Written by Carlotta Bollino
From LinkedIn posts to Instagram stories, every day we see people flaunting their successes for everyone to see. We hear about our classmates getting top-tier internships at big-name firms, and praise them as they flex their vast network of lawyers, financial advisors, and more. We compare ourselves to them and feel the need to catch up and be better. At Bocconi, this fast-paced, competitive environment often feels suffocating. We study these complex topics with the main end goal being that of working as investment bankers, asset managers, or corporate lawyers. We aim to make phenomenal salaries and take our future families to luxurious vacations at boho chic resorts in the Balearic Islands. But is that what we were made to do with our lives? Do our financial and career ambitions destroy the beauty of living in the present?
To be honest, I wouldn’t be able to answer that question myself: at around 18 years old, we are put in situations where we have to make choices that might affect the rest of our working lives; where to study, what to study, and who to study with. At a time when our own identities aren’t even fully developed, we face these issues with a lot of stress and pressure. Pressure that comes from making our families proud, making ourselves proud, and most importantly, seemingly making others proud. We feel this need to appear intelligent and composed to others, and I mean, telling people we study at Bocconi sounds great, and flexing with that internship makes us seem smart and put together at such a young age, but is that really what we are meant to be doing right now? Years ago, teenagers and young adults were represented as carefree and almost childish, but now we have the expectations to act like adults when biologically, we’re nowhere near being as mature as a 30 year old working at a big tech company. Rather than living in the present, we focus on 50 internship applications and networking aperitifs, and to me, that’s not healthy.
We need to chill out. Ask anyone’s parents, most of the time, whatever plans they had for themselves at 18 never ended up being their true career paths. Doctors who initially wanted to be managers, and managers who initially wanted to be doctors, no one had it figured out so young. Rather than being grateful for the memories we have the opportunity to make in university, the people we meet, and the places we can visit, we choose to spend three months of our summers at 19 working in an office, printing papers for our “boss” (who doesn’t even pay us). I’m not saying ambition isn’t good, because it’s great, but sometimes we need to come out of our “hustler” bubble and focus on what really matters to us, not what looks good on a resume. Life experience is something no underpaid Deloitte internship can give you, and that’s what makes you stand out. The stories you can tell will stick with you when you’re older and working every day of your life, not the finance spring week you missed out on. If you want a job, get one that actually pays you, not an internship that you’ll learn NOTHING from that your dad got you. Eventually, you’ll have to be an intern, at least if you wanna work in a high-pressure corporate environment, but don’t make that your whole personality, please. Enjoy these years because one day we’ll graduate from Bocconi, look back, and think, ” Wow, I really should’ve stressed out less and enjoyed those years more.”
Some good advice all the successful adults in my life always give me is to pick a career not based on how much money I’ll make, but on how much I’ll enjoy it, because joy is such an important part of living a healthy, fulfilling life. A job may sound appealing because of its compensation, but in reality, that high-stress environment does more harm than good. I think pursuing true passion is something most people forget about nowadays. Artists forget about their love for art because it’s not a “true career”, but then go into investment banking, hating their lives. At what point is that tradeoff completely not worth it? To put this into Bocconi terms, the opportunity cost of giving up our true passion is that we literally miss out on the life we were meant to live. Sure, we may make a lot of money and be able to afford nice things, but those material goods wouldn’t make us happier than a job we actually love would. Of course, I’m not telling you to be completely unrealistic, and to pick a career path you KNOW is unachievable (whatever that means), but rather than putting yourself in a workplace you know you don’t belong in, try finding a path that resonates with you. Rather than telling everyone your goal in life is to be an investment banker just because it sounds good and makes you money (while having to work devious hours), think about other career paths that have to do with something you really care about — like sports or theater, for example.
We sometimes take our opportunities for granted. Studying at a world-renowned university like Bocconi means we are spending days with some of the smartest, most ambitious people ever. One of my friends once said that her dad told her: “at uni people might meet their best friends, future spouses, or even business partners”, and that really stuck with me, because it’s true: you might meet the person who takes you out of the Bocconi bubble of conformity and wants to start something BIG with you, without fearing whether it works or not. If you have a passion, go for it, don’t put it aside out of fear of being judged by others. Conformity isn’t what will make you happy. Just because people tell you that as of now the “right” path is to get internships and take summer courses in management, doesn’t mean that’s what YOU were meant to do. Sometimes the “YOLO” mindset sounds a bit childish, but honestly, most people need to adapt it. We get one shot at life, and each day we have the choice to change the path we wanna take, and whenever we wake up, it means we get a brand new day to reinvent ourselves. So really think about what you want from your life, it’s totally fine if deep down you really wanna work in a corporate environment, but if you don’t and (like most people) you feel the need to do something different, DO IT, don’t let the fear of falling behind stop you from enjoying your life to the fullest.