Post-Recruiting Purpose Disorder and an Introduction to this Medium Blog

At 8:17 AM, April 17, 2020, as with every morning, I was rudely awaken by my dreaded ringtone. Operating completely under instincts and without even opening my eyes, my hand moved to swipe the screen in the familiar pattern that would turn off the alarm. It took me a good two or three unsuccessful attempts before realizing that there was no alarm to turn off, and it was instead a phone call. Resignedly opening my eyes to face my screen, my breath was taken away and I woke up within milliseconds when I saw the New York number displayed. Could this be the call that I thought I had no chance of receiving? It had been a good ten seconds since the phone first began ringing and any moment now it could go to my voicemail. I immediately pressed Accept and barked hello.

A friendly voice that I recognized from a conversation 4 days past wished me good morning and asked if it was a good time to call. Yes, it absolutely was. How are you doing? I am doing well, thanks very much. How about yourself? I am good Roy, thank you for asking. Listen here, we enjoyed speaking with you earlier this week and would like to extend you an offer to our firm…

Just like that, I received an offer for my dream internship for next summer. This was what I have been working toward since coming into university three years ago, and now — it’s finally been done. I will have an entire year to celebrate and relax before going into the role. I should be ecstatic. My life is complete.

Yet, for some odd reason, I did not feel much excitement that day. I felt deeply relieved and calm, but I couldn’t grasp the joy that, for 2 years, I had visualized so intensely when picturing this moment. I was certainly satisfied and in a more positive state than I had been for the weeks leading up to it, but I was almost disappointed by how…uneventful it felt.

The next three months rumbled by in a similar fashion. I suddenly had a ludicrously large amount of free time on my hands. It did not help that we were in quarantine and the managers at my current internship care fiercely about my work-life balance — not that I have anything to complain, of course. My life had revolved so much around recruiting for three entire years that I no longer know what to do now that it’s no longer there. My life was empty and I descended into the abyss of doing absolutely nothing.

Looking back on my past 3 months, I am no longer sure if getting the offer in April was good for my mental state. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there can be a better opportunity for me in terms of my interests and future objectives, and I look forward to it. But the post-recruiting state of life was definitely not what I envisioned. Let me backtrack a bit first, though.

I moved to downtown Toronto with two friends in May 2019 for the summer. It was the summer going into my third year of university, or as one of my mentors has described it, “the calm before the storm”. In third year I would be no doubt extremely busy with interviewing for jobs, and the summer after that I would be entirely preoccupied with my finance internship, and after that — well, I would be graduating and have no more summer breaks. But the summer going into third year is supposed to be the calm before the storm. The traditional “second-year internship” is chill enough that I could enjoy life, while all of my friends are also in my vicinity so that I could hang out.

The unfortunate truth was that very few people in my finance circle of friends enjoyed their summer. What he described was true — yes, everyone’s jobs were chill; yes, everyone was living in downtown Toronto; and yes, everyone had a lot of “free time”. But these inputs being true did not necessarily lead to the “enjoy life” output. Everyone was nervous about the incoming investment banking interviews. Everyone was busy “mocking” (mock-interviewing), learning, networking, and if they finished all of that, spent large chunks of time just stressing out and doing nothing. Yes, you read the last part right. I still vividly remember being turned down by a friend at my request to watch a movie one weekend and when I asked what he did afterwards, he admitted he just zoned out for three hours while “grinding the guides”, his mind panicking throughout that time about not knowing when the interviews were coming.

That was the quality of life I lived in and, I would say, most “keener” students recruiting for the prestigious industries — technology, finance, consulting, and other industries— live in every single year during “recruiting season”. We all persuade ourselves that this was but a phase — after we get the job offers, things would go back to normal. The summer zipped past and school started. As time went by and offers began rolling out, my circle of stressed out keener friends became smaller and smaller as more and more people escaped — seemingly, I will explain what I mean by this later — from this stressful lifestyle. For the rest of us in the circle, we felt simultaneously relieved — that there was less competition — and stressed — that there were fewer opportunities remaining — whenever the circle tightens. But then suddenly, at one point in December 2019, when I was mocking for an upcoming superday interview in the Ivey building, I realized I was, among my friends, the only person remaining in the finance recruiting circle, and that outside of my upcoming interview, there were no longer any job interviews left that I really was interested in trying out for.

