People

The cafeteria is immense. It was when I really felt I was working in the corporate world. Yale is a corporation, but I never really felt I was in some huge body of people all trying to work. The cafeteria had a lot to offer, and lots of space. People were taking a break, a biological necessity, from their work. But not really. A lot are still discussing business while shoveling food down their throats. Nearly everyone is equipped with a blackberry or some smart phone so they aren't to miss any importing email. And there are lots of important emails.

Still, the corporation knows how to treat it's employees right. There was a huge variety of food, vegetarian is no longer an exotic special, and there are two stir fry stations. Plenty of drinks, from the sugar-pumped junk food to the expensive organic healthy smoothies.

The building itself reflects the desire to treat it's employees well. There are many resting places with super-comfy chairs. A huge gym encouraging healthy living. There are even trees insides the building, and also on the terrace that overlooks a canal. All this to make the stress more bearable. This is the finance world, after all.

The trading floor is a photogenic masterpiece. All those computer monitors form a beautiful pattern from the distance, each with its own texture of colors, belying the seriousness of the business involving so much at stake, so much to win or lose. But the people don't seem very stressed, like what you see on "Wall Street". No one is screaming out some buy or sell call. I have many preconceptions of the finance world, many negative, but I am here to align my ideas closer to reality.

The man I am now working with closely is a middle-aged man who had just come back from Hawaii with his family, barely missing the blizzard. I wonder what someone his age was still doing as a programmer at a bank. I can't imagine I'd be doing the same thing at his age. On this first day of work in a new professional field, this man made me think about ten years from now. I hope I won't be still some worker bee working in a corporation while raising a family, but that seems to be a reality for many people. He seems very gentle-mannered, very kind. But perhaps too kind. As I was preparing to leave work, he was talking to someone he was writing a program for. The dynamic between them bothered me. That other man, much younger, perhaps even younger than me, stood over him, figuratively as well as literally. My colleague seemed a little small suddenly, sitting there, telling the younger man he would soon have the report for him. His voice, tone, body language, all showed deference to someone who was working on something even more stressful. I don't know what, but on this first day of the banking corporate world, in this beautiful setting, nearly human, I worried a little what a person I could become.