Classmate Andrew Bergbaum (who also blogs on here) and I gave farewell reflections. His was more lighthearted but still heartfelt, while mine was a bit more serious.

Attached are two photos from other people’s cameras because mine had run out of batteries. The first is a photo of me at the podium. Dean Colin Mayer is in the foreground. The second is a photo of some of my dearest friends (including Arash, whom I’ve mentioned in my first blog entry), waiting for taxis to the dinner.

In the meantime, thanks for reading my blog over the past few months. If you’d still like to reach me, Said Business School will know how to find me.

Best wishes and do great big things!

 Here’s what Wikipedia says about NC:

Negative capability is a theory of the poet John Keats, expressed in his letter to George and Thomas Keats dated Sunday, 21 December 1817.

I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

There fact is that with major challenges like climate change and religious conflict, the idea of a direct, easy solution is ridiculous. 

This year’s capstone focused on climate change. In groups of ten, we picked a client company and designed scenarios in which the client would have to prepare for a situation where they would be most uncomfortable and least prepared. My team’s client was a large oil company, based out of Tejas. The James Martin Institute invited numerous panelists ranging the US chief negociator for the Kyoto Protocol to major investors in solar power. On the final day, my team and I were grilled by a panel of experts regarding our scenarios.

While capstone went on, a number of classmates and I were still shuttling around finishing up job interviews. I finalized my own plans to work for an investment fund in Dubai until end of December. After that time, if the company and I like each other, I might stay on. Otherwise, I have a few other “fish in the fryer” including a speaking circuit in Shanghai. Improving Mandarin has many obvious benefits, but what I’d most look forward to is having deeper and more meaningful conversations with my parents.

Looking back, in order for us to finish all of our work on time, we had to do something that was unexpectedly very, very difficult for me. We had to 100% trust each other to cover our respective sections. There were parts in my section that my teammate had not seen before the final presentation and vice versa.

Now, don’t misunderstand. I’m not a controlling person or somebody who likes to be involved in every little detail. But, what I’d become accustomed to in the classroom was the ability to read all parts to any group paper we handed in for grading. There was always time to object to a sentence here or a graph there.

But this summer, given that each part of our final report was so new that there was no time-efficient way for each of us to become mini-experts on all areas, we had to trust each other to do our best and “deliver” on the final day.  

So why did I find letting go to be challenging? Shouldn’t I have been excited to do less work? Wouldn’t anyone have wanted to pass off the responsibility to draw solid conclusions about very unknown topics? Especially since I’ve never been a brainy-act, this prospect should have left me whooping for joy.

After thinking for a while, I think that I was uncomfortable because I’ve never been in a pressure situation when it’s been okay to pass off responsibility. It has usually been just the opposite. Usually when something of value is at stake, I’ve been asked to take on as much as possible.

Besides learning about hedge funds and renewable sources of energy, I learned about the trust necessary for smart people to handle tough problems in a time crunch. It’s not like natinal presidents know more than his or her cabinet members do (although it helps to know the basics), instead s/he selects advisors wisely, then trusts them to do their jobs.   

 Yesterday evening our supervisors took us out to a relaxed, multi-lingual, white table cloth restaurant in Chelsea called Chutney Mary. The eight of us went around the table describing what our dreams in life are or have been. I was moved by how honest and personal we all were. Our discussions were healing and our ideas were soulful. That dinner is one that I’ll compare all other dinners to.  My SCP team and I didn’t anticipate having such an intimate experience with our summer employers, and now, more than ever, we feel the fates are on our side, helping us to meet incredible minds and big hearts.  

Things that didn’t seem to matter to me before (like the prospect of eating cookies at 3 pm) now seem somewhat privileged and different. While things that previously impressed me (like unlimited laser printing and handfuls of nice pens) don’t excite me as much anymore.

Where I am still ill-adjusted is the degree of debate entitled to employees in my position. While at school, when arguments arose during group meetings, winning the dispute wasn’t the primary objective of classmates. Instead, what mattered most was that we worked in harmony and turned in a finished work product with passing marks. Comparatively, in this job, a passing mark is not the target at all. Here, we have specific definitions for successful goal achievement. And therefore, when disagreements arise, we must not quickly reach to put on our diplomatic peacemaker hats. Instead, to best serve the company, we actually need to hold our ground even if the discussion gets heated (but not over-heated–ow!) Allowing our classmates-now-turned-colleagues to find holes to poke in our seemingly water-tight arguments is the only way to best seek an optimal solution for our company. We need to push our concerns forward lest the project suffer as a consequence of our desire for non-confrontation.

Transitioning from being more agreeable than not, to being more critical than not, is absolutely necessary for the nature of our work in futuristic investments in the environment. Because no one has really “been here before” as investors, we as a team are strongest when we challenge each others’ thinking. I suppose in other organizations and situations, team accord might override sound objection. One example might be when executing an order for the military. But here, to “win” together, we must not always “think” together. Just another observation

Having just relocated to the London Bridge area in London this past weekend, I miss a lot about my life in Oxford. This feeling of nostalgia and longing reminds me of my first summer after undergrad at Cornell. During those days I had just moved back home from New York to California. Almost all the young people in my private equity firm had attended either UCLA or USC. Work life was practically an extension of their undergrad years. They could see their friends after work everyday, call each other up for lunch, and plan weekend getaways. (Based upon the reports coming out of my Cornellian classmates in Manhattan, their lives were also sort of a natural extension of their college days as well.) I guess just right now in this hour, I just feel a stark contrast to having hundreds of friends within walking distance and much opportunity to see them.

One of my best friends from the MBA programme, Arash, always tells me that we can’t live in the past. And he’s right. My life today here in the City has started off very well and I already know that I’ll miss this lifestyle come the end of August!

I always get sentimental and nervous during times of transition. My flatmate/classmate/summer colleague, Kitty, knows this and has been such a wonderful friend. For dinner tonight (our first night together in our new corporate housing flat), she brought home some of my favourite foods. She trekked to three different restaurants to find them! Her compassion for others is truly inspirational.