No one told me it was possible to make $22,000 in a span of 10 weeks while I was still a student in University. That number even reflecting back on it seems absurd, but working in finance, specifically investment banking pays. As someone who’s been working since 2015, I’ve been at jobs that pay anywhere from $7.25 to $17 an hour. Never had I ever come close to touching this kind of money. For the first time, I had to reckon with the question: how much money do I need? After a massive mindset shift during my four-month study abroad in Iceland (Scoring 3rd place on the 2023 happiest countries list by CNBC) I started to question what I’d be willing to give up for $20,000 more in salary, or how much money it would take to make me stay in a career that made me miserable. What would be the ideal relationship between money, career, and passions?

 

Last summer, I worked at Cowen (now a branch of TD) , a middle market investment banking firm. Before getting in the industry, I had the opportunity to chat with over 50 bankers. Yet, throughout all these conversations no one brought up that only about 10% of the tasks are actually learning based. Most of it is frustratingly inefficient work that needs to be checked by every single level above you before getting to a managing director that can’t even bother to open PowerPoint to correct something they told you to do incorrectly. Depending on the week, interns and analysts oftentimes had to work more than 70 hours-which to be fair-no one tries to hide that. But expecting to work 70-80 hours doesn’t actually prepare you for working 70-80 hours. In my opinion, the slogan for investment banking should be “Be prepared to not have a life for 1.5-2 years but you’ll make a good amount of money and be set up fairly well for your next career.”

  Suffice to say, I did not have a good summer. At the time, the unhappiness from my job was so severe that it bled into everything else in my life. My home during the internship-a college dorm for the School of Visual Arts-was not a safe space, instead a place filled with anxiety. Every time I went out with friends, I’d have a death grip on my work phone, checking every 10 minutes if I would get a ping. Of course, part of that anxiety stemmed from who I am as a person/not setting the proper boundaries, though in all fairness it’s a hard line to find as an intern. In my case, the money, though bountiful, was not worth the emotional turmoil I felt that summer. I was more than happy to let my HR manager know that I was not interested in coming back to investment banking. 

  But after applying to hundreds of jobs on LinkedIn, Indeed, Handshake and company websites, I wonder if I’ve made the right choice. If it’s my own fault that I’ve ended up in this jobless slump. My obsession for finding something I love outweighs my previous mindset revolving around practicality. As someone who’s about to be right out of undergrad, do I have the autonomy to be picky about my career options? Am I putting too much of an emphasis on passion to the point that I’m being unreasonable and unrealistic?  

 

Are we out of touch? Halfway through my last semester of college, I decided to visit my sister and some friends in New York City. While reminiscing about my life as a city girl, I was able to witness firsthand the lifestyle of some affluent University of Michigan graduates. 

Raeed Rasul and Ronit Tiwary were good friends of my ex-boyfriend. We got close throughout 2019 and when that boyfriend inevitably didn’t work out, I still maintained and nurtured my friendships with Raeed and Ronit. They’re both class of 2022 software engineers that studied at the University of Michigan and work full time in New York City. They are currently roommates living in a high rise in west midtown. Raeed works for a trading firm as software developer, earning $425,000 in his first year and Ronit works for the technology company Palantir as a software engineer, earning $220,000 in his first year. Combined, they both make well over half a million dollars their first year out of University. My older sister Audrey in contrast makes a little over 12% of their combined income, $80,000 annually. She graduated the same year, attended the same school, and post grad lives in the same city as them.

  Throughout the weekend, the four of us caught each other up on our lives while scoffing at tourists in Times Square, drinking conceptual cocktails at fancy bars, and playing Exploding Kittens at their sleek and spacious high rise apartment with a beautiful view of the skyline. Before the trip, I jokingly said “we can all take a nap at your big penthouse” while making plans for the weekend. Ronit responded with “Penthouse, you’ll be disappointed”. In some ways, that just showed how out of touch we all are. Graduating from the University of Michigan, having our backgrounds and majors, we’ve only seen fairly nice apartments in the safer parts of NYC. Even my sister, whose income is on the lower side in relation to everyone I know living in New York lives a very fulfilled life, still able to purchase designer bags and flights to Paris. 

