I-Banking Grads to Real-World: What, Us Worry?
Recent Dartmouth graduate and current investment banker Ursula Grisham published a piece in the latest '08 Class newsletter that is unconsciously emblematic of the Ivy League’s blithe, proud role in this recession.
The letter, a warm smile towards the mirror, recounts Grisham's time as an investment banker in Europe. Reveling in her “ambitious, if not whimsical” career choice, she delves into the “aesthetic” dimensions of her experience—thus running like hell from every imaginable real-people consequence of having played house with the global financial system.
After comparing the walk home from her bank to walking home from a frat party, she pulls the blinders tighter:
“One could argue that if there ever were a good time to be in finance, it's now. There's no way to learn like being thrown into the middle of a raging storm.”
And the ideal of the liberal arts turned over in its grave. So as not to totally berate Ms. Grisham, there's a pretty well documented (and perhaps problematic) trend in the appeals of an Ivy-fueled finance career. As so many decorated coeds haven't learned in the career services office, i-banking on the brink is not about the welfare of billions but about massaging one's skill set into greater earning potential. Ivy Leaguers are among the only people at no risk of real hardship these days, and here we are, looking for the benefit.
What benefit? Check after the jump. It involves cash and Sarah Palin.
After Grisham briefly alludes to the plight of Mexican farmers, the climax of the letter is an extended meditation on how awesome it is that her boss hates Sarah Palin. Ok so. Let's review for the incoming class of 2013 who should listen very closely to the perks of becoming a corporate wallflower with a really nice watch. Be sure to do some internships in poor-sounding countries in order to prop up a personal mission to help underdeveloped countries. But keep that GPA about a 3.5 and take that accounting class if you want to snatch up the right finance gig. Given in these hard times and everything, it's not really about what you want to do. It's about the aesthetic experience of being on the front line.
Don't forget to keep “I’m smart, promise” tone in all of your overwriting. Like the allusions in Grisham's letter, Career Services is a “salient milieu.” “Wall Street is under water, but the river isn’t entirely red.” And Sarah Palin is the real way to any wonton liberal banker's heart. And quoting theorists with challenging names always reveals the deeper meaning behind spending the rest of your life not knowing who you are.
Here's the full text of the letter as published:
"Something Corporate"
by Ursula Grisham
The past 5 months, for many of us, have been marked by a certain journey from the warm and nascent Dartmouth bubble out onto the stark landscape of the "real" world. The scope of this challenge has hardly been mitigated by the circumstances that now affect our global economy, and radically reconfigure our place within it. In retrospect, my choice to become an investment banker was ambitious, if not whimsical. I wanted to understand the economy, the markets, firsthand. But even the appeal of working at a European bank, as opposed to an American one, rendered my choice as much an aesthetic decision as any other. To this day, I often feel like an anthropologist, thrust into some strange land, seeking to deconstruct the ideas and sensibilities of these people who nevertheless remain objects of study.
As I sit to reflect on my experiences since graduation, I note that like any other, the job has its ups and downs. But for all the times I've trekked home at sunrise across the recession-blanched earth (the dawn is bleaker on this walk than, say, one's trip home from a fraternity), I see how one could argue that if there ever were a good time to be in finance, it's now. There's no way to learn like being thrown into the middle of a raging storm.
On Wall Street, one comes to understand complex financial instruments and supply and demand and Microsoft Excel. But most of all, one learns about flux. Monitoring the headlines each day, I am borne back into a salient milieu: The Career Services office during my Junior winter, the way I went about answering the question: "So, why banking?" I rambled on about some article I read (probably in the WSJ, probably for the first time), about how the push for alternative sources of energy had sent tremors throughout the web of interrelated commodity markets: of course, finding myself more clever with each word. One day President Bush said we should subsidize ethanol farmers, and the next, families in Mexico who lived off tortillas could no longer afford their stable food. That's why finance was fascinating. It's all connected. And now, this precious anecdote frames the work I do each day.
Of course, there are plenty of banal tales that have made my time here, er, interesting. And yet, amid the hysteria of the global bourses, one of the most hallowed lessons is one I gleaned during my stay at Dartmouth. To be a true intellectual, one must be able to maintain dissonant systems of thought without viewing these conflicts as troublesome. When, as a freshman, I wept when President Bush was elected AGAIN, I simultaneously held the belief that never in my long and charmed life would I find myself within the confines of a ball and brackets firm. But here I am. When I shed much different tear, in my cubicle, as polls stared to close on November 4th, a paroxysm of fear overtook my body. One of my bosses caught me and led me in his office to chat. As my eyes scanned across the room, and I caught a glimpse of an Obama bumper sticker, I realized that this isn't necessarily the sort of place I always thought it was. We talked for nearly an hour about the economy and Sarah Palin and feminism, about legal language and the religious argot: about gay marriage. This certainly a man who will not benefit from Obama's tax plan. And I realized that Wall Street is under water, but the river isn't entirely red.
So with the conclusion of yet another election season, I remember that as in those times, the most compelling lessons could only ever be learned through the lens of politics. I am not saying that the 2004 election inspired me to become a comparative literature major, so I could learn how to speak. But in this moment, the theme of my experience as an investment banker is best captured by my most beloved theorist, Slavoj Zizek: "It's the political economy, stupid."
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March 24th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Ah to have read this in print, hungover in the Hop, eating a breakfast burrito covered in tabasco and checking out the studio art chicks walking by …
Once put in this context, Mr. Howe, I’m sure you’d find it more palatable.
