Rachel Duncan

Egypt Trip Photos (Finally)

The start of Ramadan seems like an appropriate time to finally post some of my Egypt photos for inquiring minds among my anonymous internet readership.  I spent nine days visiting a good friend from college in Cairo at the beginning of June.  Her family welcomed me into their homes, and we had a great visit, including trips to Sharm El-Sheik and Alexandria.  Here are the highlights:

I went to see the pyramids and the Sphinx with two girlfriends from college who both live in Cairo now.  We went in the morning, so there was a welcome shady side at each monument.  We took a few moments to sit on some rubble and ponder the demise of civilization between aggressive sales pitches from camel-ride vendors.  My guide book noted, "If you do decide to ride a camel, do NOT allow the camel's owner to climb up onto the animal with you."

 

We took a lovely day-trip to Alexandria, home to matriarch extraordinaire Cleopatra  and to one of my favorite poets - Constantine Cavafy.  They've recently opened the new Bibliothecha Alexandrina near the site of the famous Library of Alexandria, which was the largest library of ancient times.  The new library is quite a marvel of modern architecture and is pictured below next to a photo-souvenir from Cavafy's apartment.

Mid-mini update: R.I.P. Ann

Happy Saturday everybody!  I'd like to give an internet shout-out to my favorite Canadian/Brazilian, heavy-metal-head teaching assistant who has probably singlehandedly kept me from failing out of the MSCF program thus far.  I've been loyally attending his TA sessions all the way back to "math camp" last summer; and in addition to doing his job of explaining the mysteries of stochastic calculus exceptionally well, he's just a really nice person.  And as my mom says, "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."  Okay, so maybe Mark Twain said it first; but as far as I'm concerned, my mom came up with that one.

In other news, my team's first management game board meeting happened on a dark and stormy night this past Wednesday.  The claps of thunder that began during the feedback part of our meeting certainly lent an ominous tone to the evening; but overall, I think we did really well.  Especially when you adjust for our team's game/non-game life balance.  No all-nighters, hardly any weekend, and we did a pretty decent job, so I'm happy with that.  I no longer care about winning the game simulation - just hope to learn a few things, and I think the board meeting certainly accomplished that for me.

I was saddened by the news of Ann Richards passing this week.  I'm a native Austinite, and her governorship was during the time when I first started to develop a sense of political awareness.  Politics aside, there's no doubt she was a fiesty, fabulous woman and will be missed, even by people like me who never met her.  I think a big part of the whole business school motivation for a lot of us is about how we can make more of an impact on the world around us, and Ann Richards certainly provided some insipiration for that.  Yee haw!

When I Grow Up

My 3-year-old niece has a doll that, when you push a certain button, sings "When I grow up, I know what I want to be.  A firefighter - that's me!"  After much consultation with a variety of mentors, friends, and family, I have finally confirmed that someone forgot to install my career button properly before they sent me out into the world - sigh.  But the good news is that somebody invented business school a long time ago to help people like me figure it all out.  Or at least get started.

Getting started, for me, meant an internship this summer with Deutsche Bank Global Markets in London.  It's a rotational program - ideal for anyone trying to learn more about the sales & trading business.  I spent four weeks on an exotic equity options desk and four weeks on an emerging markets illiquid assets desk.  Add to that six speakers from DB's executive committee, three product area trainings, a couple of lunches with other groups, a sailing trip, go-karting night, and several dinners/cocktail hours later, and I managed to come away from the experience with a pretty good understanding of who does what and why at a global investment bank.  Not too shabby.

Now, I'm just faced with the task of finding the niche that would make the most sense for me.  I think of myself as a quantitative person and rely on math and economics to make sense of the world, but I realized this summer that math isn't exactly going to get me out of bed every day.  On the other hand, I know that what motivates me is the client service aspect of what I'm doing, but I don't want to feel tied to my phone line all day just to manage relationships for the bank.

Got any suggestions?  Please post a comment - I'll take all the advice I can get!

About Me

I'm a second-year dual MBA/MSCF student at Tepper.  I'm originally from Texas, but I moved to California as soon as I found out about it.  After a brief stint in M&A, I spent most of my pre-business-school career working in economic consulting - the business of providing expert economists' opinions and testimony to companies involved in legal disputes.  There was variety, creativity, data, qualitative research, economists, lawyers, boxes and boxes of documents, plus the usual consulting stuff like deadlines resulting in some late nights here and there.

In that field, though, it's quite difficult to move up without an advanced degree so I came back to school to follow my quantitative finance star via the MBA/MSCF gig all the way to an internship at Deutsche Bank in London this summer.  This was a 10-week interview.  Which I passed - yay!  So now, I feel as if at a crossroads in my life.  Do I accept or recruit further?  Do I want to press ahead with quantitative finance or go back to consulting or explore something else?  Not a bad position to be in, of course - options are good, as a general rule.

And then there is the day-to-day back at school - Management Game has arrived in full force.  In seven weeks, ask me if I feel comfortable making good decisions in unstructured environments, and I will look wisely at you and speak with the utmost confidence - of course!  Now, I am more like wait a minute, is this number for my company or my world?  Uh, which company am I again?