i am an investment banker (?)


i have pretty strong doubts that this is something that i'd want to do after college, but i'm thankful for the opportunity now. it's hard to feel like i've done more than make money--and i don't know that i've even done that yet--at the end of the day.

i do still believe in the possibility of, broadly defined, achieving social goods through business (profit) interests, but i can't say that i've brought about much justice in the world via my work* here thus far. my hope is that that's because i'm so junior in the firm and can't see or don't have the influence to see what good is really coming about, not because justice and profit are always and everywhere opposed. though perhaps they are? at the very least, i hope that i'm learning things applicable to other jobs/places/ideas that i get more excited about.

*[for the mathy amongst you, my main job thus far has been to design a "fixed income structured product" that predicts the price movements of different bonds based on past data. if you can do this well, you can buy when the price is low and sell when the price is high. if the prices are volatile enough that your gains cover your transaction costs, you can make a lot of money. and by product, i mean a set of models that become formulas in one lovely spreadsheet.] fun!