Cornellian Future Anonymous

The rain pelted the windows outside and steam gently rose from my coffee cup on a cold November night. It was ten o’clock and I was the last person left in the Museum of American Finance. I was almost finished with my culminating research project — a sixty-tab spreadsheet of the best-performing stocks in the market. My meeting with the museum board was scheduled for the following day, and I was determined to deliver the best research presentation they had ever seen. As I edited growth rate graphs, color-coded cash flow charts, and input formulas, I reminisced about the start of my interest in finance.

Throughout middle school and high school, I loved the depth and uncertainty in mathematics. Adding two plus two may give you four, but adding two directional vectors may give you any number equal to or less than four. It was this interest in math coupled with a passion for social studies and history that pushed me to explore finance.

To this day, I still remember walking into the Museum of American Finance for the first time in my sophomore year and being in awe of the historic stock certificates, videos of brokers yelling at each other, and ideas of credit and debt. I was compelled to apply for an internship and was ecstatic when...