A New York State of Mind

Twenty-two year old Gwen is learning for the first time what it feels like to fall.

Less than a year ago, she seemed to be towering above the masses, even when those masses were composed of her near-flawless Harvard peers. A member of the Harvard class of 2001, Gwen shared the lofty goals of many good Ivy girlsgoals that pushed her to try her hand at the high-stress world of i-banking. She remembers the peals of laughter when her peers begged her in the spring to stop collecting coveted banking offers so she could give others a chance to find a place in the industry.

But thislike many other realities before this fallseems to fall into the realm of a distant past.

Gwen was there in New York on September 11. She had sat tall with her 400 strong I-banking training class in an accounting lecture held in an auditorium across the street from the World Trade Center. She remembers peeling up the bottom of her Oxford shirt to cover her nose as she ran down the streets of the Financial District, a cloud of debris following her just like Armageddon.

Her memory gets hazy when she thinks of the immediate aftermathbut she admits she doused her confusion with alcohol in the eveningssometimes. This made sense; or at least it seemed to make more sense than the policies of her top banking firm that asked her to take accounting tests in the immediate days after the attack. In a state of desperation, she watched her scores plummet.

But her real fall began last week.

Equipped with her Harvard learning curve, Gwens scores surged in the months of October and November. After rising so much that she became the most improved in her training class, she headed back to her company-subsidized apartment for a day off before her real work would begin. But that morning the phone rang and the thudding words fell into her earshe no longer had a job; her severance package would last a month; her apartment home was no longer her own.

For me, losing this job felt like falling off a cliff, Gwen said. I remember where I was last year, and I know Im still the same person; I still have that same capacity. But because the market changes, because your firm suddenly has all these implicit pressures on it, they just become ready to push you off the edge. They dont seem to care where youve come from, or where you can go in the future.

FMand maybe all of us at Harvardonce believed that in the future we would all be famous for fifteen minutes. But for many Harvard graduates living and working in New York, and many students in the Class of 2002, the question has become just how distant those fifteen minutes might loom. In a year when the economy has plummeted and the whole country has been affected by terrorist attacks, Harvard students in their ivory tower have not remained immune. For students like Gwen are not alone. She says many students in her own firm have been demoted to secretarial positions and she knows of alums at Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney who have lost their positions as well. But stress is nothing new for the typical Harvard student.

In the beginning I just wanted to sleep during odd hours of the day, and I was almost ready to offer myself to the lowest bidding firm that would consider me for a position, Gwen said. However, with time I began to deal with these dramatic events by taking action to a degree that I never had before. I spend my time in the apartment, researching on databases, talking to others in my situation, and really looking into all the other options that could be out there for me in this industry. It really keeps me going knowing that Im not just lying down and giving up.

For many Harvard students facing unexpected difficulties this fall, lying down and giving up became the least attractiveand not takenoption. Take Tahlia T. Tuck 00, a former Crimson editor. This fall, Tuck left her position at an I-banking firm to begin work on the NBC Nightly News. After less than a month on the job Tuck was already facing anthrax in her workplace.

Tuck says: In general, the staff was quite calm and handled the situation with great courage...As time went on, however, I must admit that all the conflicting messages surrounding the treatment and testing procedures have caused me to have more concern. Even today, personally, I am not completely satisfied with the answers given to questions about the diagnosis and treatment of anthrax. However, I have taken all the medical and scientific advice into consideration and have tried to move on and not let my fears paralyze me.

Tucks desire to move on gave her a striking satisfaction in her ability to make a difference in American dialogue through the media. As a researcher for the Nightly News, Tuck has been involved in picking footage and writing some of the sound bites that change our perception of the war abroad.

Working in broadcast journalism has been one of the most educational and fulfilling experiences I have ever had, Tuck said. Seeing the raw footage of the attacks, hearing and talking first hand with victims about their stories and monitoring the responses at home and abroad has affected me profoundly.

