My son is a junior undergraduate at UC Berkeley with Haas business school. Today is his last day for the summer intern at PIMCO, the largest fixed income investment company in the world. He was just told by his manager that he has got an offer for a permanent job with PIMCO when he is done with his current school next summer. What fantastic news for him, especially in the current job market when job cut is rampant everywhere.
Great job well done, son! You have reached another critical milestone in your life. We are so proud of you!! Life is not easy for anyone, including you. We know how many hurdles you have overcome to bring yourself to this point in your life. While each step on your way has involved a lot of pains, I'm sure you would agree with me that your joy and happiness are greatly enhanced because of such pains you have overcome. I still vividly remember a few milestones during your short 21 years of life:
- We brought you to Switzerland when you were 3 years old. The huge culture and language shock made you frightened. During the first 2 months, you were so happy every Friday coming back home but so depressed every Sunday night because you knew you had to go to the kindergarten next day where you didn't know and didn't understand anyone. Our heart was bleeding when we saw you silently weeping on the bed every Sunday night but we knew we had to push you through this. You did. Not only you successfully went through this painful transition, you have become so fascinated with different cultures and languages that you end up with mastering 6 languages. What a great transition!
- You were born with an introvert personality, shy to speak in public. We were often wrought-up and anxious when we saw you always hiding behind others because you were afraid of talking in front of people. Over time we had almost lost confidence as we knew how difficult it would be to expect you to change your personality. But you did prove that we were wrong! Without us knowing, you had challenged yourself to overcome your limit and comfort zone. You surprised us tremendously to see what a different person you had become! From a shy boy you became the captain for the Reach for the Top team of your high school. This is an esteemed Canadian game show in which teams of high school students participate in local, provincial and eventually national trivia tournaments. Your led the team to become the provincial champion and went to compete at the national tournament. I went with you to watch the final national competition. I may be biased but I still believed your team should be the national champion, not the 2nd place. Your team did answer the final question before your competitor but the judges thought they did first. Nevertheless, I was very impressed by your calm and respectful way to handle the controversy in public. A true gentleman!
- You were the provincial champion for French speech competition when you were too young to attend the national competition. You held a high expectation to realize your dream to compete nationally next year but only faced the unfair reality that the adjudicators deliberately scored you down to not allow you becoming the champion again on the ridiculous basis that champion should not always be the same person. What a heavy blow to you! While we knew it might not be bad to let you experience this as unfairness is indeed not uncommon in the real life, we were very worried that you might not be able to understand and accept this harsh reality at your young age. Again, you proved we were wrong. Instead of letting yourself be depressed for it, you wanted to demonstrate with your talent that you were the best. You joined the bilingual (English-French) parliamentary debating competition. You not only got the provincial champion, you also became the Canadian National Champion for the bilingual debate! We were extremely happy with your great achievement but we were more proud of you for being so mature in dealing with such kind of real life difficulty and challenge.
- The intern job hunting this summer was also not a smooth path for you. It was and still be a very tough job market in all aspects. Even though you did have many interviews including remote face to face interviews, you just could not get an offer for many months. But with your tenacity, persistence and your knowledge in the bond field which is not something the undergraduate finance students normally will have, you finally won the heart of the hiring manager from PIMCO. A heave workload with over 12 hours everyday in the past 2 months has finally paid off with this permanent job offer. Your experience has proved again that success is about 99% of efforts and hard work plus 1% of luck.
Congratulations, Son!
Life is always full of challenges. This is just a good start for your adult life, which will not guarantee your success by itself. More efforts are needed. I'm sure you will and you will surprise us again and again.
We love you and will always be with you regardless of what you may face in your life!!
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