Category Archives: wasted keystrokes

a sorry attempt at writing something that sort of resembles stream of consciousness, but devoid of insight.

the spaces we choose

when i was in middle school, my parents bought a new dining table, replacing our round dark brown wood table that our family had been using for the past few years. they told me i could take the table and put it in my room. for the next four years, the table was a centerpiece of my room, occupying a big chunk of the space and effectively turning my room into a home office. whether i was doing my math homework, studying for SATs, holding a meeting with my teen magazine staff (most often just wally), or hosting friends for cheating preparations on the next calculus test, the table was always in the middle of the action. it was usually cleared on top except for a mug of pens and pencils and a desk lamp. since then, i have always sought out spaces with large desks or table tops. for me, this is THE essential element to my concept of a desirable space.

i mention this because i came across a new business venture near union square that touts itself as a space for writers. it is called Paragraph: Workspace for Writers (via kottke) and it has a really nice website. the place offers membership access (over a hundred bucks a month) to a very well-planned space (at least from the pictures they have up) that caters to those who want to sit down and seriously write. i was almost tempted to join but realized i am barely home enough to take advantage of such a membership. furthermore, i have a spacious apartment room with a very large desk. while i was at first skeptical of such an idea (who the hell wants to pay so much dough for some place to sit?), i realized that in New York, space is hard to come by and so many distracting elements (roommates, noise, crappy furniture) can take away from a writer’s concentration. after browsing the site, i began to miss Butler Library and how much i had loved the various spaces there – the Reading Room, where the lighting usually sucked but a comforting feeling of being with others who were studious, the 4th floor, where I often swore I went to school in Korea because of all the international students, the cafe lounge, where you can eat smelly food and talk loudly while studying and be guilt-free, and the stacks, where I sometimes found myself when I really needed to hunker down and crank out a paper. and to think – i never ceased going to Butler even when I had a very spacious room my senior year, the quietest roommate ever (hi Grace!), and of course, a very large desk, from Ikea. sometimes spaces grow on us and you find yourself going an extra seventy blocks uptown just to sit down in a familiar spot to get some studying done (as I did this past summer).

this is a very loosely written entry, i admit. lots of rambling and nostalgic waxing, but i should attempt a tie out (as my CDO group often does with their carry calculations): there are many dimensions to the concept of space (no pun intended) that are interesting to consider. in what ways do we arrange our own spaces, and how does this affect the way we behave? how do different people react to different spaces? why do people like to hang around Starbucks? how does space reflect the construct of power in our society? (haha, that last one was just a weak hark back at Foucault – I just remember the way he talked about the way prisons, hospitals, and schools were arranged and how they all seemed to have that panopticon type of construction where the customer – inmate, patient, student – is monitored and moved about regimentally). or to put things simply, what sort of spaces do you like? what spaces do you dislike?

my likes/dislikes: the privacy of a cubicle or a bathroom stall is nice sometimes, but i also like the bustle of a cafe and the open air of an art studio. outdoors are always nice, but not always convenient. i love places that feel homey but also like sleek places that aren’t too overboard on minimalist design. well, i guess like just about any place that is comfortable and has space for some books, a laptop, and a notepad. as for spaces i dislike? seats on the train (not the MTA subways, but NJTransit), seats on the airplane, lecture halls (they are napping spots for me and desks are too small), and the back seat of cars. i guess i like stationary spaces.

the thing about design

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there is something intensely satisfying about design. and i’m not only talking about graphics. when i think of design, it takes on many meanings, but at its core, i think design is, more or less, the way things are put together. and this entails the amount of care and effort a designer puts into it.

of course, on a daily basis, we mostly associate design with the visual because the first thing we do with things is look at it. but good design – and i’ve found that this always holds true – is not so much the aesthetic value of the end product, but all the work that has gone into making the end product feasible and meaningful.

take interior design, for example. you can load your room with the nicest paints, the most expensive furniture, and the most ambient lights, but if there is no application of design skill, your room becomes a mere warehouse. there is no unifying expression of these elements that is suppose to constitute a well-designed room. the same goes with many other things – websites, magazines, buildings, cities, hair, etc. this is why a lover of design should not limit himself to just one area – a lover of design appreciates all design because the same basic principle of care, effort, planning, and skillful execution are all there. and if you are able, you will find ways, either consciously or subconsciously, to embed intellectual expressions into your work: a drawing may contain irony or satire on various levels; a clay model may represent a post-modern condition ; a color scheme for a room may be an homage to a description in a famous novel.

