Non-Target to BB full-time

I see more and more young kids at various academic stages- some even in their early high school years- worrying about, and preparing for, potential future careers within banking. Interest is obviously good, but there's always a line that should not be crossed. My colleagues and I discussed this earlier and we all experience this as somewhat unsettling and something that would throw us off when recruiting. I hope sharing my story can show that this extreme desire for banking at an early age is not a must and there are several different ways to break into the industry. I was always a solid student, but in high school I never had a thought about going into banking. I am not even sure if I knew what investment banking was. I was more focused on the usual high school stuff; sports, girls, etc. This continued into college. I graduated high school with grades good enough to get into a target school (not that I knew what that implied at the time) but chose to go to a non-target college to play D3-sports and enjoy the college lifestyle as much as possible. My lack of interest and knowledge for banking continued, even though I had for an unknown reason chosen to major in finance. It wasn't until the winter of my junior year I started to develop an interest for a banking career, but it was obviously too late to get a summer internship (I didn't know that at the time and applied to everything anyway). I ended up working in a sports retail store that summer. When my senior year was to begin, I decided to really pursue banking and I started networking frequently. This gave me a call with HR at one of the BBs that led to them bringing me in to an interview for an internship the following summer, i.e. the summer post my graduation. I weighed my options and decided to go for the summer internship, even though that would leave me with a risk of being unemployed the next fall. The recruitment process was tough and I was always the odd man out. For the super day, I was in a group of people all coming from target schools- one was even a master student. I was sure that I stood no chance against all of them, as they all had a completely different swagger and, to some extent, were much more intelligent than I. At that point, I decided to play it all on one card and I decided that I had one chance to stand out and it was not through trying to be the smartest or most knowledgeable. I played it all on personality and the fact that I did have a different background than the rest of the applicants. I kept the case studies and projects simple and instead really tried to connect with each one of the bankers that were interviewing. It worked and the master student and I went through to a last round of interviews, after which I was hired for the internship solely based on that I stood out from the group through my energy, curiosity, and different background. After that summer, I was offered a to start fulltime right away. The gambled had paid off and, more importantly, I thoroughly enjoyed my high school and college years without any worries about banking.