March 25th, 2009 at 12:46 am
wow, that was the worst shit i’ve ever read. not only did she confuse words (’subside’ for ’subsidize’ and ’stable’ for ’staple), but the piece is entirely incoherent. this would not pass a freshmen writing seminar at dartmouth; how did she graduate?
March 25th, 2009 at 10:47 am
The only thing worse than a blonde bimbo is a blonde bimbo who thinks she’s smart…
March 25th, 2009 at 11:56 am
to my tastes, there is nothing better than an I-Banker quoting a self-described Marxist philosopher; How I love the ivy league.
March 25th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
WOW. this is the actually the worst and dumbest thing i’ve ever read. wow.
March 25th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Have you read your own comment, because that’s pretty stupid itself. I love all these passive-jealous comments.
She works/worked at Deutsche Bank Securities, according to Linked In (which is a crap site, btw).
March 25th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
really? … really?
One day President Bush said we should subside ethanol farmers, and the next, families in Mexico who lived off tortillas could no longer afford their stable food. That’s why finance was fascinating. It’s all connected. And now, this precious anecdote frames the work I do each day.
March 25th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
this coming from alex howe whose obvious jealousy stems from the fact that he can neither seem to find a job nor graduate from school. get off your own high-horse and get a degree before you start complaining to the world of ivygate.
March 25th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
I don’t understand how a self satisfied prick like alex Howe thinks it’s his duty to criticize an academic who is merely trying to make her experience meaningful.
March 25th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
don’t get me wrong, i find ursula’s piece kind of absurd but alex howe is in no position to put down others.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
OH WAY TO PULL OUT THE ZIZEK QUOTE.
stupid bitch.
March 25th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Ursula’s an academic? Superficially indulging in the “interestingness” of holding a meaningless job in a collapsing industry (that never produced anything of value in the first place) passes for an attempt at eliciting meaning? Rhetorical Questions?
well, I never.
March 25th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Eh. You’re all just a bunch of cranky bitches, and Alex you’re pathetic for not having something better to talk about. If I were her I’d be smelling my own asshole too. Plus she’s sexy.
March 25th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
“I don’t understand how a self satisfied prick like alex Howe thinks it’s his duty to criticize an academic who is merely trying to make her experience meaningful.”
ummmm…. do you know ursula? academic? HAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
March 25th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
i’d tap that…
March 25th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
She was the hottest girl at Dartmouth, that is enough to make her writing worthwhile ha-ha
March 25th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
“Wonton liberal”? Is that a jab at all the liberals who admire the “Single Asians” video?
I think you really wanted wanton there.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Wow, did you see that flurry of ad hominem posts within an hour? Right up there, three in an row, all saying the same thing.
The author of this piece totally got pissed off, bitched online to her best friends, attacking this Alex in the process, and directed them to defend her honor on this forum.
That makes me chuckle. Pathetic!
March 25th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Naw dude she was just that hott…
March 26th, 2009 at 12:21 am
http://thedartmouth.com/2007/10/12/mirror/maven/
March 26th, 2009 at 2:35 am
anyone who even remotely will agree – ursula is a PSYCHOOOOO. ive never met anyone so fucked up in the head. she’s literally a crazy bitch.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:36 am
Who cares? She’s pathetic and this is a prosaic post.
Just wait– the great Z and “Wonton” liberalism won’t be able to save her when the dissociative fugue of a quarter-life crisis hits.
March 26th, 2009 at 7:44 am
ursula’s hotness and howe’s douchness aside, that newsletter was so much more fucked up than this post says. they copy-and-pasted emails right into the pages with no editing at all – they even forgot to take out the confidentiality notice from someone’s work e-mail, so about a quarter of a page is taken up with a typeset version of “This message is intended exclusively for the individual(s) or entity to which it is addressed.” and all that bullshit.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:31 am
All the needless personal shit you people are posting about the authors of both articles on a public forum notwithstanding, Alex Howe is dead on in calling out Ursula’s article (published, fair game) for being the masturbatory, overwritten, pseudo-intellectual rubbish that it is. Nevermind the typos, which happen to the best of us, or even the fact that the article makes no coherent point; she’s an Ivy grad. who doesn’t know the meaning of ‘nascent.’ Who the hell would be jealous of someone whose name is attached to a piece of writing with such unbelievable errors. What a joke. No wonder Wall St. is in shambles…look who they’re hiring.
March 26th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
DOUBLE FIST-POUND
(m)(o_o)(m)
March 26th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
She’s also the descendent of a famous Nazi….i can’t remember who right now. Does anyone else remember?
March 26th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
you’re all the worst. Stop being jealous of alex howe for being a campus icon and, well, I will make no comment on ursula. Get a life bitches, I bet you were the ones on bored at baker looking for hook ups in the stacks while howe was sleeping with every hot girl on campus.
March 26th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Kids, kids: you’re all just awful.
March 26th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
the nazi was himmler i think
March 27th, 2009 at 8:48 am
granted, this article is stupid
but does anyone actually think that some liberal arts analyst created credit default swaps?
so alex howe here is attacking some random naive girl without even making any real point
the ivy league at its best
April 5th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
It sounds to me as if Alex Howe was denied by the hottest girl @ Dartmouth. I hear he has a tiny weinie—to match the size of his cerebral cortex. Maybe his mom didn’t breastfeed him long enough. I don’t blame her; he has a face even a mother couldn’t love!!