Fifteen Minutes: Endpaper: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

I think there may be something seriously wrong with me.

I got the call on Monday night: "Rich, could you come to The Crimson for a few minutes: we have a special project for you." My mission, which I chose to accept, was to create a sidebar for last week's consulting/investment banking scrutiny. The piece was meant to be a small quiz to help recruits discover the profession they were most suited for. Comfortable in my abilities to lampoon what some consider the most morally defunct of career professionals--intellectual whores, if you will--I set out for home.

I discovered later, to my extreme surprise, that I couldn't do it. You have to realize that over the course of my FM career, I've poked fun at florists, motorcycle enthusiasts, carnival workers and pre-frosh, just to name a few. Disparaging consultants should be easy by comparison. Consider: Investment bankers spend 18 hours a day entering numbers into spreadsheets. They "analyze data" and "run regressions." Consultants "work in teams" and "brainstorm." They figure out how to "streamline" and "trim the fat." "Let's get back to basics," they might say, pointing to a 3-D pie chart on their PowerPoint presentation. It was as though the Starr report had just come out and everyone was smoking cigars. And I couldn't think of a single sarcastic thing to say.

At first I blamed the nasty cold that I had caught earlier that week. I went to UHS the next day claiming a persistent hacking cough, mucus-filled throat and inability to mock others. They told me I was on my period (Haha! See? Now why can't I do that with I-bankers?). Later I realized the truth: I was afraid. I was afraid of the enraged horde of budding consultants that would inevitably knock down my door, shouting invectives and threatening to stab me with their PalmPilot Styluses. I was afraid that a mob of investment bankers would conspire to give me brain cancer by surrounding me and calling each other with their cell phones. The truth of the matter was that I didn't want to deal with anyone who might be seriously offended by jokes at their expense. The truth of the matter was I didn't really care.

I don't care if somebody supposedly "sells out" and joins a consulting firm. I might end up doing it myself someday. Sometimes I wonder if, 10 years from now, I'll look back at my college days and laugh at how idealistic I was. I think if that does happen, I'd rather be sipping martinis in my townhouse than gulping malt liquor on the corner. Here's what's really wrong with me though: I'm an idealist without any ideals. I don't have a burning desire to be a writer, or a doctor, or any number of honorable pursuits. I can't sell out my dreams and passions because I don't have any inventory.

I get the feeling that I'm not alone on this one. I have a friend who is "maybe" going to go pre-med "eventually," "just because." Someone else once told me that they would like nothing better than to sit in bed all day and watch television. Another person admitted that they "wanted to go after a Ph.D.," but would rather that "'they' just give it to him without him having to actually do anything" (All three go to Harvard). Almost nobody I've asked knows what he or she is going to do with their lives after graduation.

Maybe it's the pressure of a Harvard degree. Sometimes it seems as if graduating from Harvard doesn't just give you the opportunity to make it big, it gives you the responsibility to as well. You can't just be any old doctor; you have to be a surgeon. You can't just teach; you have to be a professor. You can't just work for a hot new Internet company; you have to go out and start your own. You can't even be just an investment banker; you have to quit when you're 30 and write the great American novel.

I met a girl this summer who goes to the University of Vermont. She loves animals and is studying to be a veterinarian or a zookeeper. She is also learning sign language to supplement what she knows will be a meager salary. I don't suppose too many Harvard freshmen come in hoping to land a great zookeeping job after four years. That dream is far too small to bear the Harvard insignia. We have to think bigger and better, to reach for the stars. But how can I reach for something that I can't even identify? How will I know that I've reached it?

I've decided that I could really use an "-ism." An "-ism" is something that was defined for me a long time ago by my high school European history teacher. Nationalism, Socialism, Communism--"-isms" were things that could make a bunch of disgruntled peasants forget their gripes about the government and focus their energies on their hate for other countries, he explained. "-Isms" were things that people didn't mind going to war for. Meanwhile, in the back of the classroom, my neighbor claimed that he could really get this country going by dispersing the seeds of "j-ism" to the population. That pretty much ended any intellectual discourse about "-isms" for the next three years. Maybe when I'm mature enough to not laugh at that, I'll find an "-ism" really worth pursuing. Only my "-ism" wouldn't be a hoax. It wouldn't involve hate. I wouldn't even need for anyone else to believe in it. It would just be something that I could finally be passionate about.

Unfortunately, it would seem that the "-ism" closest to my current state of mind would be existentialism. I think about how I didn't exist before I was born. I try not to think about how I won't exist after I die. And how that won't change no matter what I do while I'm alive. Oftentimes, a lot of the passions and endeavors of others seem useless to me. Maybe that's why I'm so sympathetic to consultants and investments bankers--they're no more useless than anybody else. I guess if I wanted to go all out with this particular "-ism," I'd spend all my time trying to comprehend "the void" and despairing at the futility of modern existence. I have a feeling that it wouldn't be long before I said, "Screw this, I want a Porsche. Where's the number for J.P. Morgan?"

So I need an "-ism". An "-ity" would do just as well. Any sufficiently righteous movement will suffice, as long as it doesn't land me in jail. Actually, check that. The right "-ism" will be worth going to jail for. The right "-ism" will be all I need to be happy. I want to want to pour my heart into something, to lay everything I care about on the line. I want to run out into the pouring rain half-naked and scream at the sky. I want to stop asking my boss if I can use the bathroom, and take a bus to the Pacific Coast in Mexico. I want to chip away at a wall for 19 years and watch as the final layer cracks and crumbles before my eyes. I want to reference a cinematic epiphany not from the "Shawshank Redemption."

I want to be able to make fun of i-bankers. And then I want to feel sorry for them.

Rich D. Ma '01 is a computer science concentrator in Lowell House. Next semester he will be an Associate Editor of FM.