I love Wednesdays...

Wednesdays are always awesome! There's Psych 101, there's Investment Analysis, Macro and the icing on the cake - M&A and Distressed Investing. Wednesday classes are different from the Monday sessions in that we get a guest speaker in. First, we had Dave Breazanno who spoke about distressed debt investing. Then, we had Robert Stefanowski share with us his experiences on M&As and corporate cultures.

Today, we had the privilege of having Barry Ridings, MD of Restructing in Lazard, who spoke about corporate restructuring in the face of bankruptcy. This is THE guy selling Lehman's assets off, this is THE guy who's been in the thick of the action over the last couple of weeks. He's still busily involved with the whole deal - it was a surprise he even showed up today! Barry gave me many valuable insights - some of which I won't mention here. (note to self: blog it down once i figure out how to lock the post). More importantly, he gave so much good advice on life and the kind of perspective we should be taking as financial advisors. If this is what Lazard is all about. I hope I get a chance to work there. Anyone got lobang for summer internship 2009?

Anyways, I get the feeling that it's quite different here. When you get all these successful alumnus down for a heart-to-heart session, you sense their sincerity. Somehow, it doesn't quite seem like an ego trip for these guys. One senses that they are genuinely trying to help you avoid the hard knocks that they took - because they didn't know better. I'd rather hear about all their failures (Barry was one of the Drexel 200, Robert was jobless out of grad school, Dave had an Italian surname and worked with junk companies - go figure. lol.) than hear someone brag over all they've accomplished. I learn better that way. In addition, they all give the low-down on deals they've been involved in and some pretty interesting insights to the psychology of the different players in the industry (many of whom most of us only read about in the papers). I hope SMU will build up an alumni base as sincere as the one over at Johnson.

You know, this really helps the aspiring undergraduate because one realises that there are successful people who were just like us. They all look for that ice-cold beer after a hard day at work, they were once figuring out how to make mortgages, they were once partying thursdays,fridays,saturdays at Cornell and figuring out how to get that elusive "B+" or "A-". It somehow inspires me to work harder knowing that I CAN get to where they are.

A shoutout to SMU alumni: Come back and give us all these valuable insights! Let that be the SMU graduates' competitive advantage!! It will be extremely helpful for us to get some candid advice and tips on how to survive in the "jungle" out there.

For now, need to mug. No knowledge = No Job.