David Chen
I flew from Vermont to JFK this past Saturday. What a change of view when I arrived in NYC! I come from a small city called Burlington which is located right next to Lake Champlain. It is nothing like the City. Vermont is predominantly white (97% to be exact) and the population is very spread out. New York City on the other hand is very diverse. The population of NYC alone is close to 20 times that of the entire state of Vermont. Even though this is not my first time in the City, I am still overwhelmed by my surroundings.
I live in a "luxury" apartment in Manhattan on the 27th floor. We have a beautiful view of Battery Park and the Statue of Liberty. We also have AC in the apartment which is awesome. Even though I moved into the City four days ago, I already have a very busy schedule. We have gone on a tour of the Financial District in Manhattan. We walked down Wall St. and saw the headquarters of many financial giants while learning about the history behind each building. In the same day, Professor Balkan took us down to Chinatown to have dinner.
I started working at my internship this past Monday. I am interning at a Hedge Fund investment company in Greenwich, Conn. Simply put, our company uses high-risk techniques to make extraordinary capital gains for our investors. It has been a busy two days at work so far. I get up every day at 5:30 a.m. because it takes a little more than an hour to commute to work. I start work at 7:30 a.m. and do not get back to the apartment until 7:30 p.m. The sad thing is that I'm never the first one at work and never the last one to leave either. Some of our research analysts will stay in the office 18 hours a day! I work with an elite group of investors, all incredibly knowledgeable in their area of expertise. I have learned so much from them in only two days of work so far. I truly look forward to the rest of my semester here in NYC.
