Belated Investment Banking Dream which may end prematurely

Leaving college with 4 A's in A-Level and graduating from UCL with a 1st (90% average)... All sounds very rosy apart from the fact that it all happened between 1999 and 2002.

A master degree deemed to be not challenging enough for me and as a consequence, I embarked upon a pursuit of a piano career, which was far more challenging for me - a career which ended in an uneventfully opprobrious fashion.

Two years ago, I started self-studying for an ACCA qualification as an act of "atonement" and a year later, started my first job - a humdrum accountancy job in a small accountancy firm, as an act of "survival" - with no career prospect at all due to the lack of a palpable career ladder.

Leaving UCL with a 1st and working in Merrill Lynch as an analyst (£60,000 per annum)... All sounds very rosy apart from the fact that it all happened in my dream.





As far as I am concerned, no investment banking firms are willing to take on a "nonagenarian" (or more actually, 30% of a nonagenarian = 27 years old)like me, who "transpires" to have developed a wistful yearning for a investment banking job (as a trainee?).

The only way to fructify my hopelessly romantic dream is to get a master degree (or MBA), upon completion of which I will be almost in my 30s. Human beings are born to discriminate people on the grounds of their age and it is essentially why the futile age discrimination law is in place.

As I have entered into the final phase of my ACCA qualification (not in terms of work experience), is burgeoning a naive thought of self-studying a CFA, which is more relevant to the object of my affection, or, should I say, the object of my unrequited love for a loveless object - Investment Banking.





My heart is fuelled with my jealousy of you all, who are talking sanguinely about your chance of seducing the object of my affection - Investment Banking; and regret - for the reason that had I developed the quaint passion for an Investment Banking job six years ago, from which I am currently suffering, my chance of seducing the object of your affection - Investment Banking - would have been greater than zero, which was good enough for me.

Your suggestion and demolition of my dream are welcome.

(Please accept my apology if you are annoyed by the use of emotional language in this thread. I was not writing in a prudent style as an accountant should. )

tl;dr it all

You totally confused me. What bits happened in your dream? What are you doing? Do you play the piano? That didnt make sense to me.

Sorry.

so are you actually a ucl graduate with a 1st?
what?
I'm so confused..!

You didn't get into IB and consider yourself a failure? man....

My advice would be for you to finish ACCA and apply to big4. If you still think that 55k (average salary of a newly qualified accountant) is not enough. You may use a big4 job as a steping stone into a finance dept of an ibank.

this almost made me cry. then i realised it was probably a joke.

Are you a Philosophy grad, or English Lit?

Are you a Philosophy grad, or English Lit?

I don't know about you but I prefer the idea of being an oligarch to being the bitch boy of a managing director at lehman brothers (oops - get with the times ryan...)...at x investment bank. Heard a few vacancies opened up in Russia lately...

But seriously, why would you even want to work in IB - just for the money? more money to be made elsewhere...

Grats on getting the 90%. Have you considered getting a job at a more boutique IB then applying for an experienced position in a big bank later on, then your age relative to other applicants wouldn't be such a glaring issue.

Money brings power; Power brings jealousy; Jealousy brings hatred. I would rather be a mistress whom her servants hate than a servant who hates her mistress. The object of hatred is always superior to the subject of hatred.

My plan would be applying "speculatively" to the smallest Investment Banks for an unpaid voluntary job. I can always afford to leave my accountancy job for a month or two and be taken advantage by bankers as I am working on a self-employment basis at the moment and have somewhat unique value to my accountancy firm. It would not do me any harm (at the expense of my dignity) to send 1,000 speculative letters to 1,000 small Investment Banks in the hope that at least one or two of them may reply to my letter.

I am going to send not-too-honest application forms to some of the big banks (while sending too-honest application forms to others) to see how they would reponse to my application and what they want from their applicants. The thing I would lie about is, of course, years of graduation from my college and university, besides which, all the information I give should be factually correct. If I finally got a job offer from one of them, the chance of which is remote, I would not (cannot) accept it. Although I'm already 27 years old, I still look like a 22 year old student, which is the only achievement I am proud of and which, along with my ability as a superb actress, should be sufficient for me to stultify those avaricious, supercilious and existentially vacuous bankers in the interviews. It is the only way for me to acquire real job interview experience.

It will be a desideratum to do a master degree as soon as possible if I don't want my existence in the world to be forgotten, which looks increasing likely at the moment.