How did you talk about your deals?

Few reasons:

• Sell-sides do a better job of teaching the end-to-end deal process given more exposure to the longitudinal deal (versus a buy-side that's often post-LOI only, etc.)
• The steps in a sell-side are just better aligned to where associates spend time in PE (model creation, VDR review, submitting requests, interacting with management)
• Sell-side work (assuming your bank is actually mandated) usually goes somewhere (either successful transaction or dead deal but with experience that spans multiple months) versus buy-side doesn't always materialize in your buyer winning (if multiple parties still involved) and is often shorter in effort and duration
• (To generalize) Buy-side work is frequently fluffier (particularly for sponsors who might just be looking to pay a tip and don't actually ask for that much support; understand that public company buy-side advising probably looks different)

I'm sure those who did IB can offer up more (or choose to disagree with me). To me, the only real benefit to buy-side is thinking like a buyer when it comes to valuation, pros/cons of a business, etc.