Day 1: Training and Blackberries

One day of training has come and gone. I had a crazy time just getting to where they did the training today. Because of the large analyst class, we had training in Jersey City across the Hudson from the financial district. I had to take a subway to 59th, walk to 57th, take a bus to the pier, then take a ferry across the Hudson until I finally go to the training building.

I saw a few of the people that were there when I interviewed - I guess interviews worked out for them. Everyone I talked to said that the group I'm in was their first choice - I feel more blessed than ever to be in this group. It's the top group at the bank and on the street, and it's a great time to be doing oil deals.

We spent most of the day doing administrative stuff. They showed us how to log onto a computer, gave us blackberries, got us our id cards, and had us fill out paperwork. In the afternoon there was a training on how to do comps that lasted two hours - about an hour and a half too long for what they taught. We also had a training on the cool stuff that's here to help you with powerpoint and excel. It's amazing - if I had these programs in school I could have saved myself TONS of hours of work. I did today in about 20 seconds what would have taken me 45 minutes to do. It was amazing. It made me wonder...if that only takes a few seconds, what do you spend the rest of the 100 hours a week doing?

I am surprised how many different types of people are here. There were tons of people from other countries, people of different ethnicities, and lots of female bankers too. It definitely wasn't the "white male dominant" atmosphere I had heard about. I found out that there are 6 interns in my group, so I'll have a few others there interning with me. Three of them were here last year doing the sophomore program. Since they were here last year, they got to choose their group and they all chose naty res. Hopefully I won't be behind since they've all been here before.

I do feel out of place a little because I'm from BYU. Pretty much every single person there (I know because we all introduced ourselves) goes to an east-coast school, and 90% of them are in the Ivy League. There were tons of kids from Cornell, NYU, Penn, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Emory, and other big-name schools. It was weird to be the only west-coast kid. The other thing that wasn't as fun is that everybody else has at least another person they know from school. I'm the only one who is the single person from their school. It's alright - I'll just have to really represent BYU well so we can get more next year. I think to make BYU more legit it would be good to have more people do the summer internships, not just the winternship.

On the way back I stopped to get dinner at Subway and these two girls stopped me on the street. They were missionaries for their church and were out telling the world that there is a Heavenly Mother and that the Bible proves it. They said a lot of kind of strange and interesting things, and really pressured me to meet with them again. I shared my beliefs and we kind of left it at that. It was an interesting experience.

Well tomorrow we're going down to 745 7th Ave, and I hope to meet some people in my group. I found out today that training is only 3 days long, so by Thursday I'll be on the desk and doing REAL work. Pretty crazy stuff. I'm more nervous about that than anything else. I just don't want to mess up this internship. I don't think I will though - it seems like people have pretty low expectations about interns. I've been surprised already at the attitudes of some of the interns. I feel like if I can be honest, work hard, and try and really learn as I go, things will work out. Some of these kids kind of have the attitude of, "Tell me what I need to do to get by, and that's all I'll do." They don't say that, but actions speak louder than words.

Well it was a long day of just sitting and listening to boring lectures, but it's one day closer to the real thing, and I won't complain about getting done with the day at 6:15 PM!