I am home.

These past several months have been both exciting and overwhelming at times. I managed to drag my suitcases out of England and move into my tiny little flat in Soho. Before I knew it, training was underway and all a hundred of us were put into a ballroom at the Marriott in the Financial District. Fast forward a few weeks, I’m at my cubicle jamming away on a model and putting together a book. In between the coffee runs, Seamless dinners in the conference rooms, 1 AM drinks, and insane amount of ping pong, we the interns became a part of this world that have been mysterious for so long.

I learned three valuable things this summer

1) Banking lingo
2) Excel shortcuts
3) And the fact that I want to do investment banking in M&A for two years when I graduate

I’m going to miss everyone I worked with this summer quite a bit.

Now that I’m back in Vancouver, it’s time to recuperate and just spend time with the people I love. Senior year starts in just over a week. Jeezes. Getting old.

To my dismay, the clerk explained to me that this supermarket had yet to install card-swipe machines. Cash only. I relented and fumbled through the unfamiliar wad of bills stuffed in my wallet,  handed her the right change, and went home.

A couple hours of frantic housework later, everything was in place in my tiny literally-one-room apartment. My mosquito net was propped up with plastic strings tied to nails driven into the random corners of the room (left behind by the previous apartment occupant). The tradeoff for not waking up with half a dozen mosquito bites was having to avoid all the strings that haphazardly cross my room – a fair bargain, I think.

Next, I got to work on the curtains. Remember those checkered plastic Chinese restaurant table cloths? Great curtains. And their functions don’t stop there – they also make great bathroom doors! So the set-up of the apartment is that I have one bedroom, and my landlord has her bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen on the OTHER side of the hallway. Basically, if I need to use the bathroom, I would have to open my door, lock it, open her door, lock it, go to the bathroom, open her door, lock it, and unlock my door. The icing on the cake is that the sliding door of the bathroom does not close, at all. Table cloth to the rescue!

Another peculiar thing I noticed is that many Chinese people don’t believe in mattresses. For the first couple of nights before I asked my landlord for a cotton pad, I was sleeping on a hard bed frame and developing back issues at the tender age of nineteen.

Other than that, I learned that duct tape truly solves all your problems and that there’s no need to buy brooms when one’s neighbor leaves a broom in the hallway (hey, it’s a Communist country, people are obligated to share their resources… or something like that).

Frugal intern score: A+
Housewife score: D-

This makes me wonder how my fellow interns are doing in various corners of the world. Are you living in some fancy studio on the Upper West Side or downtown Vancouver? An NYU/UBC dorm shared with three other people? A leaky apartment in the Bronx? Or more likely, commuting from Jersey or Queen’s? I doubt you guys make dinner every night. How does it feel going from dining hall food in Ithaca to business lunches with bankers in the financial district? I would say that, save the exception of those currently slaving away in a cubicle or a testosterone-filled trade floor for corporate monoliths, most interns are paid somewhere near minimum wage, or nothing at all (I guess I lucked out with an awesome job overseas which I love, yes, I’m talking to you boss-who-reads-this-blog).

So fellow interns, how are you doing? What (wonderful/horrific) summer stories are you willing to share?

West Campus, Ithaca, New York – Saturday, May 22

Flora Rose is emptying up. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that I had the best suite (including other peeps down the hall) I could ask for this year. Before going away for college, people warned me about hall drama, roommate fights, and awful cafeteria food. These were mostly non-existent in my Cornell experience so far (with the exception of Flora Rose house dinners, GAH!). I’m going to miss these girls so much this summer <3.  We’ll be in DC, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Spain, China, Vancouver etc. – literally scattered around the world.

Collegetown, Ithaca, New York – Wednesday, May 26

A tearful goodbye at 4am in front of the Shortline bus, perhaps an ironic throwback to that first chance encounter.

Adios Ithaca. Every time I leave I am eager to get out of this bumblefuck and return to civilization. Every time I return, it is with trepidation and uncertainty. Ithaca seems to change a little each time. When I come back in August, one part of it is going to feel empty.

Somewhere upstate, NY – early am, Wednesday

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD why is no position comfortable to sleep in on this bus?! I am running on three hours of sleep and all I’m asking for is to be horizontal, for a moment.

Lincoln Tunnel, New York City – 9:00 am, Wednesday

Entire year at Cornell flashing before my eyes. It’s ending the same way it begun. Too much nostalgia. Snap out of it Phoebe.