There could be a lot of reasons why this was the case. What my mind blamed at first, however, was that I did not stress enough. Throughout this entire recruiting cycle, I still went to the gym every day, was reasonably happy and energetic, went through a relationship, and was certainly not re-preparing for every single technical and behavioral question over and over again, like many of my peers claimed they were doing. I was extremely busy with recruiting, yes, but I still did not give up enough, so it’s no surprise that people who worked and stressed harder got their offers before me. Now they have reaped their reward, which is that they are happily relaxing and enjoying life, while I remain in the hell of being unemployed, or so I thought.

The first cracks to this myth breaking were when some of my “successful” finance friends reached out to me for personal advice. It seems that the stress and unhappiness they had felt during recruiting did not dissipate; instead, they had come back in other forms, whether it was with academics, personal relationships, or else. At this point, I realized the ridicule behind laying all my hopes and dreams of obtaining happiness behind an INVESTMENT BANKING JOB OFFER: yeah dude, it’s not going to change anything.

Over Christmas 2019, while clearing out my old house, I came across a bunch of my old notes from high school. I took a trip down memory lane and remembered how stressed my peers and I were over things that made no sense from my perspective now: interviewing for executive positions on clubs, grade 9 math quizzes, fitting in, so on and so forth. My high school was particularly competitive and kids stressed over quite literally everything. But comparing my high school stress to my then-current stress about recruiting, nothing had changed. I also came across memorabilia from my old hobbies in high school: world history, traditional Chinese literature, fingerstyle guitar, writing (I had some embarrassing fantasy stories written up that I have made sure no one will never get to read ever again) — interests I had not made time for since my “finance grind” has started.

2 truths had become abundantly clear to me:

1. If you are the type of person who stresses easily, you will never run out of things to stress about no matter what you accomplish;
2. Pursuing career goals is nice, but making that your entire life while not even spending a couple of hours per month on your hobbies is…questionable.

I pride myself on being someone who is always positive and happy, and that I have a ton of interesting hobbies. This has not been the case for a very long time.

While these realizations were quite clear to me, everyone knows it’s hard to persuade your brain to think rationally. But overall, I definitely got a healthier perspective. I decided that I would pursue a full-year internship with the firm I have signed with for the summer and push my graduation back by a year; this way, I have another year to recruit for summer investment banking internships, lessening my pressure to get a top job NOW. This approach thankfully worked, which brings me back to April 17th and the 3 months of figurative interregnum since then.

When examining the two truths I have pondered upon from the present, I don’t think I ever exhibited much of point #1. I was never a “permanent keener” like most of my friends in that I was never the type to stress about everything. I certainly felt the pressure and uncertainty during recruiting season, but I never really thought it changed my life in any significant way. Hence, before April 17, I always thought I had a healthier perspective than that of most other people.

But I think the overall problem is never solved: I still put everything in my life on hold to pursue recruiting and now that it’s gone, I lack purpose. When others fill this void by stressing about other things and continuing this lifestyle, I can’t even fill this void. The truth is, I have been living in a rut and doing absolutely nothing with my newly-found freedom in the past three months.

At the beginning of this summer, I made a resolution to pick up playing the guitar again, maintain a daily calisthenics exercise routine, read 30 books, and act as a mentor to as many younger students as I possibly can. I would say I was only moderately successful with the last endeavour. I read 2 books from my list of 30. I never even touched my guitar. And my fitness…well, let’s just say my first post-Phase 3 gym session today was a royal disaster.

I had always envisioned that I would work very hard in my twenties and retire in my early thirties. This seemed like the ideal life. My experience in the last 3 months has taught me that if nothing changes, that would be the worst future imaginable for me: I simply have lost the ability to relax and if I retire at age 30, I’d live the rest of my life in sheer boredom and internal turmoil.

At the moment, all I do every day is try to do as much work as I can at my internship, and when there’s absolutely nothing left to be done, I go on social media or play video games. This is quite shameful to admit. I want to use this as a reminder for all the keen students who are “grinding” for internships and jobs: no, your life is not going to magically become perfect once you get a job, and dedicating your life to recruiting might end up ruining your life.

This blog is my public statement to my determination on picking up my life again. I understand it comes off as boastful in that I am complaining about how easy my life is now that I don’t have to worry about jobs for an entire year. The truth is: I am not happy at all with the way I am living my life at the moment. The pre-April 17 Roy, certainly, would be looking at the current Roy and frowning.

Some of the things I would like to use this blog to do in the coming months:

• Continuously journaling my path to regaining my purpose in life and become someone who can be satisfied even when I have nothing to do;
• Use this blog to write — I have always loved writing and it’s time to pick it up again;
• Ramble about things I like/think are beautiful (e.g. traditional Chinese literature, philosophy, history, etc — there is a reason why the cover photo is a medieval Chinese painting).

I look forward to hearing your comments :)