December 6, 2011
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Because I majored in comparative literature, my education, while superb in the "getting me to think" department, left me woefully unprepared for becoming a money manager.
Not that I knew back then what I wanted to be when I grew up – I was only sure of two things I didn't want to be:
- An academic. I didn't want to risk becoming a third-rate scholar of second-rate dead writers no one cared about. Having studied 18th century literature intensely since high school, I couldn't bear to devote even one more minute to the subject.
- A lawyer. Like many clueless humanities majors, I took the LSATs and did quite well. Thankfully, a course in Constitutional Interpretation in the fall of my senior year – one which required the writing of a brief defending the forces of evil – convinced me that a career in litigation was out of the question.
Having ruled out two of the most obvious options for a liberal arts major, and in a desperate move during my last semester, I signed up for the one practical course available to me: Accounting.
In case you were expecting the triumphant discovery of my life's calling as a result of this class, I'm sorry to disappoint you; it didn't play out that way at all. My world-class cramming capabilities could not compensate for my spotty homework output. Concepts like T accounts and negative goodwill amortization need practice to sink in.
Although my first foray into applied knowledge was (way, way) less than stellar, it awakened in me a dormant interest in finance – there is a certain thrill in putting to immediate and practical use what one learns in class. And so for the next few years after graduation, I raced to acquire my technical education at night, taking all those classes in economics, accounting and finance that I had missed out on as an undergrad.
You might think that going to school at night after working all day would be a drag. For me though, it was a constant and vital reminder that theory and the real world often live on planets in different solar systems.
Case in point: A class devoted to modern portfolio theory, taught by a portfolio manager who worked at Goldman Sachs. He was nice and earnest, and he genuinely wanted to do right by his clients. And yet the most important lesson he taught me was that nice, smart people often believe in things that don't make sense.
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