Port Authority Bus Terminal, NYC – 10:00am, Wednesday

Three thoughts
1) WHY THE HELL IS IT SO FRIGGIN HOT HERE?!
2) Dragging my 50 pound luggage through the New York subway is very, very unpleasant. Major obstacles include turnstiles, stairs, subway cars, and more stairs
3) Someone helped me up and down almost every set of stairs. Wow! They all looked like Wall Street analysts haha.

Deutsche Bank Auditorium, 60 Wall Street, NYC – 11:45am, Wednesday

Can’t believe I’m here! Mad mutual connections everywhere. I was talking about “this conference I went to in Stanford about China” and someone I didn’t know pitched in, “You mean FACES?!” YAY?!

The finance training session they have is  so much clearer than anything that Finance / Accounting classes had!

I’m an Ideas person, apparently. My personality profile according to Ann Miller is deemed slightly unfit for investment banking. That’s okay, I think.

Somewhere in the Financial District, NYC – 6:00pm, Wednesday

This is the biggest scavenger hunt I’ve been in in my life.

Harry’s Steak, NYC – 8:30pm, Wednesday

I find out that 400+ people applied for this program, and 30 people got selected. Not bad.

PS – This steak is absolutely amazing.

Club Quarters, Wall Street, NYC – 11:00pm, Wednesday

Single room, king sized bed, ergonomically designed chair, WIFI. Now I can get used to this.

47th Floor, DB Building, NYC – 9:00am, Thursday, May 27

The view is absolutely gorgeous up here on the top floor. Great place for breakfast. We have a couple useful presentations in the morning and a lunch with analysts/MDs. The afternoon’s LRC analyst panel starts off uneventful. In the middle of the panel, a guy in business attire strolls in casually from the lobby. The panelists stop talking mid-sentence and someone goes up to introduce the guy.

“This is Seth Waugh, CEO of Americas for Deutche Bank.”

The room basically stops moving for the next 10 minutes (save the few people flipping to the page with the company organization chart and glossy executive photos, to make sure we heard right) as Mr. Waugh talked about the firm. Great moment.

New York City Food Bank, The Bronx, NY – 3:30pm, Thursday

So this is the Bronx. Props everyone for a job well done repackaging donations.

New York Stock Exchange, Wall Street, NYC – 9:30am, Friday, May 28

This is hands-down one of the most exciting events of the program. If anyone was watching CNBC on Friday morning, the people you see waving to the camera in the background are… us. There is so much energy (and testosterone) on the trading floor it’s just incredible.

Near NYU Dorm, NYC – 11:25pm, Friday, May 28

I am sitting in a movie theatre watching Sex and the City, IN the City. Yes, to you New Yorkers this might not be all that special, but I’m feeling very giddy. It’s a full theatre, maybe 25% guys tied to their gfs, and 75% gals.

12th Street and 3rd Avenue, NYC – 2:45am, Saturday, May 29

Can’t… keep… eyes… open. Standing at a street corner with a giant luggage at 2:30 AM is so friggin’ scary. At one point a dude came up to me and said, “You know you really shouldn’t stand there alone at this hour with so much stuff.” I KNOW, I KNOW. Never doing this again. GOD DAMN IT WHERE IS MY SHORTLINE.

Speeding towards JFK – 3:15am, Saturday, May 29

Passing out on shuttle, exhaustion.

Terminal 8, JFK – 4:30am, Saturday, May 29

I AM NEVER FLYING AMERICAN AIRLINES AGAIN. AN HOUR WAIT TIME IN LINE TO CHECK LUGGAGE?! WTF!!

Departure Gate, JFK – 5:00am, Saturday May 29

Strategically wrapping my carry-ons around me so no one would steal them. Curling up in the corner to sleep like a hobo.

Flight AA1, JFK – 9:00am, Saturday May 29

So I’m wearing a red Cornell shirt on the plane. The lady next to me looks over and exclaims, “Oh! Cornell! Wonderful school. I went there too.” She was traveling with two other people so basically my entire row, from left to right, was Cornell grad of 2012, 2007, 2007, and 1973. Amazing.

LAX, Los Angeles, California – 1:00pm, Saturday May 29

Thank god, one more flight and I’m home. It’s so nice hearing “Vancouver Passengers” on the PA!

My bed, Richmond, British Columbia – 6:00pm, Saturday, May 29

I have never appreciated sleep this much.

By the time we got to our hotel it was already nightfall. We drove to Cambridge and was shown around Harvard Square and Harvard Yard by our unofficial host. Sorry Ithaca, but Cambridge is what a legit college town should look like – festive shops, classy restaurants, preppy boys dressed in swoon-worthy black topcoats and Burberry scarves traveling in groups, actual civilization etc. Ithaca just has hippies. Everything’s definitely a lot closer on what we saw of the Harvard campus, which has its advantages. I do love Cornell’s gorgeous hilly landscape though.

