Week 7. Dream job revisited

At the start of this course was also around to time where I started my co-op. Back then, I wrote that I would be interested in working in finance or investment banking but I didn’t know what job specifically. But now, almost 2 months into my co-op, I finally think I know what I want to get myself involved in. I am currently working in a Hedge Fund that manages assets of over 12 billion dollars. I work in the middle office operations team. The work I do is different than what the front office does, who are the people that does all the equity research, analysis, and trading executions. I have decided that I want to be an analyst working on the trade floor. People say that finance is not for everyone, it really is for the ones that are qualified and ones that are passionate in investing money. For me, more and more I learn about this industry, more and more I want to get involved in it. The idea of using sophisticated strategies and hedging to multiply one’s capital just fascinates me. It’s amazing to see all different types of investments that are made here and how our analyses and decisions bear fruit. It just blows my mind. So more than before, I want to get into this field of business preferably a private hedge fund and work as a analyst or a trader. In terms of the specifics of the job environment, I can’t complain of where I am right now, our office occupies the top floor of the Hancock Tower, which is the highest building in New England. Thus, for my dream job, I would want an office that is close to being like my current office right now. I would want the company to be fairly small but still well known. However, most hedge funds don’t market themselves because they are not regulated by the SEC, so if I do work in a hedge fund again, it would probably be unknown. But that will be fine.

Week 5. Macklemore post

I was overwhelmed by this song “Ten Thousand Times” by Macklemore . This is a work of art through lyrics and music. Macklemore displays his exceptional talent of expressing his emotions through the rhymes. The overall knowledge he exhibits about the world that we live in and how he sees it being run is quite special. The bases of his lyrics are about how he has ended up in his music career and the struggles that he had through the process. He sums up his journey with his last line of the song, “Welcome to the Heist”. The word “Heist” here has two connotations I believe, the actual meaning of the word and also highest, spelled differently. He is telling us that he has made it to where he dreamed to be. This theme is widely centralized in the course of the song. He is telling us that hard work is key to success and that’s the most important element that got him to where he is. The title of the song “Ten Thousand Hours” comes from a theme in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers”. Malcolm Gladwell explains how every leader in a field puts in 10,000 hours of practice into their work, through his theme “Ten Thousand Hours”. Macklemore is utilizing this theme here from Gladwell. He is telling us that he is where he is now because he put in the hours of hard work, 10,000 hours of work, into practicing what he loves, which is music. The details of how he went about can be found in his lyrics. Some highlights of the lyrics are:

“Felt like I got signed the day that I got an agent”

“Got an iTunes check, shit man, I’m payin’ rent. About damn time that I got up out of my basement”

“Ten thousand hours I’m so damn close I can taste it”

“Nothing you can hold but everything that it is Ten thousand”

Pretty impressive sets of rhymes are displayed here.

Go check it out for yourself. You will be amazed.

Cheers.