Since I signed up a daily email dairy service, the usual weekly rant or retrospect was conveniently replaced by the one or two sentences everyday. You clicked "reply" the boom, a piece of your past life was sent out to somewhere far away in the cloud.
This year represents an inflection point, a year that will leave me transformed, at least social identity-wise. I've wasted a lot of time over the past 9+ months, and at the same time I accomplished a number of things which my peers in Denver normally won't be able to. But my true peers are not in Denver, they are in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and New York, the "tops" of this world.
In January, I now vaguely remember the distant stress from the equity research competition. The research report that we were writing was in distress, so was the presentation for Feburary. I was frustrated by teammates performance, or the lack of it. I kept procrastinating, justifying the generous use of time in meanless on-line activities by my larger contribution to the team. I was grumpy, but luckily, not confrontation to the point of affecting the still positive team dynamics.
In Feburary, we, the University of Denver team won the Colorado Championship for CFA Research Challenge. Our presentation was stiff, boring, and uninspired. But our research report was more rigorous, and the attention to detail in the format of the report was remarkable - despite of a number of mistakes after so many reviews. Equity research is strange work. It at times, very often actually, is very stimulating because of the new wave of information pouring into you. At other times, however, the endless search for industry knowledge, the no-one-will-believe assumptions in the financial model, and unavoidable inclination to fall in love with what you've been researching all make the work look like a wildest guess on something you know absolutely nothing about.
In March, I flew to NYC and met Z. The competition was a failure due to my lack of aggressiveness and maybe desire to win a seemingly formidable competition. I had a loser's attitude joining because my faith in my teammates was reduced to minimum after 4 months of constant struggle, depression, and difficult work. But apart from the misery at the competition, NYC was wonderful. Afternoon team and MoMA tour with Z (she became my girlfriend after 3 months) was delightful. She is open, surprisingly honest about her feelings. The tough of a teenage girl, the incredible toughness that's hidden most times, and the innocence were just too tempting to not inspiring more study on her. So I did, the one message after trip evolves into a relationship, and maybe more.
Before I muster the courage to write down the rest of the year, I must speak about my frustration and lack of motivation to fully quell that frustration. I am walking towards a goal that may not be mine. The path before me is clear, but might as well be the very wrong one for my true capabilities and personalities. The woman-like side of me frequently surface, and surpress initiative and bold actions. I tend to think too much about the consequence, letting the regret of not doing anything sweep through me time and again...
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