Consultants and caterpillars

When I was in high school I used to volunteer at a day-care center, and one day I asked the little boys and girls the Big Question:

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Molly wanted to be a veterinarian, Tom wanted to be a baseball player and little Jimmy had high aspirations for himself. He thought for a moment quite seriously, looked up at me and replied, "I want to be an astronaut. But if that doesn't work out, I want to be a caterpillar."

A sound back-up plan, young Jimmy.

Now that we college students are returning from Winter Break, horrifyingly, it is already time to start sending out resumes for summer jobs. And more importantly, time to start thinking about what we want to be when we grow up.

For a very large percentage of the Duke population, the answer is investment banking or consulting. I find it hard to believe that i-banking and consulting were the childhood dreams of any of these students, so where did these choices come from?

Some students genuinely expect to feel fulfilled by the challenging analysis and number-crunching of investment banking and the difficult problem-solving and traveling lifestyle of consulting. Others, however, have a different plan in mind-one that sounds a little something like this:

"I'm going to make a couple million i-banking for a while after college, retire at the age of 25 and spend the rest of my life playing video games."

Over all, Paul is pleased with his job, though he and many of his coworkers doubt that they will remain in consulting long term. In fact, the reason Paul switched companies is because he could not tolerate the constant traveling and living out of a suitcase that came with MicroStrategy, which he "did not realize [he] would dislike so much."

What's more, Paul also noted that his work as a consultant has reminded him "how many idiots are in the world running things sometimes, which is frustrating to deal with."

Ouch.

Meanwhile, Bartholomew (remember, names have been changed), is a 24-year-old Northwestern alum who now works in private equity, but worked as an investment banker at Robert W. Baird for a couple years after graduating.

Bartholomew spoke highly of his i-banking days.

"[It was] an attractive opportunity to quickly develop finance and accounting skills, work with talented individuals and gain general business experience right out of college," he wrote in an e-mail. However, the 16-hour workdays, lack of a social life and tedious work ultimately led Bartholomew to make the switch to private equity. He told me most of his peers also planned on changing career paths after two or three years.

So, what advice would Bartholomew give to students thinking about entering a career in investment banking?

"Spend some time thinking about what the lifestyle will actually be like-the banking lifestyle isn't suited for everyone and you don't want to be stuck in a situation where you won't find the lifestyle tolerable," he wrote.

Paul and Bartholomew both seem to imply that while consulting and investment banking are a quick way to gather up money and career experience, this same quickness can ultimately lead to burn-out and unhappiness. These companies take fresh young recruits straight out of college and bleed them dry. But for some recent grads, it is a risk they are willing to take.

In retrospect, I think my preschool friend Jimmy is destined for a career as an investment banking or a consultant. Aside from creepily having a fall-back plan at the tender age of four, are caterpillars and young investment bankers/consultants so different?

They worm about the corporate world, try to gather up as much of the green stuff as quickly as possible, and then create the biggest, prettiest chrysalis for themselves that they can-a chrysalis from which they secretly hope they can emerge one day as a nice big grown-up butterfly, one free from the tethers of financial constraints and practicality, one free to seek out the career and life path that is really of their own choosing.

Stacy Chudwin is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Thursday.