In A New York State of Mind

The long awaited final days of my JP Morgan Chase internship are officially here. End-of-summer presentation is over and performance reviews are due. My next three calendar days in Lotus Notes are completely blank and that’s a first! Three more days and I’ll be packed up and ready to hit the road (well, sky)!

So many things have come into mind lately. Have I made the most of my time here? What will I take with me? What will I miss most? I can surely say that New York has been an unforgettable experience, both positive and negative. I can’t say that I’m leaving here the way I thought I would, and that was gripping the last of every slice of New York I could have. It’s true: New York is exhausting and works only for some people. Sometimes, doing nothing in my apartment and letting the tourists on those famous double-decker buses seep in all the fun can still give me satisfaction here in the Big Apple. Oh, tourists. I’m proud to say that yesterday, I could actually give subway directions to someone who probably assumed I was a native!

Sure, I can give you a never-ending list of all the fun things I’ve done here. Though I’ll spare you (until I get back to Rochester and reminisce) and share my top 5 surprising things I’ve found about New York:

5.) In such an expensive city to live and go out in, there are surprisingly LOADS worth of free things to do from seeing concerts/plays in the park to getting into top clubs.

4.) The odds of running into someone in New York that you know are really high! I’ve run into 5 people: an RIT friend in the subway station, a middle/high school classmate who now works at SoHo H&M, a childhood friend that I’ve lost touch with at a John Mayer concert line, a JP Morgan Chase co-worker on the subway on a Saturday night, and the most random reunion — getting on the same subway train in Chelsea that our friends from Long Island were on, who were on their way to meet us in Brooklyn!

3.) Thinking out loud can come in handy with directions. People are almost more than willing to point you quickly in the right direction. (TIP: Apparently, the acronym OWEE for Odd = West, Even = East helps when navigating between streets. ) But you ask a financial district cop for directions and they probably won’t know.

2.) You can buy the new Harry Potter book at a Duane Reade (the Starbucks of drug stores here). Yeah, “WTF?!” is what I said too!

1.) New Yorkers really aren’t fazed by anything. Even a half naked bum jerking off on Park Ave won’t stop people in their tracks!

Color Me Blue

What a way to start a blog, eh?! Go ahead, call me a Debbie Downer – I’m allowed to be this week after surviving a heart-wrenching break-up, especially one that had nothing to do with feelings, but everything to do with circumstance. =/ But that’s life…and life’s good at jabbing you in the ribs from time to time to remind us all that we’re human. Thanks, life.

In other news, it’s been a noteworthy week after experiencing the mild panic of a steam pipe explosion just blocks away from work, seeing the best free concert ever (John Mayer & Eric Clapton), and being randomly reunited with a childhood friend (third reunion yet in NYC this summer!).

So with all these events, I finally mustered up the motivation to start this blog, not necessarily to vent about why my week was so shitty, but rather to add some insight hopefully to my own life and ponder the bigger picture.

This past Thursday, the JP Morgan Chase interns got the opportunity to have an engaging Q&A session with the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon. In regards to a woman stepping down from an executive level position to a less aggressive job for work/life/balance reasons (yes, we all love that buzz word, don’t we interns?) and receiving a pay cut, he quoted the following: “You can have it all, but you can’t have it all at once.” Later this week, the same idea pops back up after watching an episode of Sex and the City where Carrie states, “In New York, they say you’re always looking for a job, boyfriend, or an apartment. So let’s say you have 2 out of 3…why do we let the one thing we don’t have affect how we feel about all the things we do have?“

In applying this to my own situation, I wonder why it is that my relationship couldn’t withstand the external pressures of timing, distance, and family (not to say that I’m loving my job either, but more on that later). Is it true that you can’t ever have your cake and eat it too? Perhaps this great love I had was brief in order to open up doors that I would’ve nonetheless closed or ignored (I sense you nodding right now). But do you just simply let go of something you once believed in because it’s just too risky, even before getting a valid sense of what it’d be like?

With two quarters left at RIT, I’ve begun to think about post-graduation life. How do people decide where to go? Do you build your life around someone who you think you could potentially be with or do you pursue that career you’ve always wanted? And why can’t you do both?