It’s even more obvious after I had the opportunity to visit Ronit’s office. They offer employees a weekly Friday happy hour where employees can bring up to five guests. The building itself is pretty inconspicuous, right near Union Square, but after checking in through two different security checkpoints and getting a guest badge, the best office I’ve ever seen unfolded. Wall to wall fridges and pantries full of every snack you could possibly think of, beers, seltzers, fancy waters, full meals, salads, they even had multiple drinks “on tap” like kombucha, red wine, sangria, and ciders. Opposite the food wall, there was a rec room, filled with a ping pong table, game consoles, board games, and big plush bean bags for employees to unwind. For a minute, enchanted by the distractions of endless food and entertainment, I couldn’t imagine why someone would ever leave this job.

Ronit himself admits that he’s “out of touch because I don’t pay any money for food” regarding how much money he would need to be happy in New York City. With an office full of amenities, a $125 food budget per day, and the “I’m pretty cheap” mentality, his expenses outside of rent rarely go over a grand per month. Even then, his average is skewed because most of the people he knows or spends time with are living in his tax bracket. It’s an endless loop of ‘this is normal’, when it is anything but normal. Because we’re out of touch, does that mean we don’t understand how much money we actually need? 

 

Is there a monetary amount reflecting satiety? When discussing how much money Ronit would need for satiety he also mentioned “I drastically overestimated what this would be, especially living in New York”. With satiety being loosely described as having everything you need and a bit extra, not suffering but more would make them happier (more in the context of money), Ronit settled on $40,000 annual income. In contrast, a study done by Andrew T. Jebb of Purdue University claimed that “It’s been debated at what point does money no longer change your level of well-being. We found that the ideal income point is $95,000 for life evaluation and $60,000 to $75,000 for emotional well-being. Again, this amount is for individuals and would likely be higher for families”. 

  When I questioned Ronit further about why he needed to make so much more than that $40,000 figure yearly ($180,000 extra to be exact), he thought about it for a long second. Ronit started off with “the boring answer to your question is just, because everyone else is doing it? Like I’m just kind of doing what I’ve been told right?” He continued “It was instilled in me at a young age that you should always have a goal in life. My parents specifically were pretty clear. From the fourth grade, the goal in life should be to get into a very good college so you can earn a lot of money through a very good job” It took me aback when he brought it back to competition, comparison, and societal expectations. 

Further into the money happiness correlation study, lead researcher Jebb touches on societal comparison stating “there was substantial variation across world regions, with satiation occurring later in wealthier regions for life satisfaction,… This could be because evaluations tend to be more influenced by the standards by which individuals compare themselves to other people.” There’s a particular track that mainstream career paths can take you down and if you’re not on that path, it always seems to feel like you’re behind. For instance, a good college degree to investment banking to private equity or venture capital to business development where hours are better-a perfect time to start building a family. Society won’t reward you if you’re not on a designated path and if you’re on one, there are just logical next steps to your career, logical next steps that everyone does. Ronit further expounds on this stating “I think a lot of us are just like on autopilot. Like it’s not even like a super conscious decision. It’s like everyone else is trying to get a high paying job and society tells me to get a good job because everyone flexes money and the power of having money. It’s like, not even just like where you can buy, but like the status of it too.” 

  Income however cannot be the only factor that contributes to emotional well-being. According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in a study done by USC, “Doing work you love is energizing and creates a positive feedback loop that fuels productivity. Your passion for the work energizes you and vice versa, giving you more fuel to put towards success. The trick is figuring out how to make yourself love your work – even the most tedious of tasks.” But with that logic, why aren’t companies looking to hire only passionate people that love the work? 

 

Should we always be searching for what we love? Or is work just a means to survive and thrive? Raeed currently believes that it’s the second one. As he sat across from me virtually, he kept laughing about the formality of the situation. 

