30
Jan
It’s just human nature. Your expenses grow to match your income. As the decades pass and you realize that no, you’re not going to save the world, the money becomes a more and more important part of the justification. And when you have kids, you’re stuck; it’s much easier to deprive yourself of money (and what it buys) than to deprive your children of money.
More importantly, you internalize the rationalizations for the work you are doing. It’s easier to think that underwriting new debt offerings really is saving the world than to think that you are underwriting new debt offerings, because of the money, instead of saving the world. And this goes for many walks of life. It’s easier for college professors to think that, by training the next generation of young minds (or, even more improbably, writing papers on esoteric subjects), they are changing the world than to think that they are teaching and researching instead of changing the world.
Why Do Harvard Kids Go To Wall Street? — Revisited this because I told me friends about this over dinner and wanted to recheck my sources.
This article and another one I read (but can’t find!! frustration!) discuss why smart kids are enticed by the Wall Street lifestyle. The major takeaway from the other article is to keep your expenses low despite taking the “sell out job”, or else one day, you haven’t a chance of switching over to a more meaningful and lower paying job. Both articles are fairly practical, but I ended up coming up with a very “life philosophy”-type conclusion. When I first came to college, I really did think Whartonites were soulless, but now I just think they’re smart. They’re not smart enough to be brilliant engineers or scientists, but smart enough to be risk averse and know when to put up a fight. The next big challenge is to keep what matters close in sight.
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imbigon said:
haha I have this article as my top bookmark…
too true.
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chanelpoison said:
best advice of the night
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chanelpoison liked this
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jennyfan posted this
