OPINION
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Thursday, October 10, 2018
Checking items off your bucket list boosts self-worth CASSIDY JACKSON
ASSISTANT OPINION EDITOR
The beginning of this past summer, I sank into a state of intense self-deprecation. My freshman year was full of self-neglect and completely lacking self-care all because… I got swept into Northwestern’s “AND is in our DNA” mentality. I went from having a plethora of hobbies namely journaling, poetry and running to dropping all of them to keep up with all the classes and clubs I took on. Basically, my life was a loop: classes, clubs, homework, sleep and repeat. It didn’t hit me until freshman year ended. Within a week being back home, I had broken down. What’s supposed to be a relaxation period was instead a rude awakening. As I sat on the couch binging on “New Girl” reruns, I thought to myself there has to be something better to do. But the thing is I truly had no clue to spend my excessive amount of freetime. I was frozen. In that moment, it hit me how in the process
of running back and forth across campus to clubs and classes, I had lost Cassidy. So, at that second, I set an intention. I decisively brought reading, poetry, journaling and running back into my repertoire. All of those hobbies, I still loved, but it felt time to progress to achieve something new. I knew just bringing back those hobbies would only restore to old Cassidy, but I wanted a new Cassidy. Writing had been a hobby of mine since I could hold a pencil; running entered the picture in middle school; I’d been a bookworm since I learned how to read. Realizing all of these things, I realized it had been years since I mastered a new skill, but it wasn’t like I was lacking in options. I had an intense list of skills and experiences I wanted to hone in from mastering French to riding a unicycle, but that’s the thing. It was a list that I never worked to materialize. So, that very day, I committed to learning one skill in the remainder of 2018: skateboarding. Since I can remember, I’ve dreamed of being a skater girl. I partly credit this dream to my first girl crush, Avril Lavigne and her revolutionary “Sk8er Boi” track. And I credit the rest of this fantasy to growing up blocks away from a skate park. Standing on the sidelines, I watched
beautiful skateboards glide back and forth, flip under the rider’s feet, and speed across the pavement. To then 10-year-old me, these seemingly “normal” moves were magical. But instead of pursuing my skateboarding dream, I became a metaphorical benchwarmer, watching from the sidelines but never playing. Eight years later, I was a freshman plopped on Northwestern’s campus. And oh my, there’s so many self-proclaimed skaters on this campus to where fall and spring quarter, it’s practically impossible to go a day without passing one… or witnessing a tragic accident. Last year, I saw four near-death skateboard accidents, including one where someone hit his head on the curb. It may have been a sign from God that pursuing skateboarding wasn’t a good idea, but… I refused to take it that way. Instead, this past summer, I went out to Dick’s Sporting Goods and invested $65 in a poppin’ board. It has a rad sunset design, and its name is Frank. But anyway the final three weeks of summer, I committed to skateboarding… and was partly successful. My neighbourhood lacks sidewalks, and despite my passion for skateboarding, I refused to kill myself in the process. So, I came back to school with maybe seven
skateboarding attempts under my belt, and so, the cover of nightfall quickly became my best friend. The night has hid my single fall and the multiple times I’ve had to adjust the direction of the board by hopping off, picking it up and shifting it. But despite the roughness of learning to skateboard, it’s one of those things that, not to be cliche, makes me feel alive. Since I was 10, I’ve had this dream of riding a skateboard, but because of fear or laziness, I let it sit on the back burner for half my life. As people, we do this a lot. We set life goals and have dreams for skills we wish we had in our back pocket but fail to execute. Personally, I’m still in the process of sifting through activities and figuring out how I want to answer “What do you like to do in your spare time?” but I’m figuring it out. And skateboarding has been added to that list.
their ability and commitment to the job during the internship receive a full-time return offer. However, this recruiting timeline seems to have changed recently: in a recent chat with a current student, I was surprised to learn that junior internship recruiting now begins in the spring of sophomore year. Effectively, students now need to interview for a position, which starts in 15 months, that may or may not turn into a full-time position, which then starts in another 12 months. This is an almost comical proposition to those working in different industries, but the logic is simple and well understood: every year, talentobsessed investment banks have been competing for “top-tier candidates” by recruiting earlier than their competitors. There were already signs back when I was in college — I recall having heard whispers of invitation-only events and networking chats with fraternity alums in the hallways of my macroeconomics class. Even without referencing game theory (thank you, NU), it’s not difficult to see why this recruiting
race creates a mutually inferior outcome for both recruiters and universities. But my sympathy is really reserved for the students. I find it hard to believe that a 19-year-old with a few intro level classes under his belt would have the knowledge and maturity to be fully convinced of his career choice (at that age, I didn’t). But peer pressure gets the better of him, and so he sits in his dorm room and studies how to do discounted cash flow analysis instead of reading Machiavelli and write dozens of emails to guys like myself — with the slim hope that someone will eventually pick up the phone for him. This practice also hurts the socioeconomic diversity of Wall Street’s young, incoming analysts. Students who have attended prestigious prep schools or have friends and family working in the industry will have the upper hand in access to closed door mixers and interviewing tips. And the disparity in social capital continues to widen, as private equity and hedge funds then recruit from this self-selecting pool of investment banking analysts.
In business or law school recruiting, universities forbid this practice from recruiters to give students more time to explore their career options. Generally, recruiters must go through a single standardized schedule mandated by the University and are not allowed to give “exploding offers” which candidates must accept by a certain date ahead of the mandated schedule. Recruiters that violate this policy may be uninvited to the campus in the following year’s recruiting cycle. The policy is not perfect, but it does force recruiting firms to play on the same field. The solution appears to be pretty simple: University administrators should consider creating a similar policy for undergraduate students. Realistically, it would work best if universities were to form a consortium and enforce the policy collectively. So, who would want to be the first to lead and set the example in this race? I certainly hope my alma mater would.
Cassidy Jackson is a Medill sophomore. She can be contacted at cassidyjackson2021@u.northwestern. edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@ dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
No student should be forced to choose a career path by sophomore year
I graduated from Northwestern in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science and started my career in investment banking. Over the past seven years, I have met with and mentored dozens of students seeking similar career paths. I am incredibly appreciative of the strong foundation that NU’s liberal arts education has provided for my career, and I believe mentoring students is how I give back to my alma mater. The beaten path of breaking into the investment banking industry starts with a junior year internship. Recruiting begins in winter of junior year, which means that students should decide on their career paths by then, attend information sessions and mixers throughout the winter, ace interviews and secure a spot by spring. Those who have proven
— Richard Bae Gong, Weinberg ’11
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