When we talked about if he would trade his current job and the $425,000 income for something he loved, Raeed’s answer (though he thought about it for a while) was no, “my idea of a job that I love just changes so much. Like I thought ‘this was it’ with the mechanical engineering job at Denso, but it wasn’t. And then I thought working Software at Amazon would be it, but it wasn’t. And I thought this job that I’m currently working at, this job’s description matched what I wanted to do, but at this point, it’s just work. Like, nothing excites me, so now I just believe that any job is just going to become a job.” 

  He said it so matter-a-factly, it made me internally wince a bit. Everything he was saying was contributing to the “what’s the point” mindset that had been brewing in my mind for years. The thought that no matter what I did, I wouldn’t be extremely passionate about it, so better to just find a stable high paying job and do what I was passionate about on the side. That being said, Raeed mentioned that people he worked with were very passionate about coding, both at the job and outside of it. One of his coworkers coded a bot to obtain tough reservations which he could sell to the general public, and another coworker was making a 3D version of his favorite Pokemon game. But when I questioned Raeed about his passions, he responded “I don’t have the motivation to do those projects outside of work because I want to use my free time to spend with friends”. So maybe coding didn’t exactly spark his passions, but it provided him with more than enough money and time to catch up with friends.

  At the end of our conversation, Raeed made sure that I knew he had hobbies, talking animatedly about his enjoyment while camping, something he tries to do a few times a year. While recalling a conversation he had with a coworker, Raeed said “We were thinking about what we’d rather be doing… I said I’d probably want to spend time in the environment, in nature, and like, move between different major places like national parks.”

“So like a park ranger?” I cut in jokingly as our mutual friend and my ex-boyfriend worked that role a few summers ago.

“Well, the aspect of the environment and being in nature, I can do that later in my life. I don’t hate my job or anything, really, right now, there’s nothing I’d rather do.”

“But you’re not passionate about your job?”

Raeed scoffs, “no”.

Ronit didn’t exactly have the same take on loving work. He’s sitting in the same apartment that I was in just a few weeks prior, recovering from a small facial surgery while working from home. When hopping on the zoom, he was serious but excited, claiming that he “has some hot takes about the subject” of money, career and passion. When discussing whether or not meaningful work is important to him, he said “I feel like it’s worth trying to find something that you are really passionate about. And maybe it’s wishful thinking but if you can find something it doesn’t feel like work. I feel like that’s how you know it’s right”. Ronit’s conviction about this was a stark 180 from what Raeed believes.

 

“So are you passionate about Palantir?” I asked, genuinely curious if this was something he thought about before he signed his offer. 

His response was fairly in line with what I had expected, “No. I can’t lie to you, some of the stuff we’re doing is cool. And I’m happy that I can do it. But am I working at Palantir because I’m passionate about it? No, absolutely not. It’s 100% a vehicle to earn money and experience and have a stable lifestyle.

So more money had no correlation with more passion. But are the first few careers we pursue meant only to be a way to achieve things we are passionate about? What amount of sacrifice would be too much to bear and how do individuals measure that?

 

Are your first careers important, or are they a stepping stone for something better? An old coworker of mine and someone I looked up to at Cowen was Olivia Gomez (affectionately nicknamed OG by her analyst class), she wasn’t my mentor but was part of a group of first year analysts that worked closely with the interns. Gomez was someone who was always positive, even if she was the last analyst in the office on a random Tuesday-her attitude was unfailing. We weren’t necessarily close, but I had noticed on LinkedIn that she had recently left her investment banking job and moved to a Venture Capital fund. It sparked my curiosity as she seemed like someone who would’ve stayed the whole 2 years as leaving early meant she had forfeited her bonus (around $75,000 before taxes according to her).

  Compared to every other person I talked to, this one made me the most nervous. Perhaps it was because the interview reminded me of my networking calls from years prior to landing the investment banking internship. I was almost tempted to play my hype up song “Legends Never Die” before dialing her mobile.

 

Gomez went to William College, a private liberal arts school majoring in Economics and minoring in Environmental Studies. She started her professional career at Cowen and recently at the beginning of the year moved to S2G Ventures which is a climate tech fund where she’s currently staffed on the Oceans group.

