presenting myself briefly. yes.

I'm not going to eternalize my writing on boring contextual references, i was born in canada, had a norwegian mother and been mostly educated in the french system (chauvinism is my thing). While I'm not especially trying to sound particularly serious, I'm simply wondering if you had some good financial history and theory books to recommend in order to fulfill my intellectual pursuits on the subject?

I also have some questions to you guys about what you believe makes a good investment banker and what kind of mentality he has to develop (or innately posses) in order to pursue a fulfilling career in this field?

Will the fact that I'm currently finishing my last year of high school in Paris in a private school specialized with precocious youth education (took some IQ tests right before getting expelled from my previous private high school in Montréal and managed to jump back into the french system) and dropped out from Canadian high exactly 8 times in 3 years (was pursuing a science pre-university degree in Oslo before moving back to my home town); Okey, this sentence in getting out of control but what I was basically trying to say is - how much does personal history and past experiences influence: 1. the essay I'm going to write for uni and 2. the version I'll have to give of myself to a potential employer in that domain?

First: I used to trade options (FRO's) and contracts (CFD's) part time while at CEGEP, making or losing money irregularly (giving credit to my cyclothymic temperament for that one I guess), but ended up considering the whole internet based trading platform thing a big scam (I had a discussion with an institutional trader who worked for BMO at some point and was amazed to hear about the the lack of psychological understanding this guy was actually expressing - do you only consider math and physics to be relevant or does psych and even socio have things to say about market behaviour? I obviously get the economics part - even though I'm more of a behaviourist than anything else, but what field of science explains finance in its most sincere way (don't say *finance* because it sounds right, nor accounting, they're not real domains of research).

I have travelled a lot (my father works in foreign affairs within the world bank group) and speak 3 languages fluently (that being french, english, norwegian and I have 7 years of german behind me).

I guess it doesn't come as a huge surprise when I say that my strongest subjects are history and philosophy, although my grades do skyrocket when I really try to study in the other courses (I'm averaging between Assez Bien and Bien right now, but am conscious about getting my grades up before the BAC).

How is the system in France actually?

I hear that Dauphine is pretty strong in that kind of thing - what are your thoughts?