As I am starting my senior year, something that I am constantly reminded of is finding a job and starting my career post-graduation. This summer, I started to work on case interview prep with my roommate. We spent an hour or so (sometimes more, sometimes less) each week reading consulting books and quizzing each other on market sizing, business operations, etc. questions. Prior to engaging in case prep, I thought I’d decided that I was not going to recruit this fall semester for consulting jobs. But as the summer approached its end, I started talking to my “mentors” (my colleagues and my bosses) to ask them for advice on going into consulting instead of jumping into the social enterprise field directly. The conclusion I came to was that I will not recruit this fall semester, and instead will conduct informational interviews. If by the end of the fall semester I think I might want to go into consulting, then I would recruit in the Spring.

There are many reasons why I have, for the time being, decided that I may not want to go into consulting straight out of undergrad. While those reasons are all valid and require just as much attention, I want to focus on one in particular: salary-level and financial gains.

It’s not a secret that those working in management consulting get paid a lot more than those who work at either a NGO or social enterprise. And while for the past 3 years of my life, I had been setting my mind to working within the social enterprise field, I hadn’t really and truly considered what it means to work for  a social enterprise, from a financial standpoint.

For me, part of what it boils down to is my background, upbringing, and financial stability which affects my career choices and how that would affect my lifestyle. I’ve talked about this more than once on this blog, but coming back to it — I’ve had a “fairly comfortable” (if not “overly comfortable”) life growing up… and partially I think this is also what made me realize that I need something more than “wealth” to be happy. And here, too, are multiple things going on: perhaps I think I’d be unhappy with “just wealth” because I lack the same sense of “personal achievement” that comes with wealth. And so who is to say that if I were to make something of myself in my future career and made a good amount of money, I wouldn’t be content enough with this? That’s something I cannot discount, because frankly I don’t know how I’d feel if I got to that point. But the point is that in my present state (or throughout my life) I never felt like pursuing a career that would bring in a lot of money would be enough for me, from a career standpoint.

So thus begins my pursuit of a career in social enterprise/social entrepreneurship, what I believe is a way for me to achieve that “something else” that I feel like I lack. But pursuing a career in this field means not making a lot of money, perhaps just enough for a “comfortable” lifestyle. And, to be honest, I think this is what scares me the most. The fact that I’ve grown up living a certain lifestyle, being provided by my parents, and not having to worry about money is what makes me doubt my ability to learn how to want less and how to be content with a less “extravagant” lifestyle.

And while I can say this fear/doubt of mine can be attributed to my upbringing/growing up, it can just as well be attributed to social and peer pressure. Society — American society especially – breeds a culture of excess, consumption, and materialism. We are bombarded daily with new products or new “somethings,” and are constantly reminded of how awesome it must be to be rich and wealthy.

Let’s take my recent weekend trip to Las Vegas, for instance. Vegas is perhaps the epitomes of excess, consumption, and materialism. Table service at clubs costs thousands of dollars; suites or penthouse suites can cost up to $10,000 per night (can you believe that?!); lounging at the VIP section of a pool party can easily cost $3,000 for the afternoon. While it is not that hard to “crash” these VIP places, there is a sense of “coolness” and even “superiority” to be had when we are able to sit in these places or have the “VIP” treatment. We are conditioned to think that being VIP, having bottle service, or staying in a penthouse suite is what it means to be “baller”, “high rollers”, and just plain awesome. The implication behind all of these words is that: you have made it, you are wealthy, and that is something to be looked up to (in a sense). And being surrounded by that, and to see people’s reactions to this excess/consumption/materialism (myself included), only reminds me more of how much our society idolizes what it means to be wealthy and how that is the ultimate achievement.

While I am not discrediting wealth as achievement, I think there are other forms of achievement that are often downplayed. But when we are surrounded 24/7 by this excessive, materialistic, and consumption-focused culture, I think it is difficult to train ourselves — to re-condition ourselves, in a sense — to believe that there are, in fact, different forms of achievement, and that we don’t HAVE to buy into this wealth=achievement type of thinking (even though I am not saying people cannot have this type of thinking).

Peer pressure is another way we are conditioned to believe that achievement and wealth are synonymous. As an undergrad at a business school, a good percentage of them will be recruiting for investment banking, consulting, and accounting jobs. While I don’t believe this of all of those recruiting, a good amount of them want jobs in these industries because their end-goal is to make a lot of money. And to be honest, can I blame them? Is it really so wrong for those who: 1) grew up living a comfortable or extravagant lifestyle and want to sustain that for themselves in the future OR 2) did NOT grow up wealthy and thus want that kind of lifestyle — to pursue a career that will bring in a good amount of money? No, it’s really not so wrong.