  Even though she’s only two years out of college, Gomez found something that combined two of her passions, finance and environmental studies. Over the phone, she was audibly excited when talking about her new job, “I sort of stumbled upon this role, I mean, it’s at this impact climate tech venture firm, which is just investing in such cool companies. The oceans team is pretty new. All their companies are amazing. The research I’m doing is so interesting, like it’s such a change of pace and I definitely want to stay there long term. I could really see myself wanting to climb the ladder here. Which I never thought of thinking and never expected to”.

  She does credit her time in banking for giving her an opportunity to get to this new more suitable career. When asked if she thought banking was worth it, Gomez claimed “I would say so if they’re specifically interested in finance, if they want to do something that’s not finance after I definitely don’t think it’s worth it.” When pushed for further elaboration about the work conditions, the 70-90 hour work weeks and the lack of free time with fairly decent compensation, she doubled down on her beliefs. This time, her answer came with a bit of a pause “…I honestly think so. I mean, I think it’s easy to look back at it and kind of forget how bad it could be. But I think it got me to where my job is now and I’m so appreciative of that. And so I think it was worth it for that year and a half.” 

When I asked if it was ever possible to find a job that doesn’t feel like a job, she very bluntly started with “I don’t know”. Gomez did however mention that there are industries that people are passionate about that need business people and engineers to keep things running smoothly. She mentioned “when you’re working in a nonprofit area there’s just so many cool companies doing awesome things but they need people with more practical skill sets and sometimes it takes time to build those. I think you do need some sort of practical base to be able to pursue your passions”. Another moment where I internally had to wince. She was making the same claims friends, parents, and even myself (from a few years ago) made. Can you create as big of an impact if you don’t sell your soul to corporate America for a little while? If you don’t have that ‘practical base’ a dream job may not even hire you. 

“So do you think there is a point in searching for your dream job right out of college?” I wondered aloud.

My heart sinks a little more as Gomez answers with “I do think it’s important to have a more demanding job when you first get out of college. Being able to build that work ethic and being able to apply it to your next role. If you find your dream job right out of college. I mean, that’s like a homerun. But from what I’ve seen, it’s not common”. 

 

  When ending the call, I asked Gomez what final insights she might have. She paused, “I already said this, but going from Cowen to SVG I took a salary decrease, and I think that felt like a no brainer for me. Just given the opportunity and what I was gaining from it. So yeah, you’ll lose a fraction of your income, but you do something that you care about so much more. That loss is worth it.” After she hung up, I did the math on her salary decrease. Her Cowen before-tax pay being around $180,000 and SVG pay being $168,000 with knowledge that some of her food expenses were subsidized at Cowen. Giving up ten grand is not just throwing away pocket change. That being said, no one can argue for the side that Gomez would struggle at either income, but giving up a bit of salary to pursue something she truly cares about seems like it’s worth it-at least according to her.

Even so, I wondered if part of the reason Gomez enjoyed this new job was because she felt like she was giving back to society. Investment Banking oftentimes is perceived as an unethical business, prioritizing the bottom line instead of the people behind it. 

 

Doing good for the world, is that a motivator? Gomez is currently working at a climate venture fund, investing in companies that have positive societal or environmental impact. She’s always had an interest in environmental sustainability, stating right from the start of our phone call “I always knew that I wanted my career to tie back into an environmental focus”. Even in her bio on her current company website, it specifically cites her experiences studying abroad in the Bahamas during high school, focusing on environmental sustainability. Her working hours-while better than investment banking-are still usually 60+ per week, but she feels good about what she’s doing. Instead of spending those hours trying to appease semiconductor company c-suite executives being sold from one private equity firm to another, she was working with companies that had long term sustainable effects on our ocean ecosystem. 

Doing good for the world seems like a recurring theme with new graduates as during our call, Ronit Tiwary (Palantir $220,000) when asked about his hobbies immediately brightened up. Instead of the answer I had gotten from literally everyone else-I don’t have much time so I just like spending my free time with friends-he started talking about his membership in Effective Altruism (EA). It’s the reason he went vegan senior year of college and a way of life that he’s adopted in the past 2 years.  

