Tuesday, February 19, 2008

What Perks Do You Offer?

I stumbled upon this intriguing piece on NY Times' Dealbook blogs today, entirely by accident (it is a little over 10 days old). Apparently, Goldman Sachs has added sex-change surgery to its list of employee perks. Yes, you read that right. Sex-change surgery. I know I will probably be offending someone out there when I say this (for which I apologize), but aren't there other more important things Goldman could be doing for its employees? Things that apply to a wider portion of its employee base? Seriously?

Even slightly more bizarre is the fact that I found the link to this under the NY Times' Business section. Talk about serious business news.

(For the cited Fortune article, click here.)

Monday, February 18, 2008

The Positives Lately

1. I have successfully battled my cold/flu.(You really don't realize how important it is to be healthy until you get sick.)
2. Have finally achieved some order in the chaos that was the start of the second semester.
3. Going skiing in Utah in 4 weeks! (It will be my first skiing experience out West.)
4. Still don't know where I will be doing an internship this summer, but the realm of possibilities is pretty exciting.
5. I laugh a lot these days (and am allowed to be silly even more :) )

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Learning to Pause, Breathe, and Sometimes Take the Easier Road

I have always aimed pretty high in whatever I was doing - whether it be school, work, every-day life. Set high standards and abide by them. This "aiming high" has become so ingrained in me, that I have recently actually had to remind myself that perhaps (just perhaps) it may not always be necessary... or healthy, for that matter.

It is not that I want to slack off or not care or be less motivated. But I have realized that there should be a distinction between the things you set high standards for (those that you presumably care most about, are most interested in, etc.) and those that you set lower standards for (those things that you just need to do but are personally not that invested in). And setting lower standards for some things is actually necessary and often recommended. I know this is all sounding pretty abstract right now. But just in the past two days, I was faced with making some (what to many people will seem pretty) mundane decisions. Whether to take a certain (required) class at the more advanced (i.e., more quantitative) level or simply do the easier track. My initial instinct was to do the former - and challenge myself. But a few days later, I stopped and asked myself the question: Am I doing this because I really want to learn this material or because I don't want to admit "defeat" in taking the easier track? Is it worth spending so much time on class assignments (that will take far longer than the ones for the easier class), when I could be putting this time towards work in the courses I am actually really interested in and excited about? When put in those terms, the answer seemed pretty evident. I should just take the easier track. And, yet, why was it so hard for me to reach that conclusion? Pride? Fear of admitting failure? My inclination to stick it out once I have started something?

Human nature is pretty strange sometimes. I knew the right answer but almost didn't want to admit it to myself. And now that I actually have, I feel a lot better. Note to self: You don't always have to take the hard road, especially if it does not contribute much to your overall journey. Things that probably seem pretty evident to most of you (and, viewed from the outside, seem obvious to me as well), but it also just as amazing how "irrational" we become when bogged down in something.

Second point, although this was just a simple class example, these trade-offs exist in all aspects of life, and I should become better at recognizing and tackling them.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

The Spoonfed Nation

The last time I took the train from New York's Penn Station to Princeton, I asked myself a question I had asked myself many times: Why are passengers not allowed to stand on the train platforms and wait for their train there like in almost all other countries, instead of waiting upstairs and staring incessantly at a monitor until their train platform is announced? This has always really puzzled me. At first, I had thought it could be because of safety concerns, but how could these concerns differ from those of passengers waiting for the subway for example? Then I considered the possibility that it was due to heavy traffic through the station, but would traffic really be heavier than at London's Victoria Station for example? Not so sure. But then I came to another possible explanation that seemed to fit pretty well based on observations from other parts of daily life in the U.S.: they don't want people to wait on the train platforms to prevent passengers from getting on the wrong train. I know it may sound absurd at first, but there is a high likelihood of that happening given how many trains pass through Penn Station in any given span of time. And it is even more likely given how accustomed people here are to having everything spelled out to them. What do I mean exactly?

Well, road signs consist mostly of words (not actual signs like in Europe and most other places): Yield, Right Lane Must Turn Right, etc. Yellow signs alert you to a "Wet Floor". Coffee cup sleeves tell you that you are about to consume "a hot beverage". And peanut packets make sure you know that your snack "contains nuts." I know that such disclaimers and signs exist mostly to prevent litigation, but at the same time, I think they have the somewhat perverse effect of making people more dependent on external actors and less reliant on themselves. People start thinking less for themselves and their basic "survival skills", if I can call them that, are debilitated.

But let's return to Penn Station. As I boarded my train and stared out the window, I noticed that a station employee was standing near the stairs. Then I also noticed that almost every single person who came down the stairs to board the train asked him whether this was Track 3,
whether this was the train to Trenton, or whether they should get on on this train or the one on the opposite side of the platform. These might all have been valid questions, except for the fact that a "Track 3" sign hung directly in front of you as you came down the stairs, the side of the train read "Trenton", and the train on the opposite track was dark and had all its doors closed. If no-one had been standing there to direct them, they would have just had to figure it out themselves.

Having observed those few things, I concluded that there is very high probability that people could inadvertently board the wrong train if simply allowed to stand on the train platform at all times, given how little attention they seem to pay to implicit (and sometimes even, explicit) signals. I also concluded that the U.S. is probably the most spoonfed nation in the world, for better or worse.


P.S. The above are obviously just personal assumptions/conclusions. I would love to hear what you think or to have you negate them, especially if you know the official reason for why people are not allowed to wait on the train platforms at most major U.S. train stations. :)