this is probably one of the reasons i love films. while films are not often associated with design, i always find myself viewing film as one of the ultimate expressions of design; where else can you incorporate style, realism, narrative, the arrangement of sets and bodies, the technology of cinema, and the psychology of the viewer all into one neat piece of art? it is a design medium that requires the totality of a designer’s faculties as an artist and coordinator. no wonder it takes so many people to create films. and a good film is often a rare find.

i sit in my cubicle each day and execute another kind of design. it is one done on Microsoft Excel, the bane of an analyst’s existence, as many would say. it involves capital structures, collateral portfolios, and various mechanisms that measure interest and principal payments along with the hedges and waterfalls. believe it or not, there is an incredible amount of design that goes into the process, not only in the way you execute Excel to carry out the various functions, but in the way things are laid out for others to understand and the methods of combining all the little pieces into some complex, well-oiled structure. sure, the glory of the product being shown on the silverscreen is absent, but underneath, there is an eery similarity to it all. it is just about adjusting to the language and being willing to express yourself in a different way. each day, i find myself making this transition little by little, and while there are moments of frustration when an endless sheet of numbers just doesn’t make any sense, the feeling is often not too far off from the experiences of sitting alone with a pile of tapes wondering how i’ll ever cut up and edit a film that bears any meaning.

in the end, a good design is a good design, no matter where you find it.

call me an RR

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the first time i heard of Series 7 was when i watched Boiler Room a few years ago. i learned that it was some test that people took in order to become licensed brokers. when i accepted my offer to be an analyst at Lehman Brothers last November, i had no idea that i would be required to take the Series 7. my job (according to descriptions i had read about it) would have little to do with speaking directly with customers or making market transactions. but as part of Capital Markets, i was handed two three-inch binders at the beginning of training and told that this Series 7 test lurked in the near future.

the binders sat in my room untouched for about a month. i had not heard any instructions on studying the material beforehand, and i saw on our schedule that we would have a full week of training devoted to the test. “how hard could it be?” i thought. i remembered the guys in Boiler Room were middle class suburban white boys who went to crappy colleges, and if they could manage to pass this test, i knew i’d be in pretty good shape. except i forgot that Boiler Room is a movie.

panic seized me when i took my first practice exam exactly one week ago. i scored somewhere in the fifties and many of my correct answers came from wild guesses. i had read some of the sections while in the bathroom or on the subway, but some of questions were just too damn specific.

Accrued interest on new municipal bonds is calculated from the:
a. purchased date
b. Settlement date
c. dated date
d. last interest payment

each practice exam was 125 questions. the real test would be 250 questions. there were options, muni bonds, NASD rules, FX, underwriting, interest rates, mutual funds, annuities, REITs, and all other sorts of things under the umbrella of this very basic level of finance. and yet, the details seemed mountainous. some of my peers, most of them who had taken courses or had finance internships before, expressed some anxiety as well. at least i’m not alone, i thought.

statistically, 66% of those who take the test pass. the average score is 73% and you need 70% to pass. we were sternly told by HR that failure to pass the Series 7 in two attempts would lead to termination. yikes. perhaps nothing serious compared to the rumors that Citi and JP Morgan cut some of their i-bankers for crappy test scores during training, but the very possibility of losing my job so early was a bit intimidating. i hadn’t even sat in my cubicle yet!

i couldn’t stay awake in class. we sat in a windowless classroom somewhere near Battery Park every day last week from 9am-4pm. i came to love the Korean-owned deli downstairs and looked forward to the sausage, egg & cheese sandwich each morning. and although we had an excellent instructor who gave us very effective notes and tips, i could not keep myself from burying my head into the desk and passing out. it was as if i was getting rest so i could do serious studying later on (which, thankfully, i did) it also didn’t help that i lost feeling in my right hand on some of the mornings. you ever get that? when you can’t grip a pen for a few hours at a time or your hand starts to tremble? okay, maybe i need to get it checked out.

