Occam's Razor, Revisited

The last time I had a crystalising moment about my life was when I was in the middle of writing my second ABP report, and I decided that Sales & Trading was what I wanted to do with my life. But today, as I was doing the reading for Entreprenuership (and deciding that being an entrepreneur was sooo not my thing), I had another crystalizing moment: I wanted to go into Risk Management.

I guess the difference between the 2 "crystalising moments" was that the first time occured at a time of immense stress when I was desperately grasping for anything meaningful in my life, and the other occured during a 4 day vacation, after I had received internship offers, and I committed myself to doing absolutely NOTHING. But the fact is, I had actually been thinking about Risk Management for a while. I remembered the time I was a trader for an internship, and the MBAs had Risk Management internships. They watched over the traders and calculated the VaR and positions held at the end of the day. They managed the traders, but didn't have to go through the heart attacks of actually trading the market. Risk managers would book hedge trades. (Hedging is like the theme of my life. Whenever I take a risk, whether it be love, money or whatever, I always worry about hedging the risk of getting hurt. I hate uncertainty. Maybe I finally got an outlet for it).

Looking back on this, there were signs: My first "crystalizing" moment, even though it wasn't entirely correct, pointed me back to the trading direction. The job description of a Risk Manager basically required a Masters degree in Math, Statistics or Finance. I had that. It required skill in statistics. Statistics was the only subject I had 100% in during college, and I was one of the best Econometrics students in the class. Subconsciously, I always mentioned hedging in my MBA reports; one time, the Operational Finance professor actually read my answer out loud: "We want commodity price hedging with futures!" One of my key strengths is written communication, and writing Risk Reports is exactly my idea of a great day, expecially when it gives me an outlet for my interest in Law. And finally I remembered a little thing I used to have on my resume but deleted it in order to make space for my IESE club list: I was KIODEX certified in Natural Gas Risk Management.

So while everyone was partying, traveling & such I spent my holiday in Barcelona contemplating the purpose of my life. Then I realized that everything does happen for a reason, and you have to trust yourself to go down the path that is most right for you. So Risk Management for now. There are still some things I have to learn, claro, but now I know how to plan my classes next year, and what to get out of my summer internship. I am very lucky.