The First Step: An MFE dream

Professor Hanno Lustig was talking about volatility modelling, my double strong cafe was trying its best to keep me awake. I looked around, I could see many poker faces staring at the Professor like they had had enough of this shit,somewhere just noting down whatever the Professor was writing on the board. Few of them where as clueless as I was. All of a sudden class president Udit asks a doubt. Many of them were awe struck at that, as if they just got to know that Santa wasn't real. Few of them had a happy smile. I guess, like me, they were also happy that at least one person was following these complex models. From a relatively easy first quarter no one was expecting the shit to hit the roof so fast. Stochastic calculus was in similar lines. During the break people gather in front of the board which resembled script from A beautiful mind. Many of them probably were just trying to understand the chronological order in which professor wrote that “script”. Happy faces were all around during the derivatives class. The funny little French man in his witty French accent taught us derivatives in the easiest way while stealing hearts of many ladies in the class. Though the classes were really tough, everyone survived, many excelled in the exam in such a way that Prof Hanno said he won't get the marks that most of us got had he wrote the same exams. That was a moment of revelation for me when I realized most of my classmates were super smart. No quarter ends without an end quarter session. Everyone celebrated one quarter of hard work at some good pub only to leave back some funny moments or like in my case many embarrassing moments.

End of quarter networking session in spring

Typical class day

De-crypting stochastic calculus

Spring quarter was water boarding 2.0 for most of us. Professor Levon with his unlimited knowledge of computational method was bombarding us with weekly home works. Prof Jason Hsu made us write (Ctrl C + Ctrl V) SAS codes which we didn't understand. Professor Longstaff, with his charm of Wall Street knowledge was teaching us fixed income markets. The uncanny way in which he introduced topics and generated curiosity in us explained, why he was considered to be a great professor. I had to wait for another one month to join Numerix for my internship to know how great he was. Almost all the internal papers in Numerix had some citation or explanation of Professor Longstaff's work. Around this time, I realized the pattern in which MFE classes go. A bunch of smart Chinese students occupied first row, a relatively indifferent Indian gang occupied left part of last row. A bunch of confused students occupied second and third row. Gor and his gang occupied right part of last row. An inseparable Indian girls gang occupied middle part of penultimate row with the high bass Naveen Daftari guarding them behind in the last row. Classes cannot function without the jolly face of Alphonso or the multitude of questions from Emily and Sarah. Questions asked by Matt made many of us realize how little we understood from the class and the intermittent groan of Yong Du took us towards the end of spring quarter. This quarter was as mentioned earlier water boarding 2.0 for most of us as we had to go through the pressure of finding an internship. But we were all by then groomed in fire, how would we wilt away in the sun. All of us got internships and flew to different parts of the world making us realize about the inevitable separation that is supposed to happen after the final fall quarter.

Class president Udit presenting MFE teaching excellence award to Prof Daniel Andrei

Alphonso delivering graduation speech

The whole gang

People returned as jolly good fellows. There was smile on everyone's face and these were visible while Professor Holger Kraft introduced us to credit market and oliver ledoit made us all laugh when we watched his class videos in 2x speed. The quarter was coming to an end, for many of us it was time to embrace the new opportunity, for many, it was the sadness of leaving close friends, for many, it was the uncertainty of finding the right career and for me it was the sheer joy of going home after one long year. To all my fellow colleagues at MFE, we have endured a lot together, this bonded few of us, but distanced few others. The experience that we had was unmatched and will remain in our hearts with all its glory for we have seen it all.