Home sweet home

Well I'm home. What a weird/peaceful feeling. Provo, Utah is about as different from New York City as you can get. I was actually kind of sad as I rode in a cab at 3:45AM this morning heading out to JFK. I rode past Columbus Circle, through midtown, and over the East River and on towards JFK. It's sad to leave the City, and I've absolutely loved living in New York for the past two months. It's a fast-paced, energetic place and everybody is so driven to be successful. It's motivating just being in the City. I'm really glad that I have an offer to come back because I think that two years (at least) in the City will be an amazing experience.

So over the past few days I've been meeting with various people at different banks. At each place the message was basically the same: This is the worst year in the past decade or so for trying to get a job on Wall Street, and you should be very happy that you have an offer to go back to your bank.

They usually then talk to me about my experience and I share about some of the deals that I worked on this summer. At a few of the places, the people told me to send them my resume but were careful not to promise anything other than HR taking a look. That's all I'm asking for anyway. I'm confident that no matter where I end up, especially if it's back where I summered, it will turn out to be a great experience.

It's important that if you have an offer you are aware how much time you have before you need to make a decision. You don't want to put off your decision just to put it off, because the longer you wait for no reason the more chance you have of losing confidence from the people you worked with. My bank told me that I have as much time as I need, but that probably means that they would like to hear back in the next month or two. I don't actually have the specific terms of my offer, so I would like to wait to see those before I sign anything.

In the meantime, I'm back home! It's been so nice to just rest and take it easy. I have plenty to do here at home and am already getting work to do from the job that I have out here, but it's been nice to relax a little and not have to worry about getting staffed on a deal at 11:00PM on a Friday night.

These next few weeks will be very interesting as I try to figure out what I want to do with the offer and where I'll end up next year. I'll keep you all posted!