The Five Stages Of Banking

New bankers (and summer interns) typically go through 5 stages during the early part of thier careers.

Denial

You throw yourself into your work, convinced that by scrubbing comps or managing working group lists late into the night,you're adding value to the deal and making a huge contribution to the firm.

Anger

You begin to fray around the edges as associates, VPs, MDs, and yes, even analysts give you progressively more tedious and inane projects. Homicidal thoughts are entertained when a VP gives you a list of obviously unsuitible comps to add to a model, only to ask to have them removed 3 hours later.

Bargining

At this point the you try to convince yourself that if you can pull one more all-nighter, you'll be able to leave the morass of junior banker-dom behind and transcend to the higher plane of true BSD-hood. Sadly this never happens. Which leads to....

Depression

When an MD has dropped a red streaked Offering Memorandum draft on your desk at 4 on a Friday and wants it done for Monday morning, and you're alone in the office watching the cleaning crew finish, you realize the truth about being a junior banker. Waves of self-doubt and depression erode your confidence until you're a blubbering wreck, alone at your desk save the mocking, yet comforting glow of Excel on your screen.


Acceptance

Eventually, you make peace with yourself for selling out, trading any semblance of a normal social life for a shadow of an existence punctuated by those too short moments when your blackberry stops vibrating. By this point you are a broken, humorless, cynical shell of a man. A modern day Tantalus, you'll be surrounded by money, only to have any opportunity to spend it whisked out of sight, out of reach.
Once you accept this lifestyle and its innate horrors, you will have taken the first and most important step towards being a BSD.

Or at least a 2nd year analyst.