Time for a new challenge

Sigh.

Back to being the bottom of the totem pole. Scum of the Earth. A peon.

Worse. A financial analyst.

In a few months, I will move to New York City and devote 100 hours each week to the greater good of a Swiss bank. I will be working instead of sleeping, instead of eating and instead of playing. My health will decay. If I had a girlfriend, she'd dump me.

I can't wait.

Let me explain. It's been great being a senior. Fantastic. Coming back from studying in London last year, it took a few weeks to acquire the requisite senior strut. But by October, I was loving every minute. I had the best job I could think of at Duke--sports photography editor of The Chronicle. I got to sit on the court at any Duke basketball game I wanted and work with the best sports editor in recent memory. I even got to run my very own meetings.

But seniority has always been fleeting in my life. Temporary. Do you remember being told that you could no longer list your high school accomplishments on your rZsumZ? I do. It didn't seem fair. Why should I be robbed of my achievements and told that suddenly my life's work was meaningless? Sometimes it made me wonder why I tried so hard in the first place.

But that pattern has repeated itself throughout my life. As an eighth-grader, I was captain of my junior high cross-country team. I loved the responsibility, but by the next fall I was returned to anonymity as a high school freshman.

I could have held on to that key a few days longer. Maybe I should have. But it's time for me to move on. Because no matter how much I drag my heels, college must end, as high school before it and elementary school so many years ago.

But from now on it will be different.

In three months, I will become a financial analyst for UBS Warburg. Almost every single man and woman in that organization, and most of their children and some of their pets, will rank above me in the hierarchy. Authors John Rolfe and Peter Troob referred to analysts like me as "monkeys" in their investment-banking exposZ. I have to admit, they're not far from the truth.

Monkeys, however, remain primates for all of their days. Financial analysts undergo a gradual but very real metamorphosis. In just one pass of the seasons, first-year analysts become second-years and shed some of their fur. By the third year, many of us will have lost the ability to swing through trees. A few years after that and we will be seniors once again, with all the responsibility and privilege that comes with such status.

Rumor has it they even pay you money in the real world, instead of charging you tuition.

But this time, there will be no abrupt end. No rude awakening from a familiar environment into a brand-new, threatening one. This time, finally, seniority will be permanent. What's more, I will have an opportunity to build on what I begin. Instead of the inevitably year-long leadership positions I have grown accustomed to, I can remain in a job for years, even for a career. Never again will I be relegated to freshmanship.

At almost 23 years of age, it feels odd that I'll soon be a freshman once more. It seems like I have accomplished too much, that I deserve more. But really, I'm too old to be a student. I've had enough of the cyclical lifestyle, the ebbs and flows of academia. It's time to break out of the loop and start down a path that leads somewhere.

It won't be easy. I've seen what this job can do to people. I've seen it break the backs of smarter men and women than I. But I'm good at this. Because I've been preparing for it my whole life. I've been a freshman many times, and each time I have become a senior.

Once more.

I can't wait.

Drew Klein is sports photography editor of The Chronicle. He would like to thank his parents for making what he fervently hopes will turn out to be a good investment--him.