“So what is Effective Altruism exactly?” I ask after he’s tried to explain it to me a million times.

He patiently explained it to me again saying “It’s a big organization so you’ll have a bunch of people who will describe it in different ways. I would say it’s like people who want to do good, or you can even say do less bad in the world, whatever it is. I would definitely say that is one of my favorite hobbies, I still go to meetups and stuff like that.”

When doing more research on EA, I found that it was both a research field and a community. Ronit was on the money when saying a lot of people describe it and practice it differently. It can be anything from going vegan, donating to well researched charities, or giving away excess wealth. A study done by Psychological Science in 2019 showed that spending money on others allows for sustained happiness while spending money on ourselves is less enjoyable (this also includes giving to charity). Supporting others, doing good for the world makes individuals feel good. 

At least for Gomez, she is interested in finance and enjoys the work that she does, but increased enjoyment likely comes from the fact that she’s giving back to society, to the world at large. For Ronit, he can do good outside of work. His workplace Palatir has come under fire many times for being the defense technology behind police surveillance and even immigration raids. He chooses to contribute to society positively by practicing Effective Altruism and trying his best to do good in any way he can outside of his job. 

While doing good for the world is an excellent motivator it doesn’t always translate to passion, they’re not mutually exclusive.

 

Does pursuing your passions no matter what ever work? When I was a sophomore at the University of Michigan, I strongly considered changing my major to English. I hated every single business class I was required to take, and loved every non-fiction creative writing course. Part of that stems from the fact that society doesn’t weigh English as high in the grand scheme of useful degrees. I could very well still write a book without getting an undergraduate degree in English, or an MFA. I can submit to the New York Times opinion column without taking a single collegiate English course. The pool of jobs for English majors is just insanely smaller than most fields, with pursuing higher education in English or Literature not necessarily opening up many more opportunities. 

Gillian White is a tenured professor in the University of Michigan English Department making just over $100,000. She has a Bachelors of Arts from Northwestern University and a PhD from Princeton University. During my last semester of college I had the opportunity to take an entry level poetry class with her to fulfill my English requirements for my creative writing minor. 

When I asked Professor Gillian White if she would recommend an average student to pursue a PhD in English, point blank she said “Short answer, no… even when I went into graduate school for English that the job market was terrible. Everybody told me. And it was not nearly as bad as it is now, but it was still really bad. I mean there were eight people in my class at Princeton, the grad program, and I believe only three of them have academic jobs now. And some of them tried and tried for years and years and didn’t get anything”

I even got to see a glimpse of what my life could’ve been like through Professor White’s description of the current English PhD job market, “Universities have casualized a lot of the labor in order to maximize profits. Where you know, increasingly, rather than hiring people with tenure to whom they’re going to have to pay benefits and  full salaries, they’re hiring short. This isn’t true at Michigan per se, but they’re hiring short term lecturers who get paid like maybe $3,000 to $5,000 a class, you know, maybe they’ll teach four classes and they’ll make $12,000 a semester and that’s like, pretty good. They’ve increased their profits that way, but they’ve made it so that the labor is not protected and the labor is also not really sustainable”. To go through 8 years minimum of school and possibly make less than $30,000 as a professor really put things into perspective. The Ross School of Business boasts an impressive $85,000 average starting salary for undergrads. Almost triple what a short term lecturer would make for half the schooling.

  The question of how much money matters is still at the very forefront as White continued about what my options would’ve been, “humanities classes aren’t where the big money is. The big dogs don’t come from there, and kids don’t want to pursue it because they don’t think it’s going to lead them to a career. They’re cutting back on how many people they’re hiring in those fields too. So that combination of things, the casualization of labor, and the cutting back on positions means that there just aren’t jobs.”

