Wharton Journal

Issue date: 2/1/10 Section: Perspectives

I'm thinking of doing an investment banking internship this summer, but I've heard horror stories about the hours and I'm not sure I could cope with that lifestyle. I also have the option to go back to my old firm this summer. You've had first-hand experience of banking - what do you recommend?

I take it from your question that you've been offered a position - congratulations! I'd strongly recommend grabbing the opportunity with both hands. It's true that the lifestyle isn't for everyone, but you're not going to know unless you try. This internship gives you a unique opportunity at very low risk, because it's non-committal.

Picture the very worst-case scenario that you can imagine. Your colleagues slave-drive you, making you work 120 hours a week on mundane tasks without ever letting you see a client. You're so tired you end up making elementary mistakes that the whole department finds out about. In short, you fail. They don't even need to call you to tell you that you're not offered a full-time job. And anyway, you don't even care, because hate the company anyway.

Well, that's actually an extremely productive internship! Not because I'm assuming you're a masochist, but because it helps you rule out an entire career when deciding what job to go into full-time. The internship is the perfect opportunity to try out a new career, because it's short-term and non-committal. If you end up going back to your old firm because you're scared of the working hours, or of the difficulty of the work, you'll likely succeed. You know you will - you've been there and done that - and it will be easy securing a full-time job. But you might always have that missed opportunity nagging away at the back of your mind. You'll inevitably have dark days back at your old firm where you might be thinking "I'm bored in this job, I wish I'd tried investment banking." But, if you tried it and either didn't like it or failed in it, then you won't have that "grass is greener" feeling - you'll know that your old firm ended up being the best option - and so those dark days will seem much brighter. In layman's terms, perhaps investment banking is something that you need to "get out of your system." This was actually the main reason I left Morgan Stanley to step into the unknown and go to MIT. If things hadn't worked out at MIT and I'd had to return to pulling all-nighters at Morgan Stanley, then these all-nighters would have been less painful, since I wouldn't have been kicking myself thinking "things would have been better so much better had I gone to MIT."

Note that the same thinking also applies to taking a job in a non-traditional area, such as working for the New York Mets (like Rob Sebastian) or volunteering overseas as a Summer Public Interest Fund fellow. Again, the safe option would be to go take a standard MBA job, to maximize the chances of a full-time offer. But, the internship gives you the opportunity to do something that you might never be able to do again. With anything new, you may fail. But, as JK Rowling said in her excellent commencement speech at Harvard, failure is nothing to fear. It's impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Who are your favorite female students? And no wussing out of it this week - answer the damn question.

OK, but I stress that these choices are exclusively for their abilities in finance, ice hockey, comedy and Follies. Maya Abdurahmanova, Kathleen Bellehumeur, Lauren Christman, Lyn Comerford, Gigi Garmendia, Kathie Koo, Nicole Lim, Dhaarna Mehta, Chrissy Minyard, Chrissy Parker, Anusha Prasad, Lily Shapiro, Stacy Stokes. Is that already more than 10? I must have got carried away.

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