Don’t Let Anyone Tell You that You’re Too Young

In the Fall of 2015, I excitedly walked through the front gates of Georgetown University on my first day of class. Because Georgetown doesn’t have Greek life, many other student organizations substitute for students’ social life. After finding this out, I applied to eight clubs — the same number of schools that I had applied to for college. As each of these clubs was extremely competitive, I had to write multiple essays for each application. And on top of that, I had to include materials such as my resume, transcript, and standardized testing scores. After a long and stressful process, I ended up getting denied by not one, but all eight, organizations that I applied for.

As a motivated and successful student, this was a huge shock to my ego. The last club that I had applied to and interviewed for was the Georgetown University Student Investment Fund. GUSIF manages about $500,000 of Georgetown’s endowment. Because my dad is an investor, I thought that being a member of GUSIF could be an interesting opportunity to explore my interests in financial markets. However, in the interview, the interviewer asked me point blank “What’s happening in the financial news this week?” Despite my perceived interest, I quickly realized that I had no idea how to answer the question. I stared blankly back at the interviewer for a few seconds and said that I didn’t know.