I would like to have my 2p's worth here - and probably wont go down to well with some but here goes.........
No worries, I couldn't really be offended by someone questioning my motives, did plenty of that myself over the last few weeks ....
1) Why did you do a banking internship in the first place if thats not what you want to do?
2) How long did that last?
3) Do you honestly think you can get a job for £80k a year after Uni??? and if so doing what?
4) How are you supporting yourself through Uni?
Let me try to answer these one by one:
1) I did the internship for several reasons, firstly, I didn't really have that much of an idea beforehand what investment banking would be like and as it is immensely well paid (see (3) ), I figured I should at least give it a shot. On the other side, I needed some sort of internship for the summer anyways, just taking in mind future job applications etc.
2) It was a two-month internship, which then resulted in the subsequent job-offer starting either immediately or in summer '07.
3) Yes. Investment Banking with one of the four larger firms (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and perhaps Rothshild) is very well paid, even for first years. In my case I was looking at GBP 40k base salary and a bonus of approx. 100% (it varies slighty from year to year, but that's the average we're looking at).
4) My family pays for fees and accomodation and basic living expenses, financed the rest (which basically boils down to drinking and holidays) with summer-jobs and other part-time work.
It's kind of funny, the reactions I get to my decision not to take up the job offer, but instead do my masters (which I had applied for long before I even considered the internship) vary quite strongly. Some people think I'm crazy for turning down a job that would guarantee me a very comfortable and wealthy life, but I think most can understand my motives. My parents actually congratulated me when I spoke to them about my decision, which meant a lot to me.
So anyway, why I've chosen uni and a different career over banking: I think there are several things important to me in live, and one of them is to do a job that actually fulfills me. This probably sounds silly, but I'd rather earn a decent wage and enjoy what I'm doing and find it challenging on a constant basis, than do something that would pay me loads but that I would probably only enjoy for a short while. I mean if you think of it, I'd spend the largest amount of my next six years in an office - surely that can only work out if you really enjoy what you're doing there. Let's face it, how important is money really compared to enjoying life? Fair enough, you have to work and earn money to enjoy a comfortable life, but I suppose once you start sacrificing your life or the parts of your life that you enjoy, just to earn more money, that kind of defeats the point of money in first place? With saying that, I'm not really talking about the crazy hours you work in a bank - I'd be very happy to do something that involves working a hundred-hour week, as long as I can justify it and as long as the work is actually important enough to me to justify spending that extra time away from friends, family and social life. I mean, would I get a job with say amnesty or unicef next year, I'd probably work silly hours, too, but it just wouldn't be the same sort of burden, because I'd feel that I'm doing those additional hours because there is something important to be done, not just because there's more money to be had.
Finally, as far as my plan for life goes, it was always quite important to me, to do something that I could look back on in say 30 years and actually be proud of. I just can't see that happening if I had stuck to banking.
Well, make of it what you want. I have enough friends from uni who chose the other way round, and they still seem to be enjoying life and sound vaguely cheerful when I speak to them, but for me that life was just not an option. Hope that sort of helped you understand my position.
GL with your $1 quest BTW
Thanks
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