A senior's dilemma

hope, for the win

There is more to the world than consulting or finance.

I find myself repeating that phrase over and over every day while talking with my fellow seniors who are in the throes of the post-graduate job hunt. Every day, it's another casual conversation of “How’s the job stuff going?” only to hear “Oh, I’m looking into consulting right now, and if that doesn’t work out I don’t know what I will do with my life.” Every day, I keep telling myself the same thing.

There is more to the world than consulting or finance.

Like a nervous tic, I find myself repeating this without warning and with little control. Perhaps it’s a sign of my own insecurity, but I think it reaches a deeper truth about life on this campus. That going against the grain of peers who seek the same set of options year after year requires a great deal of will power and a bit of risk taking. More importantly, that deciding what to do after graduation is perhaps the most difficult decision one can make because there is no set path before you.

Over the past three years, I have witnessed the power of groupthink at Duke where everyone always feels as if they are competing against their peers and even themselves to do more, be more and somehow just be better. Since returning to campus this fall, the same has been true in this case with management consulting.

Suddenly, pre-meds, human rights advocates and everyone and their mother are attending an info session for Bain or a lunch with Deloitte. The suits populate campus, portfolios in tow, with freshly printed resumes and students eager to impress their desired firm with their acumen and impressive accomplishments.

This column is not to disparage the opportunity to join the ranks of consultancies because they truly are great opportunities to pay off student loans, have some financial security and make an impact immediately out of graduation. In other words, I hypocritically joined the hordes in attending information sessions and applying to these firms just because I thought, “Why not?”

However, as an individual who desires to chart my own path to a meaningful life, the pressure to follow the masses into investment banking or consulting incentivizes me to look and exist elsewhere. The pressure still exists, and frankly it is altogether stressful and unnerving.

Before I came to Duke, I had never heard about management consulting or investment banking save for knowing that both led to lucrative careers. Honestly, I never gave them a second thought. Then, graduating seniors and close friends began to pursue these opportunities and my respect for this broad set of options grew, as did my interest in them.

Yet, even as I began to become more comfortable with these potential options, I too sat in the information sessions and worked through case prep for interviews with friends with a little bit of my heart elsewhere. I have felt increasingly pushed in a direction not out of my own volition but simply because it was expected of high caliber students and that it was what everyone else was doing.

My message today is a simple one, and perhaps I’m writing to remind myself more than opining for the benefit of others. There is so much more to life than consulting or finance.

Because we live in an elite setting where the expectations of leadership, prestige and wealth are more overt than implicit in daily life, the pressure to follow these paths is high. That pressure exists here at Duke because we’re surrounded by the products of wealth and privilege whether in the form of our classmates, the buildings aptly named for donors and philanthropists or the general atmosphere of wealth that permeates the buildings and student community. To be poor at Duke or after Duke is nothing less than a disgrace in this system of thinking. And a high-paying, prestigious job following graduation is what matters most to prove your significance, worth or value.

Frankly, I have and will always believe this corrosive mentality damages us far more than it motivates our success as students and leaders. It turns empathy into a commodity, justice into an afterthought and service into that thing you do once a year as part of a company outing. We should view our educations as tools with which to serve society and make a positive difference, not as investments that yield increasing financial returns over time.

Consulting and finance may be what you really care about and want to do with your life. But for most of the people I know on this campus that is simply not true. Our reasons for applying to a top firm is simply to get ahead in life and build a successful career so that some day we can make a serious impact on the issues we truly care about. It makes sense, but it continues to bother me that this framework is what we have begun to subscribe to.

The only way to make a difference is to gather privilege, wealth and tangible skills. The only way I have value as a human being is if I am winning and appear more successful than others around me. Perhaps this maxim is true, but I hope that we can form our own paths to meaningful lives.

As I sit in the library pondering what the future may hold, this is what I think about. When I come to the end of the road, will it matter to me more that I took a lucrative job out of college because it was the expected path, or did I pursue that dream to help start a secondary school where I taught with DukeEngage or live on a couch working for a political campaign I care about?

Every time the answer is predictably the same. There is so much more to my life than consulting or finance.

Jay Sullivan is a Trinity senior. His column runs on alternate Mondays.

Discussion

Share and discuss “A senior's dilemma ” on social media.