What was the best job you ever had?
The summer after I graduated high school (and before I even had the most remote understanding of what IB or Finance was) I worked in construction for a local homebuilder in Arizona.
The jobs were pretty simple. Painting walls, doing drywall, installing lights, toilets, bathtubs, etc. Some days we spent all day sweeping up sawdust.
It paid $17/hour (this was in 2019, before COVID/Inflation and rising wages, so it was pretty nice for a job as a kid who just graduated HS). I worked with 3 of my best friends and we just dicked around all day. Reminiscing on this I think this was seriously the best job or internship I’ve ever had.
No MDs yelling at you, favorable schedule (7am-3pm, M-F) on your feet moving around all day, and just being a jackass, shooting the shit with your best buddies. I’m set on going into IB and will be interning with a BB next summer, but sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to just pursue a blue collar career and live a chill life. I remember my boss telling me that if I stayed on for another year or so he would promote me to being a supervisor and start off making 55k a year as a 20 year old. Obviously I wouldn’t be making nearly as much as IB, but that was tempting as an 18/19 year old kid at the time, to just not even go to college, learn the ropes of construction, and live a pretty chill blue collar life.
Glad I picked IB, but man sometimes I wish I could back to those days in construction. There is nothing like working with a couple of your best friends and just dicking around all day.
What was the best job you ever had?
Caddying: wake up early, go to the club, walk with some rich rich person for 3-4 hours (mostly shoot the shit with some golf advice sprinkled in there), get to be outside, then get home before noon with $200 CASH
Best job I had was working in an animal shelter with my mom. I worked constantly whenever I was available. I would bathe dogs and cats who had cuts and scratches and needed careful attention. I'd also take injured dogs on rehabilitating walks, train them to do integrate etc. I miss that life
Aren't you an incoming intern that hasn't even experienced a day in Ib yet? Why are you talking like you're 6 years into your career reminiscing. You graduated high school literally a year ago lol.
I played poker for a living and it was glorious!
I sucked at the game for a long time, just playing recreationally. But then I started to really study the game and became friends with some professionals that upped my knowledge. One year a friend and I committed to playing every single weekend for a year (we both had other jobs) and we managed to do it and I knew I was playing at a high level.
Out of pure coincidence, later that year I found myself in between consulting gigs so I decided to play poker professionally and ended up doing it for 8 months. It was the best time of my life! I got to meet so many people, play against so many different styles and made some good friends along the way (poker room managers, dealers, waitstaff, other players, etc). I got to be so good at it that I wouldn't even look at my cards half the time (that whole "play the player" thing) and I could even tell people ahead of time that I would take their money. I would flat out tell people, "You're in my office, you're sitting at my desk, I play this game more than you do and I will take your money". I kept my schedule in a very professional way and created "shifts" for myself and when I had to be at the "office". Overall, the game is worth about $35/hour for me (I have the records to support that). So not all the money in the world but I keep my life expenses low so this was plenty of money.
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, better than the feeling you get when you're paying your bills from money you won with your own intellect. You could have come to me and said, "choose any other job, we'll make you an astronaut, a porn star or the lead guitarist for Aerosmith, whatever" and I would have told you, "nah, I'll just keep playing poker".
I've had plenty of jobs in my life but I'd return to playing poker in a second. I'm working on my skills again just in case this recession thing gets serious, so it's always nice to be able to fall back on it if I need to.
Worked at a marina one summer. Nothing better than getting paid to tan and blatantly hit on chicks in front of their boat-owning investment banker boyfriends.
Was also in the company policy that drinks on the job were allowed after 5pm. Good times.
I feel like physical jobs just humble you and make you appreciate all the hard work you put in the classroom. I worked 60 hour weeks as a mechanic all summer long in 90+ degree weather( shop had no ac just fans). At some point when your body is aching and you are just physically exhausted you ask yourself "why the fuck am I here".You become humble when you look at your coworkers and they've been going through the same thing for years, doing it to support their families and you can't help but feel pity for them. However, then you realize how fortunate you are to be able to get further education.That experience indirectly helped me get my internship for this summer as well as place in IB for next summer. I knew I definitely didn't want to do that shit and was willing to do whatever I could to avoid it. Worked my ass off and it all worked out.I think having experiences like those make the good ones feel 10 times better, also gives you more mental strength.
So when my friends ask me if I think I can handle IB hours I think about my 12 hour shifts doing physically labor in the heat and kind of laugh inside.