- Joined
- 6/6/08
- Messages
- 1,194
- Points
- 58
This is an article about doing what you love for your career. I know that there's a heck of a lot of money to be made in front-office trading and i-banking and all of that, but at the same time, I am sure it will entail crazy work weeks at times (if not all the time year round), a lot of job insecurity, working in the environment of a pressurized bottle, and a lot of other things that can really deter people. I know it's not for everyone.
How to Do What You Love
Now there's some horn tooting ahead about how it applies to me, so if you're a headhunter looking for someone with potential to guide and groom towards an eventual career with your firm in London or NYC or Philadelphia, please read on. If not, hopefully this article proved useful.
[HornToot]
1) My optimization models and applications professor, constantly, in emails, told me I was working hard at my OR skills, since I always started the homework/studying early (like 2 days after it was assigned when there was a week to do it). She is only partially right when she says I work so hard. The reason I seemed to work as hard as I did was that I found linear/integer/nonlinear programming fun--since I knew that it was about solving problems as to how to allocate resources the best. Also, the professor is so wonderful that she is just fun to be around.
One time even, I ran through both sample exams ahead of time and checked them over with her so she kicked me out of a review lecture because she was going over them there. That's what I got for having too much fun with my "work". I'm planning on taking a stochastic programming course with her in the coming spring. Hopefully my university will let me in.
2) I took a graduate level statistics course (design of experiments) for the sheer fun and challenge of it. Since it was the Russian professor I had for basic engineering statistics and the course was just too easy (bring in a bunch of notes for the open note exam, mix and match equations, get A) and I wanted to be challenged by a graduate level course. I don't remember the material too well, but it was fun learning it and doing the homework. It made me feel smart knowing the work I was doing was for the sheer fun of it.
3) I did a 3-man project on the decision to invest in the Tesla Roadster all alone--in fact, I told my other two group members to not bug me about it, sit back, eat a muffin, and enjoy an easy A (and an A it was. I got a 90!). In fact, the first topic we got was for some silly corporation that I could find no information for, and when I called the company, they wouldn't disclose it, so we had to change topics in a day. The advent of a niche electric sports car means that fully electric cars for the rest of us aren't too far away meaning there may be an end to being bled at the pump! So that made it really fun. I'm not sure if this is a black mark against my record, though, since instead of utilizing every member of my group, I decided to do all the work myself. I know in reality that there will be far too much work for a single member to handle, and I also have to learn how to allocate different projects to different people.
4) My PHP web programming project was something also that was the most enjoyable programming project I had ever done--mainly because I was doing it on something I wanted to do. Sadly, I can't download C++ at work to learn it, which makes it hard to study that. Not sure how to go about becoming a super programmer all that quickly. It's something I've had a very rocky start with, but I realize that it's the glue that puts all of the problem solving and operations research skills together and links it to the real world. I have to thank my algorithms professor for that. He really was amazing, but sadly, I realized this only in hindsight.
5) In my organizational planning and control class, I took charge of my group for two projects. Why? Because the opportunity to lead presented itself and I wanted to for the experience of it.
6) Looking forward to game theory this coming semester. I am extremely excited, but to write some big capital letter spamming cheer would seem immature. I especially need it to understand how game theory applies to relationships between a guy and a girl--or at least that's the impression I got from numb3rs (finally, a show for self-proclaimed nerds like me!).
This is why I decided to go into actuarial work--but at my internship, I'm being heavily under-utilized. 20% of the time, I'm doing work which doesn't have me using the skills I thought I was being hired for, and 80% of the time I'm reading Robert McDonald's derivatives book or researching other options in careers!
So yeah...this is basically why I'm looking into the quant field. I love math, operations research, statistics, and finance. I have an ambition to build a family in financial security and to teach my kids (when I have them) of the power of good problem solving skills.
So yeah.
[/HornToot]
How to Do What You Love
Now there's some horn tooting ahead about how it applies to me, so if you're a headhunter looking for someone with potential to guide and groom towards an eventual career with your firm in London or NYC or Philadelphia, please read on. If not, hopefully this article proved useful.
[HornToot]
1) My optimization models and applications professor, constantly, in emails, told me I was working hard at my OR skills, since I always started the homework/studying early (like 2 days after it was assigned when there was a week to do it). She is only partially right when she says I work so hard. The reason I seemed to work as hard as I did was that I found linear/integer/nonlinear programming fun--since I knew that it was about solving problems as to how to allocate resources the best. Also, the professor is so wonderful that she is just fun to be around.
One time even, I ran through both sample exams ahead of time and checked them over with her so she kicked me out of a review lecture because she was going over them there. That's what I got for having too much fun with my "work". I'm planning on taking a stochastic programming course with her in the coming spring. Hopefully my university will let me in.
2) I took a graduate level statistics course (design of experiments) for the sheer fun and challenge of it. Since it was the Russian professor I had for basic engineering statistics and the course was just too easy (bring in a bunch of notes for the open note exam, mix and match equations, get A) and I wanted to be challenged by a graduate level course. I don't remember the material too well, but it was fun learning it and doing the homework. It made me feel smart knowing the work I was doing was for the sheer fun of it.
3) I did a 3-man project on the decision to invest in the Tesla Roadster all alone--in fact, I told my other two group members to not bug me about it, sit back, eat a muffin, and enjoy an easy A (and an A it was. I got a 90!). In fact, the first topic we got was for some silly corporation that I could find no information for, and when I called the company, they wouldn't disclose it, so we had to change topics in a day. The advent of a niche electric sports car means that fully electric cars for the rest of us aren't too far away meaning there may be an end to being bled at the pump! So that made it really fun. I'm not sure if this is a black mark against my record, though, since instead of utilizing every member of my group, I decided to do all the work myself. I know in reality that there will be far too much work for a single member to handle, and I also have to learn how to allocate different projects to different people.
4) My PHP web programming project was something also that was the most enjoyable programming project I had ever done--mainly because I was doing it on something I wanted to do. Sadly, I can't download C++ at work to learn it, which makes it hard to study that. Not sure how to go about becoming a super programmer all that quickly. It's something I've had a very rocky start with, but I realize that it's the glue that puts all of the problem solving and operations research skills together and links it to the real world. I have to thank my algorithms professor for that. He really was amazing, but sadly, I realized this only in hindsight.
5) In my organizational planning and control class, I took charge of my group for two projects. Why? Because the opportunity to lead presented itself and I wanted to for the experience of it.
6) Looking forward to game theory this coming semester. I am extremely excited, but to write some big capital letter spamming cheer would seem immature. I especially need it to understand how game theory applies to relationships between a guy and a girl--or at least that's the impression I got from numb3rs (finally, a show for self-proclaimed nerds like me!).
This is why I decided to go into actuarial work--but at my internship, I'm being heavily under-utilized. 20% of the time, I'm doing work which doesn't have me using the skills I thought I was being hired for, and 80% of the time I'm reading Robert McDonald's derivatives book or researching other options in careers!
So yeah...this is basically why I'm looking into the quant field. I love math, operations research, statistics, and finance. I have an ambition to build a family in financial security and to teach my kids (when I have them) of the power of good problem solving skills.
So yeah.
[/HornToot]
