Gut Check, “Chapter 5: A Boy in a Business Suit” pp. 71-72

In what seemed like an instant, three weeks removed from my last college class, I found myself in another classroom, but this time I excitedly lapped up the Kool-aid of my corporate orientation, wagging my tail like an enthusiastic puppy and eager to sprint on the fast track to white-collar nirvana. This time it mattered. It was like transitioning from the practice field to the game field. I envisioned myself as a young Gordon Gecko with designs on Wall Street. I went to the men’s store and bought three more business suits, even though the dress code was business casual. I walked differently, and I spoke differently, and I soon made a name for myself as an up-and-comer within the cluttered class system of corporate society. I felt empowered by my paycheck and my position, and I embraced my career with the excitement of knowing that the future had finally arrived.

The newness and the routine of my budding career became intoxicating, and the spiritual fascination of my college years began to disintegrate in turn. I loved work and the competitive challenge tied to it. It was like a nine-hour contest every day. My apartment was 9.3 miles from the office, and my normal route sometimes included a stop at the dry cleaners - extra starch please - or the car wash - you missed a spot. I even began drinking coffee, because every professional drinks coffee, and each morning at eight o’clock I’d pop into the shop to buy a steaming cup of corporate goodness. For the first time in a long time I had a sense of who I was. I was a businessman, and I conformed everything I did around that image.

Not surprisingly, the polish and formality wore off little by little, and my masquerade of maturity revealed itself before long. Beneath the austere formalities of business cards and titles, I began to discover a very familiar subculture, as the other new college hires in the exclusive program attempted to stamp their place as the alpha dog of good times. It made sense, because outside of the office we had nothing else to do, so we clung together in a sort of professional fraternity. In a matter of months, I came to the disturbing realization that I hadn’t left my past behind at all. The real man beneath the half-Windsor eventually resurfaced, where rigidity loosened to swagger, and my dull version of Bruce Banner morphed into the party Hulk. Though my days were entrenched in TPS reports and Microsoft Excel, my nights were ?lled inhaling 75-cent rail drinks at the club Happy Hour. I wasn’t an alcoholic; I was a sociaholic, rapidly assuming the role of captain on the ship of making friends and blowing money.

Admittedly, my peer group was an eclectic cast of characters, a mix of frat boys and Class A wannabes. Some were the nerdy type, geeked up by the fact that their elevated salary placed them in a class above the cool crowd they once idolized, and unclear about what to do with their free time without a test or report to prepare for. Others were surprisingly unmotivated, satisfied that they had already achieved their goal of gainful employment. Then there were the hybrids; otherwise normal guys who were immediately discontented with their jobs and who had already earmarked business school as the stepping-stone to their professional aspirations (which were strictly related to wealth generation). The women, rare in the engineering world, mainly fell into three stereotypes: beautiful airheads with a penchant for sleeping around, degree hunters validated by paper progress, or twenty-something versions of Thelma Harper from Mama’s Family. Nevertheless, we were all connected through our company, and still mired in that strange purgatory between adolescence and adulthood, not really knowing how to act, not developing lasting friendships, and perpetually dreaming of bigger things. We were essentially college kids with a professional budget."