Now, after seventeen years on Wall Street, this sounds comfortably late; it seemed remarkably early then. I woke up around 7 A.M., if Josh hadn’t woken me earlier. I ate breakfast, skimmed the New York Times, took my car out of the garage beneath our Rockefeller University apartment building, drove crosstown to the Lincoln Tunnel, shot down the New Jersey Turnpike, turned west on Route 24 at Newark, and headed for Murray Hill. It was a reverse commute, and took about an hour. Coming back, even against the evening traffic, required anywhere between one and two hours. The first morning, uncertain of how long it would take to drive there, I arrived early and stopped at the local McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin, feeling romantically proletarian in a Hopperish sort of way. I had never commuted to work before. I had always worked at what I wanted to work at. Now, I was like almost everyone else, doing what my boss wanted me to do, for money. This was the real world. For the first few weeks, as I drove down the turnpike, I nursed my sad thoughts like a late-night whisky, taking small slow sips, trying to savor the taste of my plight, seeking some perspective.
What do You think about My Life As A Quant (2012)?