for the next six days, i found myself after work either at my desk in my room or at butler library taking practice exams and reading sections from the binder. there were moments when i thought about contingency plans – what kind of job i could apply for if this finance thing didn’t pan out, how i would go about making payment on rent, how i could show my face around to my friends and family. it was an uncertain time, and it certainly didn’t help that my scores could not break the magic 70. i tried to type up every single answer from the answer keys to help me memorize some things better. my roommate rich gave me a private lesson on options which helped me a great deal, and i tried to see if certain wall street journal articles made more sense after learning about a few things on a given day.

i broke 70 on saturday, two days before my test. i remember holding my answers in my hand and staring at the handwritten score on top. it was a great feeling, even if it was just a practice test. i treated myself to a shrimp salad at Le Monde while i went over the answers i got wrong. progress, hope, and encouragement – good things.
later that day, i took what is called the “Greenlight Exam.” our instructor told us that the results of the Greenlight Exam would, 94% of the time, reflect the score we would get on the real Series 7, “give or take 5%.” i scored 77% and pumped my fist like Tiger Woods when he wins majors.

on sunday i reviewed my notes and took another practice exam. i scored 66%, but convinced myself that the questions were a lot harder than the ones i had seen. no, the Greenlight was my winning ticket. i caught glimpses of In the Mood for Love on our beautiful big screen as Warren and Jackie watched in the living room. i felt relaxed and even a bit confident. i bounced pep talks in my head – yeah, pete, you worked hard, you’ll get it done, man. com’on, you went to an ivy league school, you can’t let yourself down now! every little thing sometimes helps.

this morning at One Penn Plaza, i saw my peers wearily walking into the building, all wearing looks of fatigue or anxiety. “man, i took the Greenlight this morning and got a 70,” said Gibbons, an analyst in Real Estate and frat bros with Warren at MIT. he looked very tired and talked about having crammed everything into a weekend. Brandon, a friend doing Public Finance, told me about taking six exams all of sunday and another one very early in the morning. the tests were given on computers and there were very strict security provisions. no phones, notepads, or anything was allowed inside the testing rooms. i had to throw out my Starbucks coffee, only a few sips old. i wore a button-down flannel because offices are usually air-conditioned and cold. they told me that if i thought about taking the flannel off during the test, i would have to come out of the room to do so. the office was impersonal and bland, like most other offices of the world. i took a deep breath. i took several deep breaths, and went inside.

you are given a mandatory 30-min break in between the two sections, each containing 130 questions – five of them “experimental.” after the first session, which i finished with more than an hour an a half left, i met up with Matt, a fellow Securtization banker, and walked the streets outside the office to collect our thoughts and to get a breather. we agreed that some of the questions were challenging while some were easier than we had ever seen on our practice exams. Matt complained about the many mutual fund questions he had seen. i told him that mine was loaded with options. the Series 7 drew randomly from a bank of questions, so everyone would be given a uniquely-generated test. we grabbed coffee, had a pastry, and went back inside.

i finished with two hours left in my second section. i went back and reviewed every single question again. i ended up changing a few here and there. as the number closed in on 130 the second time, my heart began to pound. one peer sitting a few seats away, Anand, had completed his test a few minutes before and let deep breaths of relief out as he left the room. he had obviously passed. i looked at my computer screen and wondered if i was ready to press the Exit button, which would go ahead and calculate my score. i felt like the time i was in elementary school and reading my essay in front of parents and teachers at some appreciation event. my principal had to come over and tell me to slow down and take a deep breath because i was so nervous and reading so quickly. damn, how impersonal and cold was this test, just needing a few seconds to spit back at me my fate?

84%. whew.

there is a small affair left. it’s called the Series 63, somethng about state legislation, but i won’t get into it now. it’s on Wednesday and i’ll be studying for it today and tomorrow. but yes, just to go along with the happy mood i currently find myself in, call me an RR, or if you prefer the longer version, a Registered Representative. haha.

it was trying and sometimes unbearable, but you can’t deny the uplifting effect of an adversity story with a happy ending. that is my life, where taking a test about making money qualifies as an adversity.