Frank Leonard 01 has also succeeded by maintaining a positive attitude during the more anxious moments in New York this fall. Leonard currently lives three blocks east of the World Trade Center Plaza. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, there was no power in Leonards apartment for seven days and his own block was engulfed in the stench that many have noted when visiting the site of the Twin Towers. (Many current students like Emily L. Katz 02 and Adam M. Taub 02, a Crimson editor, have called this smellsimilar to burning rubberthe most shocking and powerful element of their Ground Zero visits.) However, as soon as Leonard had a chance to end his futon-hopping days and return to an apartment with power, he immediately mustered his courage and moved back to his place.

My attitude toward New York has not changed, he said. When the power was back on in my building, I moved back in, period. I was on an airplane the next week for work. Ive told myself, Im not going to worry about things I cannot control. Ive made a conscious effort to move forward without forgetting.

Leonards success in moving on actually ended up causing him additional anxiety, as he worried that other students would be insulted that he was ready to attempt a return to normalcy before everyone else.

However, many former Harvard students in New York have reported that their relationships with other members of their class have been a source of comfort. With so many former Harvard students living and working in New York, many graduates have turned to the Harvard (recent) alum community for support during their most trying moments this fall. Alex Beale 01, a graduate who works in public relations, admits that within 10 minutes of the first plane crash on September 11, she and her friends set up an e-mail list to ensure one anothers safety. And P. Ivonne Thompson 01, an employee of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, said that after the terrorist attacks her friends became her anchor and primary support in the city. Gwens decision to isolate her job search to New York was also based on the encouragement of Harvard friendsas well as her own relativesin the area.

Not having a job is one of the most isolating experiences that I have ever endured, Gwen said. If you dont have a job, you dont even feel like a member of society anymore. I thought for a few days that that would be really hard in a community of employed and successful Harvard kids. But that hasnt been the case at all. This is happening to so many of us, and my peers from Harvard have been instrumental in helping to point me in the direction of valuable contacts My only fear with them has been that underneath all of my productivity and my emergency mode behavior around finding a job, that some of them sense something that I might not even recognize bubbling underneath in the mental realm.

But maybe what the Harvard graduates sense the best is the degree to which students in the Class of 2002 face obstacles finding jobs in this market. According to Bill Wright-Swadell, Director of the Office of Career Services, 20 percent of students with e-recruiting offers in the Class of 2001 were deferred from employment for a year last spring, and things bode even worse for the Class of 2002. Gwen pointed to a phenomenon that is currently developing in the banking and consulting industries: companies without room to hire new students will layoff recent graduates to make room for graduating seniors. This trend stems from the intense need many employers feel to retain a relationship with Harvard and to keep their names on the docket of companies eligible for the OCSs e-recruiting program. However, as many students have already learned, this relationship with OCS doesnt always translate into bona-fide job opportunities.

One of the most disheartening moments for me so far on my job search occurred after a second-round interview I had in New York, said senior Taub, who is deeply involved in the e-recruiting process. I never usually say this, but I thought this interview went incredibly well, and I received wonderful feedback from those interviewing me. In the end, however, the company decided that it just couldnt afford to hire anyone at all.

Many students in the Class of 2001, however, encourage any student who can get a job in New York to not be too dissuaded by potential safety issues or the fear of anxiety in the city. Beale said that overall she feels safe in New York these days. Her only major safety concern is less immediate: the poor air quality and spread of asthma among New Yorkers. She emphasizes that the experience of living in New York right now and the gradually normalizing atmosphere there are things that can only be fully understood by those who live there.

I would encourage anyone thinking of moving to New York to visit the city at least a few times, and to stay with Harvard friends if possible, Beale said. You cannot possibly decide if you want to live here unless you experience it, as it is now, for yourself.

For others like Leonard, though, the endorsement of the city is unconditional.

New York is still the greatest city on earth, Leonard said. For the Class of 2002, Id say that its going to be tough because no one is hiring and things dont seem to be getting better. For the five of them that actually get jobs, Id suggest they take them.

Katz is one student who seemed to take this advice. A native of the New York area (well, New Jersey), she decided to accept her offer from the summer with the New York office of Credit Suisse First Boston. However, she wonders if New York will still lure members of her class who are not fortunate enough to have positions lined up after graduation.Ive begun to wonder if New York will now be a city that only attracts New Yorkers after graduation, she said. Its hard to imagine why someone else would flock there with the marketand even the safetyso up in the air.