For me, I think realizing all of these factors and being surrounded by this type of “philosophy” (if I may call that) only makes it harder for me to slowly accept the financial/lifestyle consequences of pursuing what I want to pursue. I need to learn how to be OK with living “modestly”; I need to, despite the fact that my sister is pursuing a career in the fashion industry (an industry that I also am interested in, as a hobby, but also an industry that thrives on excess and wealth), not participate alongside her desire to purchase expensive designer items, because that’s her future line of work, so it would be OK for her to want that, but it’s not mine. Most of all, I need to start thinking realistically what going into this field means financially and lifestyle-wise and start accepting this and being OK with it, despite the constant reminders that “more is better and wealth=achievement.” Otherwise, I am just kidding myself and will remain sitting here, thinking up some great scheme about how I am going to participate in poverty alleviation/changing the world, allthewhile still being supported by my parents and not having any financial burden at all, until I am thrown into it and hit by the reality of what it really means to want to work in the social enterprise space.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw

What is “world” anyway? If the world is merely what we perceive and interpret it to be, couldn’t one’s world change if one decided to perceive it differently (or tried to)? Is that man adapting himself to the world, or adapting the world to himself? And how much can we actually adapt the world to ourselves, until we realize that we must accept other “facts” of life as is? Or must we always push for denial of these facts? Is that even humanly possible? All progress thus could not depend just on the unreasonable man, because by then the unreasonable man must be exhausted if not already broken down. The unreasonable man too must understand how to incorporate the reasonable man’s way of life into his own. The “unreasonable” and “reasonable” mustn’t be mutually exclusive.

Today, my friend and I were talking about something too often on my mind: relationships and interactions with other people. It’s a topic that I’ve discussed with my sister multiple times before, and something good to reflect on — occasionally. It’s something that’s been on my mind a bit too many times for comfort, so I figured I might as well put it out here…

As overly-analytical this may seem, I always evaluate conversations I have with people, my personal “conversational style” and ways of interaction with other people. After talking to my sister and some friends, I’ve come to conclude that I am one who is “asking the questions.” I keep the conversation flowing, and mostly direct my questions about that person. Somewhere in-between, I’ll interject my own comments or my personal experiences. But more often than not, rather than being inquired about, I throw in little things going on in my life — perhaps in a subconscious effort to make up for other peoples’ lack of “asking the questions.”

While it makes for easy and non-awkward conversation, it also leads to other “consequences”: first, it leads others to become used to my “quizzical” nature, and people become used to talking about themselves (or continue to always talk about themselves in future conversations, because let’s face it — most people love to hear their own voices). Second, on my end, I learn a lot about the person I am talking to. While this is a good thing, I have recently realized that this also leads to a self-delusion: that I think I am close with someone, because I know so much about them, but that they really know not that much at all about me.

Some people don’t mind that others don’t know too much about them; some even prefer it. I wish I could say that I would prefer people not know much about me, and I wouldn’t be having this dilemma in my head at all, but then I would be lying to myself. As much as I am “independent,” sometimes “closed” or “not available” and “to-myself”, I cannot deny that I need daily interaction with people to be happy. Even if I am more introverted than extroverted, I have always had a need to connect with people or people I am close to. So when I realize that my relationships with people are sometimes more one-sided, and that I actually know a lot more about their lives or about them than they know about me/my life, it’s a bit disheartening.

My sister and I had a conversation that I’ve come back to think about quite a few times now — We were talking about our “questioner”/”listener” roles in a conversation, and I claimed that it is nice when somebody asks how you are doing, as a general question. I said that in the context of what the “opposite” would be, which is not ask anything about you (even if it’s general), and just answer/talk about themselves the whole time. My sister, on the other hand, interjected and said, “Yes — but mostly asking ‘how are you’ is a common courtesy and a lot of times just thrown out there because [the person asking] feels bad that they have been talking the whole time.” She continued to say that, “I don’t want people to just vaguely, and out of a tiny sense of guilt, ask ‘how are you?’” which I proceeded to agree with… And she helped me come to the conclusion that it shouldn’t be so difficult for others to ask about specific aspects of my life/life events/etc., to pick out those details and ask about them, because I would do the same. When somebody just generally asks “how are you?” it’s so easy for the other person to shut down and say “I’m fine,” and continue onto “well how about you, tell me about your life…” While I may do that to people I tend to not open myself up to, I also do not always shut down right away. When I talk to somebody else, I can pick out aspects or have specific incidents in his/her lives to ask about, because I care to remember these things (even if I do not have the best memory in the world) and want to know about it. But does the other party want to know about little things in my life? More likely than not, I don’t feel like they do.

So at the end of the day, what should it be? You can’t change somebody to want to ask more about your life or want to know about how you are doing, over talking about their own lives. If someone has the opportunity to talk out loud or have someone to rant to, more likely than not, they’ll take it. And as a friend and a listener, I am willing to do so. But am I willing to continue to build relationships with people under the false impression that we are such good friends, that we are so close, when in fact it’s really more of a one-way street? I’m not so sure. Do I try and tone down my “questioning” …and see what the other person does — if anything — and says instead? I don’t feel like this so-called “questioning” (although I honestly do not feel like it’s as much questioning as making conversation… am I wrong here?) takes over a conversation, because like I said before, if people do not ask me, I usually will share bits of my life too (again, I guess a subconscious effort to feel like the other party actually wants to know?). Or do I just invest my time in people (and I have, very few but there are those few out there…) who actually care enough to ask about my life and tell me about theirs? Is the world so limited to those few people? Are we all so self-absorbed nowadays that we can listen to ourselves talk for conversations at a time about our own lives that we leave no room/desire to hear about other people’s lives?

I’ve quoted this once before in my blog and I will do it again –

“He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.“ – Albert Camus

I hope I’m not a fool..

…we will meet again in less than 8 hours.

Traveling to Hong Kong for three days with my family.

I have yet to write about my amazing, epic 3-week adventure to London, Amsterdam, and Greece. That will come soon enough. 

Until then… I will be enjoying my last days in Taipei, Hong Kong, and EDC!