The “big dogs” comment really stuck with me. The Stephen M. Ross school of business allegedly gets millions of dollars donated to it every month from just Stephen M. Ross himself. In the buildings it’s very clear where those big dogs are coming from. In comparison, most English classes are taught in Mason Hall, the first university building that was used for instruction, opening its doors in 1841. The rooms are old and the technology used in those rooms might be older than me. It takes minutes for the projectors to power up and sometimes they don’t work at all. Meanwhile, the business school has an atrium with windows for a ceiling, a Starbucks, the newest technology installed in almost every single room, and even a sky bridge. It’s a vicious cycle of people feeding into the capitalism heavy mindset and continuing to encourage kids to go to those schools/industries due to the perks. 

  The New Yorker recently released an article The End of the English Major by Nathan Heller which heavily discusses the cycle that White was discussing stating “ From 2012 to the start of the pandemic, the number of English majors on campus at Arizona State University fell from nine hundred and fifty-three to five hundred and seventy-eight. Records indicate that the number of graduated language and literature majors decreased by roughly half”. With fewer students pursuing their potential passions in humanities and more students choosing stability, “the study of English and history at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third. Humanities enrollment in the United States has declined over all by seventeen percent”. For many reasons similar to my own, students avoid getting an English degree, even if that’s their greatest passion. 

 

In the final minutes of our interview, I had to ask White whether she “still feels that same passion toward poetry? Has it diminished a little or is it still there?” With no hesitation at all, “yeah it’s still there”. White continues with “I was really lucky, not everyone gets to know what they really love, but I really love the written word and thinking about it and thinking… I’m just having a ball!” For White, it absolutely paid off to pursue her passions. Yet, even though she is a success story of someone finding “what they love” she cannot in good conscience recommend others take the same path as she. Passion in some cases does not outweigh practicality. There’s luck, scrappiness, blood, sweat, tears, and privilege involved in both finding and choosing to pursue passions that may lack stability. 

 

How much does our background influence the privilege of our choices? It was interesting to hear how both Gomez and White had parents either in Private Equity or Venture Capital, yet their paths were so different. While White may have a few more decades of experience in comparison to Gomez, their degree choices showed a path diversion early on.

  When asking Gomez if she was passionate about finance, the answer was quickly “Yeah”. With the clarification that investment banking wasn’t necessarily her passion, but she had passions in finance.

  “I think my dad’s career in finance helped shape that as well. Just always getting to see what he was doing as I grew up, and he started a company when I was in middle school, and so I started seeing him work in private equity and then work at a startup. And I think he just really emphasized the skills that you can build. He also was in banking before private equity. And so he was taking a more practical approach and thinking about skills that you build in those early years of your career really open doors for you to do different things, whether it is a startup in his case, or VC in my case right now”. In no way discounting those working in the financial services industry (they work very hard), it’s easier to get a foot in the door if you know someone. If you know what the process entails and you have someone giving even the slightest bit of guidance. The university a candidate attends plays a role as prestigious firms will visit highly ranked schools to conduct their company presentations. And while it’s not easy, it is easier.

Gomez’s experience with her dad being in finance and pulling her into the field was fairly opposite of what happened to White.

  When explaining her background, White strongly emphasized her family’s position of privilege and her view on the “American Dream”. Within the first few minutes she mentioned “I thought a lot about money my whole life because I’ve thought a lot about who my parents are and how their world was. My dad came out of college and the boom economy in the 50s. He’s a white guy from an educated family who had been in this country, you know, most of them, from the 1600s forward. So he had every advantage in the world, right? And he freely admits this. He went to a good college and he graduated with literally no money. So he started with, quote, unquote, nothing. But he had this understanding that there was an enormous safety net for him”

  White continues with, “So I tell you all that because I think it really shows, you know, I thought a lot about money when I was a kid, and I thought a lot about where my dad came from, and income gap and my small town. There’s 30,000 people in my town and you can really see the full gamut of who did well. So I became a kind of a skeptic about the American Dream pretty early, in a funny sort of way”

  Even so, White’s parental background did have an influence on what she decided to do. Her father had told her “So he said to me, you know, what this allows you to do is to choose what you want to do.” With that, she pursued a path of academia in English. It’s easier to justify a path less traveled when there’s a backup plan. Once again, not easy as White worked multiple jobs and went through years of education and failed job searches, but easier. 

