Well, that 60 hour a week job turned into a 30 hour Target job and the one new big project turned into about 5 potentially new projects that I need to narrow down, and fast.

Why the employment change? Well, I got shit on hardcore.  I was the absolute bitch who sucked cock and then got raped regardless of the outcome.  The work and money really was enjoyable, but the treatment was terrible. What happened was, I got hired as a laborer for a crew. Alright. However, when I started my first day I got stuck with the jackass owner who turned me into his “right hand man.” Not cool. So this 58ish year old took it upon himself to mold me and treat me like shit, just like he treats everyone else, and I was going crazy after six 12 hour days with him, so I quit

I found myself in a precarious situation with no job, which is bad since I need to earn at least $4,000 this summer. I got a job at Target then, but turns out it’s not 40 hours/week - Management screwed me again. Five job applications later for part time jobs in the morning have yielded no results, so I’m frantically searching for 2 online streams of income to harness me another $1,500 or so this summer - a very tall order.

Currently, I have about six things on my list, and that’s bad.

While all the money issues are going not well, socially my summer has sucked too. My hometown is pretty boring and I haven’t been able to hang out with my really good high school friends as much as I’d like. I missed a big road trip already this summer, but I’m hoping to make another happen at the end of July.

So this leads me to some new, simple summer goals:

• Make $4,000 from employment and new projects. Just do it.
  • acquire a web site with consistent passive income (willing to drop earnings to $3500 then)
• Go on a trip. Prty.

Ideally my new project will be a passive income stream to help pay me enormous rent this fall, which is why acquiring a web site gets bonus points in my book.

But yeah, I’ll update you how my summer goals go. I will succeed. I’m trying out the law of attraction here….

• I pulled a 4.0 the spring semester fairly easily with all my liberal education classes.
  • I was #1/375ish kids on my geology final
  • I was #3/100ish kids in Psychology with a final grade slightly over 100%
  • I was in the top 10 students in my 500 person Anthropology class

And, I only had class monday, tuesday, and thursday in Spring of 2008, while in the meantime I studied some, but tried to figure out life and my future the rest of it. While it was kind of wasted away, it was also very beneficial inside me, I hope.

So what does that mean of me… well, I have a 3.78 GPA now, which is pretty shitty since I’ve only gotten one grade that isnt an A.  I find myself hating Calculus more now.

So as I leave my freshman year in the dust, I learned a lot. Here are a few things:

•  I was under confident regarding my academic abilities in college regarding balancing everything and not freaking out while doing it. This anxiety/lack of confidence inhibited my ability to get involved outside of class right away.
• I over estimated my social skills ability. While I have friends, I dropped the ball on developing better relationships with more people, and the right people that I actually like. I find myself with several “close” friends that I really don’t like because we’re not compatible, and I just plain don’t like them anymore.
• College is really expensive, and keeping track of your finances closely is key (if you’re paying for your own college anyways…)
• Analyze everything, know your strengths and play to them. Everything is a game, so practice playing your cards and see what works.
• College academics really aren’t that hard, but everything else in college is what you need to be concerned about. The grades will happen if you’re a good student, but nothing else will happen as objectively, so work on those subjective aspects of college more.

I learned what it takes to be successful so now I have a much better grasp for exactly what I need to do to get what I want socially, academically, and career wise.  I have goals, I have a plan, and I’m ready. While my confidence is at an all time high, my summer performance so far really isn’t up to par. Check out my features in the future:

Summer 2008 Part 1 - Midway

Summer 2008 Part 2  - The End

I’ve decided to start investing in the markets a bit because I realized that I’ll have more cash than expected in the next couple years. I recently sat down and figured out my finances with trusty Excel, and I figured I have a couple thousand to lose invest in the markets, so here I am.

Right now I’m eager to jump in and get started, but with such a volatile/bear market, I’m going to hold off a bit more and study. But since I have the money in position, I’ll be ready when I see an opportunity. More to come on my stock market experiences later on.

A bunch of questions that I still don’t have all the answers to, even though the idea of being an investment banker is very appealing.  So over the past couple days I’ve compiled a list of online investment banking resources that may be of interest. Starting with college admissions and attending a good business school, and ending with some investment banking blogs. I may have missed some along the way. If that is the case, please contact me or comment. Enjoy.

College Admissions, Chances

College Confidential

CollegeConfidential.com boasts the internet’s best forums for prospective college students. Sub forums cover college search, scholarship search, college admissions, med/law school admissions, summer programs, and the ever beloved Chances forum amongst many other sub forums. What really makes College Confidential standout is their individual forums for schools. They have their own designated Ivy League forums, and forums for every major university that you may be interested in.

Princeton Review Discussion

PrincetonReview.com has long been a leader in college admissions and search information. I used to be a loyal member of this site before I found CollegeConfidential. Their forums are less active and more focused on the Ivies and the top Liberal Arts colleges. With that said, these forums are still potentially helpful to prospective college students. It’s a nice little community where everybody will know your name. It was a bit like Cheers when I posted their frequently.

