Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I'll be honest — I have a direction, not a destination, and I've found that's been the right way to think about it given how much my interests have evolved over the last two years.

Near-term, the answer is straightforward: I want to be a strong third-year analyst or first-year associate at this firm, with a reputation for technical precision and judgment that exceeds my title. I want to have built the muscle memory for the modeling, but more importantly I want to be the analyst the senior bankers trust to run a process workstream end-to-end without supervision. That's the foundation everything else builds on.

Five years out, I expect to still be in the deal economy — though whether that's banking, sponsor side, or something corporate-development-flavored is something I want to decide based on the deals I work on, not in the abstract. I've talked to enough people who jumped to PE because everyone else did and regretted it that I've stopped trying to plan that decision in advance. I want to spend the next two years on real deals, see which side of the table I'm drawn to, and make the call when I have actual data.

What I'm confident about: I want to stay close to advisory and capital markets work, I want to be in a seat where the work is intellectually serious, and I want to be on a team where I'm the dumbest person in the room as often as possible. Beyond that, I'd rather optimize for staying at this firm and earning the next seat — your group has a strong record of promoting from within — than pretend I have a five-year plan I don't.