Read Online The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change by Adam Braun - Free Book Online Page B

end, I stood up to announce that I would join as well. Cheers went up from across the room, and a flute of golden champagne was placed in my hand. The whole scene felt foreign, but it felt good.
    In the months leading up to this dinner, I had been operating on a tight budget, which had me staying in youth hostels abroad and eating a diet of ramen noodles. But tonight I was enjoying a fantastic steak I didn’t have to pay for. It was the best food I’d had in months.
    I was sitting to the right of Bain NY’s youngest female partner, and I noticed that although she ordered the filet mignon, she didn’t touch it; she only ate the vegetables. I had finished mine within five minutes, but her perfect steak remained untouched. Perhaps the alcohol emboldened me to get a little too comfortable, but when she waved her hand for the server to clear her plate and went back to her conversation with the person on her left, I discreetly stabbed her steak with my fork and placed it on my plate.
    Yes, it was an idiot move. And apparently I wasn’t discreet at all.
    “Did you just take my steak?” she asked, turning to face me.
    The entire table—partners and prospective colleagues—lookedat me. Someone else echoed incredulously, “Seriously? Did you just take her steak?”
    My face filled with prickly heat. I could feel myself turning bright red. “I’m sorry,” I stammered. I definitely shouldn’t have had that last glass of champagne. Or the one before it. “I’ve been backpacking for so long and this is just too good to let it go to waste. I don’t know what I was thinking, but that was totally inappropriate. I’m so sorry.”
    “Well, now you have to eat it,” said the partner across the table, smiling. For the next several minutes, everyone’s eyes remained fixed on me as I polished off my second steak of the evening. It was as delicious as the first, but I felt the dissonance between backpacking culture and corporate privilege with each bite. One thing was clear: if I was going to do well at this company, I needed to change more than just my clothes.
    *  *  *
    I was ecstatic to land the Bain offer, but accepting it had not been an easy decision. The best firms decide on candidates during the same few weeks each fall, and I’d been through interviews with five investment banks, five consulting firms, and one private equity shop during two frantic, rapid-fire weeks.
    At my Goldman Sachs interview they asked questions designed to rattle me. “What’s the sum of all the numbers between one and one hundred?” they asked on a whim (answer: 5,050). Blackstone Private Equity had eight different employees put me through the wringer, requesting that I build balance sheets and financial models from scratch. When I thought I’d crushed my interviews at a boutique consulting firm that I’d viewed as my “safety” job, they called to tell me that I didn’t impress them whatsoever.
    I began to understand clearly that I could never make assumptionsabout how others perceive me. Each day several doors closed, and others opened, some more promising than others. First rounds became second rounds, which became final rounds, but nothing was guaranteed until I had an offer in hand.
    After I completed the interviews and returned home, I waited nervously to hear back from each company. I received a call from Bain (my top choice) the day before my birthday. After several white-knuckled minutes of small talk, they made an official job offer, and along with the contract, they sent a massive chocolate cake with the Bain logo and “Happy Birthday Adam” written in frosting on top. It was a terrific birthday present and I was thrilled, but I also received an offer from Lehman Brothers in its esteemed investment bank division.
    Lehman was appealing since the pay as an investment banker was considerably higher, but the drawback was that it would require me to work like a dog. While the hours in consulting weren’t insubstantial—I