2021 is not even halfway over, and this year has already brought more change than I ever imagined.
I am no stranger to change. Growing up, I moved around frequently as my professor parents pursued their PhDs. I was used to switching schools, making new friends and adapting to new environments. While these were stressful childhood memories, they taught me that change is inevitable and farewells are a component of change.
Over the past five years, I have said my fair share of goodbyes: when I left Philadelphia after college, when I left Boston to move to New York, when I left my first job in consulting – but I was not particularly sad or emotional because I was very excited for what was next. While I am ecstatic about where life brought me, leaving NYC and investment banking was the hardest farewell yet.
From a young age, I had aspirations of living in NYC. You know, walking on 5th Ave with a latte in hand, with yellow taxis passing by and commuting to a skyscraper for work… Looking back now, they sound cheesy, but it was fun to have experienced a sliver of the Carrie Bradshaw life (without the fancy shoe closet and exhilarating love life, of course – ha!).
I truly believe there is no place like NYC. The city has an energy that makes you feel like anything is possible. Everyone is aiming to be the best versions of themselves as they pursue their dreams in Broadway, media, fashion or, in my case, finance.
NYC is not only a city where I began my Wall Street career, but also one that nurtured me. When I first arrived in NYC, I was a fresh, ambitious, bright-eyed corporate newbie, trying to navigate the real world to make my big dreams a reality. With roughly 8.7 million people across 470 million square feet in Manhattan, I figured pretty much anything was possible if I put my mind to it – and I think my experiences proved that hypothesis right.
Everything and everyone in NYC is incredibly accessible, so it really is up to you to make anything happen for yourself. I definitely took advantage of this. Because the city is so densely populated, it was easy to contact people I wanted to learn from, meet them at a Blue Bottle two blocks away and go back to work feeling motivated and energized. In three years, I met SO many amazing people with whom I had the incredible fortune of crossing paths. As I write this, I am having a hard time trying to describe or quantify their impact on my personal and professional growth.
I didn’t have to go outside to meet great people though, because there were many of them at my office. The investment banking industry is known for being cutthroat, and while I don’t necessarily disagree, I think the people you work with make a huge difference. I formed a really strong camaraderie with my friends from my analyst class. Most of us were in different offices, but we helped each other through tough times on the job, and we are still close to this day even though we all left the firm. I also worked with fantastic senior leadership, managing directors, executive directors, vice presidents and associates, who not only taught me so much but also went out of their way to vouch for me to receive promotions and recognition for my work at the firm.
I was also very close with the support staff in banking. Below is the printing staff who stopped by my desk every day in the pre-COVID days. They knew if I was super busy because their office was close to my desk and they would see my print requests come in at 3am (not kidding)! I visited them in the office before I left NYC, and I literally burst into tears as I hugged them goodbye.
One person from work I am sad I did not get to say goodbye to is the janitor who worked the late night and weekend shifts. He always greeted me in Korean, which he claimed he learned from living in Flushing! Who knew February 2020 would be the last time we would see each other? I think about him from time to time, and I hope he is okay.
As I walked out of the office for the last time, I realized that the small and mundane interactions over the years grew to become really special relationships. I didn’t know I could cry that much!
With all that being said, leaving investment banking was surprisingly bittersweet. I always thought I would be jumping with joy on my last day – let’s be real, it is a tough job – but my reaction was quite the opposite. My chest felt heavy the entire day after I woke up to emails from my managing directors and colleagues thanking me for my work and wishing me good luck.
I am also so grateful to have had the truly fantastic learning experience in investment banking, working on unique and complex deals with literally some of the smartest people I have ever met. When I decided to leave consulting, I knew I wanted a rigorous investment banking experience given my unorthodox background as a consultant with a liberal arts degree – and I got exactly what I was looking for: an opportunity to join a top tier elite boutique investment bank with a reputation for being extremely technical and having robust deal flow and a very unique generalist program across all industries and products (M&A, capital markets, and restructuring and recapitalization).
At first, I thought I would pursue traditional M&A deals only, but I spent a lot of time in restructuring and special situations, advising clients on liquidity and capital structures in-and-out of bankruptcy across media, healthcare, business services, consumer and retail, as well as food and beverage. The diverse transaction experiences helped me figure out which industries, investing strategies and parts of the capital structure I found intriguing.
The lean deal team structure at my firm hugely benefited my learning experience. More often than not, I was the only analyst on the deal, which required me to be involved in every step of the transaction. When I started the job, it literally felt like “drinking from the firehose” or “being thrown into the fire” because there was so much new information to take in, but that was the steep learning curve I wanted in banking. After several reps, I gained confidence and speed, which aided me well.
Lean deal teams and strong deal flow equate to a really busy analyst. Like most junior bankers, I did not have much of a life, and I was stressed or burned out most of the time. I pulled more all nighters in those three years than I did in all my years of schooling. This may be TMI, but my NYC hair stylist always plucked out a bunch of white hairs at every appointment.
Did I love this lifestyle? No, but I went into investment banking with the expectation that I would dedicate 2-3 years to learn as much as possible. I thought of the job as a rigorous bootcamp to offset my minimal finance exposure as a liberal arts graduate. I pushed through and I got what I wanted! All in all, three years of investment banking were the best investment I have made in myself, and all the hardships were so worth it given how much I learned.
Nothing in this post should be construed negatively against the investment bank I worked for. Long hours and stress are to be expected in ANY client services business. As a junior banker, you should aim to be at a busy firm to learn as much as possible.
A personal takeaway for me after finishing investment banking is that I love deals. I was not a fan of sleep deprivation (is anyone though?), but it was an amazing feeling working with a team to see a deal from start to close and finding an effective solution for all parties on a mandate that seemed too complex at first.
Another takeaway I want to share to wrap up this post: it is a good sign if a farewell is bittersweet or sad, because it means the time you spent there was worthwhile. There is truth to the cliché quote: “Don’t be sad that it ended; be glad that it happened.” Not everyday was rainbows and butterflies, but the past three years is a chapter of my life that I will be forever grateful for.
