I thought I would set the world on fire when I got out of college. I had done quite well in a field that was growing. Unfortunately, we got hit with a recession in 1981.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It was a recession when I graduated, but I was so unequipped to have a job anyway, I don't think it would have mattered if the economy was booming. I think I was expecting bad jobs. But as it went on through my 20s, I began to wonder how things were going to turn out.
It was a dreamlike time for me from December 1997 to March of '98. Before that, I was basically unknown. Then, bang! The starting gun fired, and everybody just started running. It was learn-on-the-job. And there were more opportunities for work than I had time to do them.
I got the first job and kept going. Once I got a job, I very much wanted to keep getting jobs, basically. I did try to learn what I could in those first couple of decades.
There were times, sure, I wanted my career to go better. But once it starts to go downhill, you can never get back, or only to some degree.
I had three jobs in college. The best day of my life was when I paid off my student loans, on my own.
Upon graduation, believe it or not, I had no job. I had no interviews. I had no prospects. I had no worries. What I did have, I had passion. I had enormous passion. I had passion for financial markets. I had fallen in love with financial markets.
When I was 22, I was thrown out of graduate school and then fired from three jobs in a row at higher and higher salaries where I saved nothing.
Up until 1995, I still had a day job that I hated. I was still personally involved in things in the 90s.
The morning after my high-school graduation found me up early job hunting. The dream of college I put on the back burner.
I graduated in 2009, which - if you think back to where the economy was at that time - was an interesting time to graduate.