Business careers and majors

Wall Street Oasis

WallstreetOasis.com and their forums has really transformed into the premiere destination for those looking to enter Investment banking (I-banking), consulting, or other finance / Wall Street related careers. The forums are very busy (over 10,000 members) and have loads of information about the banking industry. Actual I-Bankers and analysts interact here all the time, so the relevancy and credibility of their insights is astounding. After you get past the shabby/cheesy design, it’s easy to waste days wandering around the forums.

Vault

Vault.com has some legit career information on investment banking. The most helpful part of the Vault career information is the career articles section which includes “a day in the life” and “a week in the life” type articles to give people a general feel of the i-banking career.

I-Banking FAQ

iBankingFAQ.com is a simple little site with a plethora of information answering questions about the investment banking career. If you’re new to the I-banking world, this is probably the best place to start before asking any questions on forums. Its three pages of questions should be able to answer a few of your questions as a noob.

College Confidential Business Major forums

The CC business major forums earned their own separate listing because it is an exceptional forum with quite a bit of helpful information. It’s a great place to start to get a good feeling of your career options from different business majors. It’s noob friendly for the most part, so start looking here if you’re a noob.

Goldman Sachs Careers

Goldman Sachs, like other I-banks, has a career page with high quality videos that helps give prospective employees an idea of what it’s like to work at the bank, and the possible careers business people can have. I personally love the vids. Here are some more career pages for investment banks: Deutsch Bank, Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan,

I-Banking Blogs

Intern Memo

Even though it’s not a traditional blog or soely focused on investment banking / finance, InternMemo.com is an interesting archive of intern stories and tips. What started as just a collection of New York City Intern memos will soon expand to LA and DC. The memos include a variety of interns - finance and PR/marketing, and are meant to be newsletters for all interns in the selected cities. Very interesting concept.

Prince of Wall Street

PrinceofWallStreet.com is a financial commentary blog of a college senior who has been an i-banking intern for the past three years. He accepted a full time offer upon graduation, and I think his blog could really pick up at that time. The Prince is where I want to be in a few years myself, so any insight into how he accomplished this is of value to moi and any aspiring I-Banker.

Mergers and Inquisitions

MergersandInquisitions.com is a very solid blog by an anonymous author, who I assume is a pretty well-off investment banker or finance professional.  Don’t be fooled by its bland design. M&I has a lot of pillar content that is relevant to aspiring finance majors and it’s a fairly easy afternoon read.  Simply, it’s legit.

Bankers Ball

BankersBall.com is a resourceful site centered around Investment banking and finance jobs. Basically, it’s a less popular and less active version of Wall street oasis. Bankers ball still has some pretty good articles and news though, so don’t disregard it completely.

Most people seem to have a love/hate feeling for Ivy League schools. The lovers awe at their advanced academics, great opportunities, and prestige. Haters claim they are “just a school,” and their education is overpriced. Personally, I’m a lover. I love the prestige of the schools, and regardless of what you learn while you’re there, you have a good chance to graduate with a six figure job.

Back to the first statement made above, what recently impressed me with the Ivies is their success investing their endowments. The truth lies in the numbers: In the last ten years, Harvard’s endowment earned 15% per annum. Yale’s endowment earned 17.2% per annum. That is remarkable for any endowment, let alone the endowment of an academic institution. I first came across these remarkable figures from a personal finance blog covering an article by Smart Money.

How do they do it?

Instead of investing in traditional “safe” securities and assets, Harvard and Yale have invested a bit more creatively. Their secret lies in how they allocate their money: a mixture between domestic stocks, foreign stocks, Real estate/commodities, private equity, and hedge funds.

This somewhat innovative investment technique lead mutual fund managers to copy the Harvard/Yale approach to investing with newly available funds. Just the whole idea of an Ivy league investment strategy being copied by publicly sold mutual funds speaks for the innovation of Ivy Leagues. The Ivy Leagues are ‘with it,’ and this is just another reason why I adore these elite institutions.

Soooo…. after receiving my ACT results in January of my junior year, I began to research universities and programs endlessly. With my overachieving resume, perfect GPA, and fairly good ACT score, I figured I could go somewhere big for college. I examined basically every college in the US, including Dartmouth, Amherst, Emory, DePaul, Bowling Green, UNLV, Macalaster, Minnesota, Boston University and St. Thomas, among many more schools.

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So throughout the lifetime of this blog, you will hear about my life as a pessimistic but determined undergraduate business student and aspiring business professional and/or entrepreneur. Expect rants on my academic program, honest commentary on the business world, and plenty of shit in between…internships, jobs, girls, teaching assistants, my other entrepreneurial activities, Ron Paul (!!!), and my failures with many other things as well.

I’m sure this blog can be of interest to anybody interested in business or currently in an undergraduate business program. So bookmark it or grab its RSS feed. (if you don’t know what an RSS feed is, google it. (hint: use Google Reader))

Peace

Nick. the skeptical frosh b-school student.