Learning to Be Myself

"No business school…teaches everything you need to know. What we learned…was that your MBA shapes and complements you but it doesn't define you"

by Rachael Klein

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Rachael Klein
Georgetown
MBA Class of 2008

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A lot goes on in an MBA program. The internship is by far one of my most important experiences I have had. So let's go there.

On my first day I looked at the summer associate sitting across from me. After some introductory conversation I asked him what school he went to. "Columbia," he answered. "What did you do before?" I asked. "I was a consultant at Deloitte & Touche for five years."

I turned to the girl next to him. Same two questions, to which she answered, "Harvard," and "a captain in the U.S. Marines." O.K. Career-switchers, but nevertheless, I began to think my background was the farthest from the current internship at hand, which made me the least likely to be good at anything and which meant I should probably just get up and walk out.

Cue inferiority complex. Lucky for me I got the unique parental advice to "just be yourself." At the time I thought to myself, "this, coming from two people who have never worked in Corporate America, so, no way." That "myself" is the product of my parents from California, noncorporate, research-inclined, and nutty. Per hints from various sources such as Gawker and those who post on it, I decided to act as stiff and humorless as possible as well as be ready to get yelled at, because I thought that was what was required in the banking industry.

Shelving My Complex

Granted, part of the reason I chose the bank I did was because of the incredibly knowledgeable and cooperative culture I had sensed. But perhaps the perception was too good to be true, and one could never be too cautious. Turned out my earlier sense was right on the mark and one could indeed be too cautious.

A week into my internship the intuitive head of recruiting sat me down and said, "Rachael, I don't know you all that well yet, but I know you are not being yourself. You have 10 weeks here. Be yourself. We have to feel like we know who you are in order to consider you for full time." O.K., if he says it, then I'll listen. So I promised him and vowed to myself to be, well, myself. This is harder than one would think, given the New York corporate bank environment. It was somewhat of a new balance of myself. I began by shelving my aforementioned complex.

The structure of the summer played a pivotal role in the type of work we were given. I was in a class of 25 summer associates. We each had three rotations, each one lasting three weeks, and we met at least two or three times a week for training, social events, classes, speakers, networking, and projects.

Going for the Quant Track

In the class of 25, due to my background I was not considered one of the quantitatively focused summer associates. Nonetheless, I was far too curious to let the quantitative methods sneak by me, so I requested a quantitative rotation for my first three weeks. And even the brief three-week glimpse I had was enough for me to decide that was exactly what I wanted to do.

I researched the 130/30 method of investing; analyzed performance, attribution, and volatility data on money managers. I decided I really should have paid better attention in statistics because this stuff was fascinating and concluded that I loved the work. I found myself sitting alone at a desk at 10 p.m. on a Friday playing with data, trying to find correlations and draw conclusions.

It was a new low/high point, depending on who you're talking to and what you have planned on a Friday night. Still, I had two more rotations to show me some other great types of work in the bank.