[time_management]

While not pertaining to relatives or holidays, here's my experience as pertains to the social pull of various careers.

Graduate student.

0: "I'm a grad student." 1: (Deadpan/barely impressed.) "Oh. You must be really smart." 0: "Don't worry. I'm not."

Analyst at a pharmaceutical consulting company.

0: "I'm a consultant." 1: "Oh." (Isn't everyone?)

Quantitative trader/developer at a hedge fund.

0: "I'm a trader." 2: "Oh." ++

Unemployed.

0: "I'm a treasure hunter." 1: WTF? OR "I'm asking what you do for a job, not..."

Working for a startup.

0: "I'm starting a tech company." 1: "Oh, cool!" 0: (Excited.) "Yeah, it's fun. I'm using a ridiculously powerful programming language called Lisp. It looks like this." (Points to some monstrosity of a macro such as ONCE-ONLY.) 1: "Uh, yeah..."

++ The use of 2 here is not a typo. Finance is not nearly as "sexy" as I thought it would be before going in, and the standard-error descriptor is, in fact, appropriate.

[Tichy]

I thought it is having lots of money that is sexy, not "finance".

[time_management]

Fair, but a talented young person in finance will, at least, have the opportunity to make lots of money in the future. This means that a 23-year-old trader ought to be especially a catch: buy cheap, sell dear.

[ahoyhere]

I always thought "over-leveraged" was a really sexy term, myself.

[dhyasama]

I actually know a guy that is a treasure hunter. He (and several other guys) had a big find in the Caribbean a while back and now he does it full time all over the world.