06.2026 - 07.2026
“It’s not our abilities that show what we truly are… it is our choices.” — Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Thursday, August 6th. 7:38 PM. President's Terrace, a rooftop bar in downtown Palo Alto. I sat down alone. White Panda's Midnight Life had been playing in my AirPods for an hour already. The server brought me a menu.
Running my eyes down it, a cocktail called Cruel Summer caught my attention. A short laugh escaped me. Right — this summer really had been cruel. I ordered it without thinking twice.
I close my eyes and let the last two months come back.
New York, arrived at with no real expectations. A week of training — suffocating, but where I did somehow feel like a banker. Landing in Menlo Park, moving into an Airbnb room, walking every day into that office I'd visited a few times before, the all-nighter until 6:30 in the morning sometime in the second week. The mid-cycle review, where I was told to reach out to people in the office more. Empty hours spent waiting on an MD's comments. Sitting in front of my laptop, thinking, or reading, or typing fragments into VS Code. The many nights I stayed late at the office — some for work, some just because I'd gotten sentimental. The last two weeks, too busy to breathe. The wine outing, the visit to the SF office, reunions with old friends. My YC batchmates didn't answer. I went to ICML in the middle of it, too. Going back and forth between SF and Palo Alto.
I opened my eyes to find the Cruel Summer and some brie and crackers in front of me. The cocktail wasn't as good as I'd hoped. Then again, it would be strange if a cruel summer tasted good.
The scenes are vivid, but what I actually felt won't come into focus. I closed my eyes again and tried to concentrate on the feeling.
What did I do for two months?
What I felt right before it started was flatness. No expectations for the job at all — just, let this summer pass quickly. Let it be uneventful. Why? Because my heart had already left banking. Why?
Partly because, even before I recruited, I'd already found that the people in this industry — junior, senior, it made no difference — neither enjoyed the work nor found any meaning in it. Or maybe I already knew earlier, at BCG, at Mirae Asset, at ACE. I don't know. What is certain is that at all three I couldn't picture a future in which I worked.
The decisive one was Hypernote. The feeling of having become useless. The feeling of contributing nothing to the company. Disgust at the function I was performing — sales.
Right — Evercore was going to be discarded then anyway. From the moment I decided to take a leave of absence and do Hypernote full-time. The banker version of me was, at least in my own mind, gone for good. I did dramatically cancel the leave and come back to school, but any thought of returning to banking had been left behind at SFO, in that moment of takeoff on my birthday, pushed out by all the brooding and the worry.
So why did I come this far?
Inertia. There was no particular reason not to. Something I once truly wanted, something I was overjoyed to get. A year and a half passed, and I stopped wanting it. But I still wanted to try it. There was no reason not to. Above all, it seemed like doing it was the only way to end it without anything left over.
Because that internship wasn't just a short stint of job experience — it was the period at the end of my ten years. I thought it would be the summit. But to the version of me that had changed so much, it was nothing more than the residue of an era, visible only when I turned to look back; a mark to step on and climb past.
So I decided to just do it. The reason to do it was gone, but there was no reason not to either. And because I thought I'd be able to tell my future self that I did it and finished it.
Tomorrow the return offer comes. Whether it comes or not, I'm not going back. It's a little strange, knowing this. I spent ten years trying to open this one door, and whether the door opens no longer moves me at all.
I think back on the last ten years. Where did it start? With Why I Left Goldman Sachs. I read a story about leaving and made up my mind to go in. I dreamed of America. I imagined becoming a man of finance. It felt like I would be standing at the center of the world. I thought the flow of money was the magnifying glass for understanding the world. (That may still hold. But does doing banking let you see the flow of money? Do you understand the world any better?)
So I wanted to come to Wharton. So I went to KMLA. So I worked hard at economics. So the moment I got into Wharton I optimized every nerve for recruiting. The days of prepping for club interviews and case studies. The stretches spent staying on campus over winter break to study technicals. The stretches where most of my friendships were filled with finance hardos.
All for what?
Do I regret it? Does it feel empty? It would be a lie to say no. Like an ex you break up with and then wonder why you ever dated. But I'm the one who met that person, and I loved with everything I had. Life is walking forward, step by step, with past regrets and brooding on your back. If you gave it everything, then even with remorse, you can hold it without longing — with a hardened heart and resolve.
What matters most is that I made up my mind. I made a hard decision. The decision to throw away the last ten years. The decision to start over as a beginner in a domain I don't know. It will be genuinely hard and difficult and painful, but I take one step forward with the conviction that it is still the right road.
He who believes in nothing is he who can do nothing. I had faith in myself. I thought that I, of all people, could do it. Above all, it didn't look impossible.
Today is the end of an era, and the tolling of the bell that announces a new one. From here there can be no excuses. Once resolved, there is no looking back. With my whole heart, with my life on the line, I must walk in great strides in the direction I have chosen.
It indeed was a cruel summer. The goal of the last ten years now negates those ten years.
It's 8:53 as I finish writing. The sun has almost fully set. On the western horizon of the Bay Area, past the hills, only a reddish dusk remains, faintly.
Yes — it was a red summer. It burned a brilliant yellow, and now it would sink into the dark. That kind of summer.
[08/07/2026 Update]
The next day, I did not get the return offer. MG said the problem was the feedback from the mid-cycle review — that in the end I hadn't gotten close to people. He asked if I had any questions. I said no. The conversation was over in a minute.
MG told me he was sorry. He said he rooted for me. He also said it didn't seem like I particularly wanted to do this work. Fair enough — after two whole months, it would be strange if that hadn't come through. He also said I seemed too smart to be doing banking. Part of me agreed; part of me wondered what exactly he had seen in me to think that.
It wasn't as though I felt nothing at all. Out of nowhere, I remembered frat rush in the spring of freshman year. I'd been rejected by a group of people then too. Being rejected by people gets more familiar as you go, but it still leaves a bitter taste. Even when it's something you didn't want.
I got in the Uber to the airport. Around this time last year I left this city unsettled too. That time carrying trials and anguish, this time a bitter aftertaste. Both times, the one turning his back was me.