 Heller’s New Yorker piece perfectly highlighted the facts that to major in humanities, you either have to be prepared to take on quite a bit of debt, or you come from wealth. He was able to interview students about humanities, with one saying “My issue as a first-gen student is I always view humanities as a passion project. You have to be affluent in order to be able to take that on and state…I view the humanities as very hobby-based”. With another saying “I would never say this to any of my English- or my film-major friends, but I kind of thought that those majors were a joke”. And who can blame them? With an average starting salary of $50,000 for humanities majors combined with the continually rising cost of higher education, pursuing humanities without a concrete plan is a sure way to be in debt. 

 

On a slow Thursday night when all my roommates decided to go to the club, a good friend of mine Nathan Huizar and I sat in my living room and just chatted for 3 hours. He’s a first generation college student from the middle of nowhere Michigan moving to New York City post-grad to pursue investment banking. As I poured his second glass of wine, Nathan turned to me, saying “sorry I haven’t been around these past few months, I feel like I just recovered from the burnout I experienced after our summer in banking”. In that moment I knew exactly how he felt because it mirrored my own experiences, and I felt a bit of remorse. Remorse that for some people, the cost of leaving is far too high to even consider. It was a privilege for me to choose to leave investment banking. To know that no matter what, I’d always be okay, and while I may want to strive for better, I don’t necessarily need to.  

 

100% Happiness is unachievable, no matter the career or passion or wealth. Achieving a balance is. On my mother’s 57th birthday, my parents drove the arduous 30 minutes to Ann Arbor so the whole family could share a meal together. Every time my father and I really get into it discussing what I’m doing post grad, I always cry. And it’s not because he’s screaming at me or berating my life decisions. It’s mainly because every time we talk about it, it feels like I’m letting him down. Letting down the family legacy of immigrating here with nothing and achieving greener pastures. He keeps repeating the same thing to me, “if you think you’ll be happy all the time and passionate about your job all the time, you will always be disappointed”. 

Every time I hear this, I want to pull out my hair. Never in my life had I expected to love my job 100% of the time, but apparently this internal questioning makes it seem as though I do. I know over 20 seniors that are going into banking and each of them has an incredulous reaction when I ask if they think they’ll be happy while working on Wall Street. All but one said no, but all of them agreed on one thing, it was worth it. 

When I asked my dad, someone who has a bachelors, masters, and PhD in mechanical engineering, someone who worked as a mechanical engineer at Ford for over 20 years, if he’s passionate about mechanical engineering, he said “no”. Something he dedicated his entire life to, and so quick to answer no when pushed about passion. Yet, he also didn’t pause when he said “but I have no regrets, being a mechanical engineer provided me with everything I needed to have this life”, he gestures around to my grandparents sipping their chrysanthemum tea slowly, and the birthday cake hidden in a Whole Foods bag for my mother. He’s had the opportunity to get everything he possibly could want or need; traveling the world, tenuring as a professor, and creating his own companies. He found balance. Balance that won’t match mine, or my sister, or my mother, but balance for himself.

 

As I’ve now been working full time in Boston for about 3 months, I somehow don’t feel much different. I work in renewable energy taking a piece of advice from Olivia and Ronit, doing work that I genuinely feel good about. I work about 40 hours a week with plenty of time after work to cook and pursue my hobbies, finding a balance where I can both be a sponge and learn as much as possible with my mentor while also finding the joys in life outside of work. My life consists of situations where I push myself-moving to a new city without knowing anyone and trying to create a new community, while also allowing me the comforting hug of situations that I feel are well within my wheelhouse. Everything within the last six months of my life has worked out exactly the way I had once hoped. I’m not happy all the time, I don’t love my job 24/7, but I couldn’t ask for a better result of my work these past 8 years. I’ll stand by the fact that I’m the luckiest girl in the world, and hope that throughout the next few chapters of my life I continues to learn and change. That’s all I can ask for.