see it snowing. No more “oh look at the snow, it’s so pretty.” This weather is actually making the whole 2012 end of the world bullshit more and more believable. It was actually hailing chunks of ice yesterday; big enough chunks that I had to brush them out of my hair. But then I saw this video…

Chunks of ice falling out of the sky? That can’t be good. Hope people parked their cars in their garage.

January 30, 2011

On losing after his loss against Ferrer in the Australian Open quarterfinal:

"This is one of the negative moments. That's part of the sport. If I am ready to accept both things the same then I will be able to come back and play my best tennis another time.”

-Rafael Nadal

January 26, 2011

Somehow or another, I've made it through twenty years of my life. As much as I like to complain about things going on in my life, everything has always seemed to fall into place and even if they don't initially, things come together eventually. I've never really suffered any setbacks and major failures. Over the past few weeks, this realization hit me and I've began to think about how I would react when I eventually fail to achieve something I try really hard to get. Just a thought... one that's kind of lingered over me recently. Regardless, I think I'll spend today celebrating making it thus far without facing adversity and that I'm actually pretty lucky.

Of course, thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and thanks for putting up with me over the past two decades. As we get older and start facing different challenges, I'm certain that these bonds will be critical to each of us.

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Sent from my Windows Phone

January 23, 2011

Wow it's been a really long time since I last blogged. I've been so busy the past couple of months and I don't see that coming to an end any time soon. I'll try to start blogging more again though now that I can blog right from my phone.

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So here's an update in how I'm doing professionally... It's pretty much the priority for me at thus point in my life so I've dedicated a lot of my time to these things.

I think I promised a post on how the Barclays Capital event I went to went. To make it quick and painless, I had a great time and met some really interesting, professional people. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get an interview or offer from them for this coming summer. I guess they were able to tell that I wasn't really that interested in finance and operations given that I was asking a good amount of questions on investment banking. No big deal. There are other opportunities out there that can potentially be a better fit fir me anyway.

That trip was the crazy weekend when I spent about 30 hours on a bus within three days or so. Good times. Everything turned out okay in the end.

A few weeks after that, I was interviews by a firm called Commonwealth Annuities. It's a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs but is in the reinsurance business. That was my first time being subjected to a practically full day interview, having to meet with 6 people. I thought I did pretty well and was incited back for second rounds, which should take place sometime in the coming weeks. This would definitely offer a great opportunity. Entry level analysts at firms such as this usually do very similar tasks as analysts in investment banking do so this offers me a great opportunity to break myself in. Not to mention it's Goldman Sachs, which is my ultimate goal. I obviously hope to have several opportunities to choose from when the time comes, but I would definitely happy to land this one. I think one thing the interviewers liked about me was my honesty and enthusiasm. I was pretty straightforward with them about the fact that I'm not 100% sure I want to launch my career in insurance, but I was able to assure them that I will put my best foot forward, work hard, and use this as an opportunity to discover of this is where I want to be.

A few weeks later I interviewed for a Merrill Lynch position in private wealth management on the day I was heading home for winter vacation. This one went well ad well...but for some reason I can't get into contact with then anymore afterwards. Major fail. Oh well.

During break, I was able to go back and work for the company I worked for over the summer, Peregrine Acquisitions. As always, that was pretty fun. The culture there is just a lot of fun. It's relaxed but somehow or another I always learn from the job. Over the summer, I did a lot of work basically as the support staff. They would find me if there was side things that needed to be done. This time around, I was exposed a lot more to financial modeling and the actual projects. I appreciated that and I put in quite a bit of work trying to really understand everything. I love learning while on the job and it's so much more satisfying to be able to figure out something that is real and will actually be used than it is to figure out something on an exam. I love the challenge - it's what I thrive on - and I'm just looking for more as i go forward in my career.

During break, I also participated in an externship at Prudential Capital Group in NYC. That was a one day program where they basically gave us a one-day overview of what they do through presentations and case studies. I was amazed by how much i actually learned during that one day. The firm works on the buy-side and issues mezzanine debt and private placements. Very intriguing stuff and that's definitely another place I would not mind working at at all. One thing I realized there is how much fun financial firms can be to work at because all entry level people you're in contact with on a daily basis are at most three years out of college (a lot like at Peregrine). Even they're young, they're a lot more professional, mature, and overall interesting than the typical college student.

Since I returned to school, every night has been packed with networking events and information sessions for various internship opportunities. Oh recruiting season. Me and a couple of friends have been doing mad dashes around campus on a nightly basis trying to make these events. A few days ago, I also went to an "etiquette dinner." They spent the night teaching us how to eat in a professional setting. Very interesting stuff and will definitely come in handy. At least now I know what all those forks and knives are for. Next week is just going to be more of the same with several internship fairs coming up. Networking!

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So that's all for now. I'm going to post on other thoughts not related to my career soon.