(85Broads girls walking in Harvard at night)

The actual conference on Saturday morning took place at the Westin Copley Place in downtown Boston. 800 women from over 100 schools, with all Ivies represented. To my male colleagues, no, it was not an ultra-feminist, men bashing convention like you imagined. Professionalism, balance, curiosity, success marked the underlying themes.  The delegate bag was filled with goodies from Dior, American Eagle, Citigroup, P&G, Raymond James, Bain & Co., and the works. The opening keynote was in a surprising format – casual interview style Q&A with Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group. This was interesting because the closing keynote was from one of ABC’s biggest competitors – Alison Gollust, Executive VP Corporate Communications from NBC Universal.

(Alison Gollust, NBC, wearing this season’s on-trend gorgeous knee-high boots I might add)

My morning was a series of hilarious chance encounters. I saw people from Vancouver who flew in just for the conference. At one workshop, I unknowingly sat down at the same table as Jenny Hu, whose fame resonates in Sauder far and wide It took a few seconds for us to put the pieces together, having never met despite going to the same school for a year and hearing each other’s names every so often. I also finally met Yingna Liu face-to-face, who was a Harvard volunteer. I’ve “known” Yingna for two years through blogging, awesome eh?

The breakout sessions I attended were

• Finance 101: Investment Banking, Investment Management, and Sales & Trading – panelists from Barclays, Credit Suisse, Raymond James, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs
• Conquering the Case Study Interview – panelists from Oliver Wyman, Bain & Co., Parthenon, Monitor, Boston Consulting Group
• Beyond Banking: Venture Capital, Private Equity, and Hedge Funds - panelists from Colcomgroup, Blackstone, Harvard Business School
• Career Fair

Finance 101 was highly informative (one of the panelists was a Cornellian) and touched upon family life in relations to women in finance. The Case Study one was my favorite, and not only because Jenny Hu busted out her elite Strategic Consulting Mentorship Program skills. At this session, we broke into small groups and tackled an actual BCG case, led by associate Hana Adaniya.  Hana gave us tons of practical tips that I will definitely apply to my project with the Cornell Consulting Group.

A few very rough takeaways for consulting case study interviews

1. Paraphrase the question, extract the key point, do not repeat the whole thing word for word
2. Don’t rush through your explanations
3. STRUCTURE AND SEGMENTATION ARE GOOD, always have some kind of framework and walk the interviewer through it
4. Always provide alternatives when laying out solutions
5. But do make a final decision
6. BCG for one will usually have numbers and calculations. If you don’t have numbers you might be barking up the wrong tree (or wrong branch of the structured tree diagram)
7. Always close your response with insight -> what’s the bottom line impact? What are some next steps?

Most inspiring keynote goes to Johanna Hanneke Faber, VP for Pantene, Proctor & Gamble. She had an amazing career story and an absolutely wonderful personality that projected, simply, a love of life and different cultures. I will probably apply to P&G because of her (actually getting an internship there will be a different story entirely). Side note: I really appreciate the IBC people giving us the contact list for ALL the business delegates at the end of the day.

(Ladies from Cornell 85Broads at the convention. Wow, we’re photogenic.)

Even though I was exhausted by the end of the day – 800 women strutting around in heels for an entire day, the thought in itself is terrifying – I did manage, in typical female practicality, to squeeze in a little shopping time after the career fair. While the Louis Vuitton’s and Armani’s of Copley Place Mall was out of my price range, I did snag some Harvard/Boston souvenirs for friends and family.

The only issue I had was with the sneak-peak movie trailer shown by Alison Gollust in her closing keynote. The movie is called It’s Complicated and starrs Merryl Streep as an ambitious career woman, mother of three, and divorcee who falls for her now-remarried ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) and becomes “the other woman” in a complicated love triangle. After an entire day of valuable career advice, female empowerment, promotion of the entrepreneurial spirit, and heated discussions of work-life balance, showing a trailer which insinuates that a successful woman who has it all still can’t be happy without a man might not have been the most ideal take-away message. It was entertaining though (ha).

Finally, quotes to end an overall amazing convention.

FIND MENTORS. FIND MENTORS. FIND MENTORS. – This was emphasized by at least 5 speakers

In your first six months in investment banking, do NOT expect work-life balance. – Finance panelists

It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you. – Alison Gollust I think, NBC