Wednesday, December 31, 2014

I've come a long way in the past year. I remember in mid-December 2013, when it first started to dawn on me that the living expenses stipend from my super awesome elite thesis sponsorship was not going to come through for me as I had anticipated, and I was totally crestfallen. I scrambled frantically for a way to find another part-time job, but things were just not breaking my way, and so I had to accept temporary defeat and take the first job I could get in Houston before moving onto the next city. I remember talking about the situation to someone back when everything was going down, and somehow my imagination started to take over, and it kept bringing me back to the famous quote Gen. MacArthur made as he escaped from the Philippines in 1942.

"The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary objective of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through and I shall return." -- General Douglas MacArthur, March 21, 1942 ( LINK from Melbourne)

And return he did, on October 20, 1944.

Will I ever return to Switzerland to get my blue chip M.Sc. quant degree? I don't know.

It took MacArthur 31 months to return to the Philippines, but he was an arrogant prima donna, and sometimes it's best in life to simply walk through the right open doors and take whatever opportunities arise. Somehow I did manage to talk my way into landing a job as a quant at a top bank in the U.S., and perhaps with my career starting to take off, maybe I will find a way to shift into the hedge fund world without needing an actual quant finance degree, and never look back. Or maybe I'll just stay put for once in my life and learn to be content without always looking for the next place to jump. Honestly, I have no idea where I'll be in a year, but at the same time, things are looking up, and there are a lot of different possibilities out there. I think I'm too worn down from the last 4 years or so of my life to call any of these possibilities "exciting" anymore, because I know now that everything is a grind, but I'm glad to have them nonetheless, and I think that it was my praying and going to mass every week that helped me most during the hard times to help me get where I am now. As things stand my life is still wide open, and new people and career options keep getting dangled in front of me every other week, and for that I should be thankful--feeling a little frayed and burned out maybe, but definitely still thankful.

If I can say anything about the process of creating this thread, it's that I am more at peace with my efforts up to this point in my life. Whatever happens, happens. I'm just glad to be where I am right now, and although the topic of hedge funds is starting to get a little old, unexciting, and boring to me now, maybe that's a good sign. If I'm going to transform myself from being a slacking dilettante to being a legitimate professional, "taking the romance out" of my field is definitely a necessary first step. Mission accomplished.

This post was edited on 1/5/15 at 8:27 pm