Lehman Brothers

It started with the alluring color green. Green has always been my favorite color and so it was not surprising that I was drawn to Lehman Brothers who uses green as their main color. Seriously though, for some odd reason I always felt like I was going to end up at Lehman Brothers so I have to take you through my journey of how I got there or rather how I was taken there. I posted a week ago after my interview about the lessons I learned in order to show that I wasn’t bluffing. It has been a wild ride and test of my faith in Jesus and it was no coincidence that every verse I’ve read in the past month has been related with faith (see the bottom for all the verses that have had significant impact on me in the past 2 months).

It has really been an amazing journey, to interview with many investment banks, to go where few Christians have gone before, and to get rejected many times. I believe that God really wanted to push my faith to another level by making it my last interview so I had no other option but to rely on him. I remember the night before I was going to my Lehman interview in New York I had not taken a rest for months but I just stopped what I was doing and went outside and laid down outside Dobbs Hall on a picnic table for over an hour. I lay there with my ipod and I just remember telling myself, I will remember this moment for a long time. It was the first time I had really trusted God in this whole process because I knew that everything was leading up to everything else. I flew out to New York the next day and every single person that I had interviewed with was a perfect fit for my personality. I have always known that I have a pretty polarizing personality. It was so obvious that God had just set up the perfect group of guys for me to interview with. One of my interviews consisted of speaking to a guy about poverty in New York and China and what businessmen can do to change the world for one hour (the interview was supposed to be 30-45 minutes). I was supposed to find out within a week, meaning you usually finding out before one week but I knew that God was going to make me wait the full week to make sure that I remembered that he was in control. During that week I went to church and Jocelyn reminded me that it was meant to be because the person that spoke at church was named Rabbi Lehman. It was even more hilarious when I received a rejection letter during the week I waited. I sat there after I got the rejection letter from Lehman in utter confusion… what had I done wrong? I thought God wanted me here? After 10 minutes I e-mailed the recruiter and said, “sorry about the confusion, but is this for the equity research position at Lehman Brothers?” She responded in 2 minutes and said, “please disregard this message as it was sent in error.” Who sends rejection letters in error?! It really showed me that if God wants to get you somewhere even rejection cannot thwart his plan. I found out on Tuesday, a week after my interviews, that I was accepted and I was so happy in the end because I realized if I had been accepted into any other positions I would have taken it right away and missed out. It is hard to remember in our small perspective that faith is at the center of everything just as Jesus is at the center of everything but it often takes crisis to remind us. I am much more excited for the summer now because I know that it is only by God that I go. May we seek God and find his will for us.

He said to his disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?"
Mark 4:40

"Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."
Mark 5:34

Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don't be afraid; just believe."
Mark 5:36

22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement,[i] through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Romans 3:22-26

20Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. 22This is why "it was credited to him as righteousness." 23The words "it was credited to him" were written not for him alone, 24but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
Romans 4:20-25

Faith is being sure of what is hoped for and convicted of what is not seen
Hebrews 11:1

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
Hebrews 11:6

PWARCHIVE

http://www.pwarchive.com is being shut down because of Church Music Publishers Association. I think they should be ashamed to put church in front of their name. This is the letter I wrote them,

By not allowing free movement of chords for the church to use you are hurting the movement of Christ across the world. You are hurting the movement of Christ. Do you get that? I am a business student so I know all about business but this is some bull shit, turning the church into a den of thieves because you all don't make enough money off CDs and concerts. You all need to examine your lives. If a church is large enough it will just have some guitarist figure the chords out and write the lyrics down for free. If a church is small and has to pay for your useless sheet music just because it doesn't have the resources to figure out the music is RIDICULOUS. It is absurd to make a small church have to pay to play music.

American capitalists and their copyright laws at their finest defiling the church of God.

Investment Banking Interviews

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." 36And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" 39And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40He said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?"
_Mark 4:35-40

I thought it would be beneficial to write down my thoughts before the end result of all this madness I’ve been going through recently. That way no matter what happens I could solidify the lessons that I learned. These past 2 months have sadly been 2 of the most trying months of my short life. I guess it was kind of like SAT + college apps on steroids. When I realized that God was calling me towards investment banking I had this vision of what that would look like. I’ve always wanted to work at this place called Lehman Brothers, but I wanted 10 backups just in case to make myself feel safe. I did not have any backups going into my interview with Lehman in New York on Tuesday. Someone told me when you give your plans to God that you have to make sure you give all your plans to God and not to hold on to what you think that plan looks like. I’ll make this a lot shorter than I normally do but this is probably one of the most important lessons that I have ever learned. The first is that when the pressure and stress comes it is really not about the result of what you are striving for. It is not about your test scores, or the college you get into, or where you work, or anything else. The only thing that matters is that God gets you to the place where you can say it does not matter where I end up because I have faith that God knows what is best for me. As my friend in investment banking so eloquently put it, “I would have never realized how selfish I was and how faithless I was unless I went through this process.” Thank God that I can relate with that. Aren’t we so blind when we think that God does not care because of the rain? When the storm comes may we have an attitude that is like Jesus’, who slept through the storm because he had so much trust in what was going to happen.