Saturday, August 7, 2010

A Takeaway

My last day of internship here at UBS.

It’s been a very enriching nine weeks, I’ve been seeing a lot and talking to all kinds of people, from IT, front-office sales and traders, etc. And it’s really a massive world, where you can visibly see how things flow, how a great organization emerges from the amalgam of thousands of employees, with a keen focus honed through decades of good practice. And IT here is huge, it’s an intricate system of interlinked units, and each seems quite exciting and different to explore. And the culture is one that is very much results-oriented, very professional. My evaluation is full of Bs and Cs, haha.

I just presented my project to a panel of managers from around the world (through conference call), and when they commented on it, I could really feel how naïve and ignorant I was. An old quote from Socrates struck me then:
One thing only I know, and that is I know nothing.
To be honest it has to be disappointing, to see that the project you take pride in is just not good enough. Yet it really fires me up to strive to improve next time, to be more inquisitive, more humble, less inflexible, and less timid. I want to be passionate and driven about learning.

Though I might not come back to pick myself up where I fell, I’ll be sure to bring along this treasure trove of knowledge with me from now on.

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