This past Thursday I attended a career event labeled “Wall Street Careers Panel.” I was the first one to arrive to the event with a few of my friends and we proceeded to sign in at the enterence of the room. Apparently we had to RSVP which none of us did so they had us wait in a separate line until all the people that did RSVP got in. We waited patiently for about an hour watching each person get into the event all dressed in suits and business attire. I felt super under dressed but at this point I just wanted to get in… I was excited for this event for the entire week prior. Eventually we were able to get in due to the amount of seats available at the start of the panel introduction.

The event started with one of the heads of the STARR Career and Development Center introducing the entire Wall Street Panel. Once everyone was situated the panel members began to tell their life stories and how to ended up where they are today. The event was different than I expected, I thought I would be meeting stock brokers and people that actually work on Wall Street but only one person out of five works at Morgan Stanley (one of the “big four” banks). The entire duration of the event was spent with each member talking about themselves. I was more interested in learning about the types of jobs Wall Street has to offer and how to attain them but none of that was mentioned. Overall, I was disappointed but I did come out learning some things, so the experience was not a complete waste of time. Hearing what the panel members had to go through to get to their current situation was inspiring to me. My big takeaway however was that there are many opportunities in Baruch to take advantage of. Those advantages include the variety of clubs, jobs and internships through STARR, and mostly just the fact that Baruch students are in New York City. Being in Manhattan is huge mainly because we are ahead of most people that are in schools out of state. Everyone eventually wants to work in the city and we as students are experiencing first hand the atmosphere of success and hustle within Manhattan. Thus, even though the event was not what I wanted it to be, I still left more knowledgable and inspired.