Summer Analyst is Paradise

It's 8:30pm on a Friday night and you're pulling together a few pages of a deck for a pitch that is going absolutely nowhere. Your analyst could've walked you through the how-tos in 15 minutes, but he thought his minimal email instructions would suffice and that it was a good rep of completing the scavenger hunt (He left for Montauk at 6:00). As soon as you save down v1 and fire off the email straight to the associate (Analyst said you could so you feel like the man), you're going to hit the pre-game at Hair of the Dog. You're excited to make the most of your hourly pay since you have been raking in the hours this week. Your boys from school, Tyler, Chris, and Jake, are already 10 drinks deep since they got off at 5:00 from their non-finance internship. "The hours might suck, but thank god I am in IB with good exit opportunities" is what you remind yourself for the 1000th time this summer.

You're running behind so you don't have time to change, but it's fine because your bank has casual Fridays. You roll into Hair of the Dog around 10:30pm with your backpack and see your boys in the back corner downing some IPAs. You make your way over and are greeted with "No way man, you just got out of the office, I can't believe you don't WFH on Fridays???" Using your new finance jargon, you explain how you had to "shell out a deck for a pitch that could rake in some serious fees." They have no idea you were simply in PowerPoint aligning logos and copying and pasting everything in.

You spend the remainder of your night making your way around bars; Mr. Purple, DL, Phebes, Carrol's Place, Fiddlesticks. You meet dozens of other interns where you ask the same questions "Where do you work?" "What group are you in?" "How do you like banking?". Since you're the one interning in IB you're buying rounds for your buddies since you're working a "shit ton this summer". You refuse to mention that your overtime is .5x (Shoutout GS) so in reality your friends are making almost just as much. After walking out of Slate hammered at 3:00 am you decide to call it a night. "This is the life" you tell yourself as you stroll back into your cracker-box dorm room you spent $6,000 on for 10 weeks at NYU. You cannot wait for when you're FT doing this every weekend.

You wake up Saturday morning with a raging headache from all the sugar-filled cocktails you consumed. After opening your computer your stomach drops as you realize an associate asked you at 9:30pm to have something ready by morning on a deal with with a somewhat rushed timeline. You thought the deal had reached a point in the process where you weren't going to be needed anymore. But you know that's not a valid excuse for the insecure hardo MBA-Associate who barks down at analysts and interns to prove he can manage those under him. You're hungover with no work sitting in his inbox, and now freaking out about how this could be the end of your career before it even started. Before starting the work you go on WSO and search "What to do if I don't get a return offer?" After reading through the posts looking for reassurance, you decide wealth management might be better for you. You're ready for round 2 tonight. Being a Summer Analyst is paradise.