Last night, I plopped to bed and dozed off to sleep for almost 9 hours straight. It’s been one of the longest sleeping times that I’ve had in the last two weeks since starting my MBA.
Some internship thoughts: My firm is really good – people are nice and they have a decent internship program that provided us with around half a day of induction seminars, half a day of Bloomberg training and Reuters, and then two full days of a primer to banking. Since we were only there for 10 weeks, am pleasantly surprised that they’ve taken the trouble to allow us to do so.
The only issue is the humbling thought that no matter how well you did before, unless you did sales and trading in your previous job, you will be a TOTAL IDIOT at your internship.
In other words, your MBA doesn’t matter.
Like what my line manager told me this week: “Do you know why nobody in the trading floor has an MBA? It’s because we’re too busy making money.”
Touche.
Then another line manager told me, “No offense but you have to learn how to trade first. You know nothing about sales trading.” This is what happened after he showed me a Bloomberg screen and kept asking me questions. Honestly I have never seen that screen in my life and had zero clue on what goes where.
That made me want to cry.
I asked Trader how to learn about trading – he is an equities derivatives and exotics trader after all.
His honest answer was that there are no convenient classes for trading. It’s not like doing an MBA for tasks in research or IBD when you’re doing valuation. Instead, people would just throw you in the deep water and hope to god you can swim.
His exact words: “Trading can be taught but no one will teach you really. Best to go join a trading desk and observe how they do things. A lot of trading is self-learnt.”
Shit. Very helpful. I want to die now.
So we shall see how we go – things doesn’t seem rosy and am starting to get hand and feet allergies. That’s what happens when I get really really pressured. It happened to me before when I first arrived in Hong Kong as well. Really bad allergies.
Anyway, do my best la. 🙂
That’s what I can do really. Really really wish me luck and hope all is well!
Been there… in a way.
Don’t think MBA is suppose to teach you things like trading, IT, accounting, or economics. Those are small details, and you should only learn the basics so that if you pick up a book you’ll atleast have a good heads start. Way I see it, MBA developed you as a thinker, a manager and – perhaps – a leader. There will always be those around you who would be better technical people – be it trading, development, marketing or office cleaning. MBA skills is more of being able to see the bigger picture, understand where the important issues lie, take good decisions and be able to communicate it to people.
So, nothing to feel bad about.
Just my two cents.
Thanks a lot Fili for those comforting words. I just wished there was more technical stuff inside my MBA degree which could’ve been more useful. A bit tired of being scolded at. 🙂