Dating a Nontarget is Paradise

It’s a sunny Friday morning as you’re walking to your shitty MM boutique office for your sophomore summer internship at “NYC’s premier MM life sciences shop.” “Fuck,” you think. “I don’t have an offer for summer 2025 yet.” You assure yourself that the folks over at GS HC will know your firm, and that you’ll kill it in full time recruiting. How could they not take you after two summers of sector-focused work? After all, you are on the board of Harvard Investment Association and Fund. Fuck those kids in Black Diamond; they’re all nerds anyways. HIAF is top now; everyone knows that.

You scoff as you look at PowerPoint and think about how cheap your firm is. God, they don’t even pay for FactSet or PitchBook. “It’s just so they give their analysts better training,” you convince yourself. You install Thor’s Hammer while in Parallels on the MacBook you use for school. “Working smarter is the key to being top bucket. Fuck the rest of my dumb ass analyst class. They don’t even go to target schools,” you think to yourself. You, however, go to the most prestigious target (you didn’t get into Wharton) “Fuck affirmative action. If I were class of 2028, I totally would’ve been able to be one of those WITG SSG hardos,” you think. You push the thought out of your head. “Nobody outside the US has even heard of Wharton, but even the child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo have heard of Harvard.” You giggle in prestige.

You see the clock hit 7pm and use your $25 GrubHub credit on a Chipotle bowl. You don’t tip because they’re all illegals getting your tax dollars anyway. You go on your phone while you await the call from the delivery guy. As you wait, you check your phone and see your friend Henry from your time at Taft (you didn’t get into Deerfield) sent you a text saying how you have to try Marinara. You check the menu in preparation for Monday (after all, what is an investment banking sophomore summer analyst if not prepared!), but you see that your stipend won’t cover it. Henry works at MS, so he gets a larger stipend.

Feeling defeated, you go to the lobby to pick up your Chipotle and go to “work from home.” You log off for the night and get ready to go to NYC’s premier underage intern bar — Phebe’s. You get in line and notice that half the people waiting still have braces. No worries, an analyst in your group told you it’s the coolest bar in the city, and you trust him. You slip a 50 under your shitty Pennsylvania fake that your high school weed dealer sold to you for $175. Usually you’d slip a 20, but inflation, and you feel generous. You cower in fear, as the bouncer may not believe you’re 26. He rolls his eyes and lets you in, money talks, and you’re an investment banker with a big swinging dick.

Time to talk to some chicks. You try to think of a line, but after coming up with nothing, you decide to channel your inner Thursday Lines admin 3 and talk loudly about blow until a girl turns around and asks you if you’re carrying bag. Immediately, a girl turns around. She flips her hair and smiles, asking if you want to hit the handi stall with her. She’s cute, must be a marketing intern.

You profess you have no bag and ask her where she’s from and what she’s doing for the summer. You wait patiently before dropping the Fat Man and telling her you’re a banker. But then she says she’s interning in IB and that she’s a sophomore. “Where?” You ask. “DB Sponsors,” she replies. “But I’m going to GS C&R next summer.” Shit. Maybe you shouldn’t have made your whole personality revolve around finance. She asks where you are, and thinking quickly, you say you’re at a small shop that only does a couple deals a year and that the firm runs lean with a whale hunting model. You hope she thinks you’re at Dyal or M. Klein, but you’re a little drunk after your 3rd vodka redbull, so the liquid courage hides your insecurity.

You start chatting, and you kind of hit it off. You ask her what Ivy she goes to and where she went to boarding school. “Oh, I actually go to Ohio State, haha, but I went to a big public high school outside Chicago,” she smiles. Her smile is pretty despite being a nontarget, public school peon. You wonder where she found the money for braces given that she’s clearly not even a 1 percenter. “What are these feelings I have for this Plebian?” you ask yourself.

Nonetheless, she’s pretty hot, so you keep chatting with her. Clearly, she has no fucking clue what she’s talking about, but she’s in the GWI Online Intensive program, so she must know at least something from that. Nope.

You ask why clubs she’s involved in, and she talks about how she is super involved on campus and how she is top of her class — that is, she is VP of finance at APhi and has a 3.66 that she rounds up. After you finish chatting and reconsider everything you know about meritocracy, she kisses you goodnight and gives you her number. You look her up on LinkedIn in the Uber home as Abdullah talks about how shitty his wife has been acting since he moved from Jordan. You realize she wasn’t lying about her offer and contemplate suicide.

Nevertheless, you’re really horny, so you reach out the next day asking for a date. After a few hours of waiting, she says she’d love to. You continue to go out on dates with her, and this continues for a few weeks until you ask her to be your girlfriend.

You really like the little nontarget peasant at this point. Plus, if she does well, that will help you lateral. Though the odds that she does well are slim, considering she didn’t understand anything you were talking about, you believe in her. She’s just got one of those personalities that brightens up the room. Must be all that sorority nonsense.

She says yes, and she invites you to the Ohio State vs. Michigan game in a few months. You lie and tell her you’re a huge Ohio State fan despite a bunch of your lax buddies being at Ross. “Those Rossholes,” you think to yourself. “IB recruiting is a joke from there; they learn all the technicals in class. Zero grind.”

As you begin to get laid and touch grass, the long stick that has been residing up there for the better part of a decade slides out. “Maybe there is something I can learn from this girl,” you think, as you listen to her fun and bubbly personality on networking calls with her future analysts and associates.

You realize that you should start networking for full-time recruiting at this point, so you reach back out to some old contacts. After months of speaking to healthcare groups across the street with no luck, your nontarget girlfriend mentions to you, “Hey, this girl in sorority…her dad is the group head of Goldman’s healthcare team, and they need another analyst. Want me to forward them your resume?” You orgasm instantaneously. “Yes!!!”you squeal. You send her an updated pdf of your resume.

The next day, you get a superday invite from HR with a Zoom meeting ID. “Wow, straight to superday. They must really want me,” you think arrogantly. You do the superday, and your behavioral answers, of course, suck, but they suck a little less than for SA recruiting. You are shocked when your interviewer smiles at you. This has never happened before. She asks some technicals — your speciality as someone who lives and breathes finance. You get them all correct and get the offer call later that day.

Your girlfriend gives you a smile, a hug, and a kiss. “Congrats! Nobody deserves it more. I’m so proud of you and how hard you’ve worked. So cool we will be in training together next year.” Your pretentious little heart of stone melts, and you’re so grateful for how everything turned out.

Dating a nontarget is paradise.