By Thomas
After a fast and furious summer, with a boy’s trip to Hong Kong, followed by a leavers send-off to Ibiza, I arrived in DC. Brimming with nervous anticipation, I was embarking on the longest stint of my gap year – a 4-month internship at the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI).
A pioneer in zoology and conservation, Jane Goodall revolutionised our knowledge of chimpanzee behaviour and redefined what it means to be human. It was a privilege to work for the Jane Goodall Institute, a wonderful organization that advances her mission of conservation and chimpanzee protection.
I was working half for the Development Team, helping their fundraising efforts, and half with Roots & Shoots, the youth action branch of JGI. Daily tasks involved sorting through checks/donations and uploading them on excel (on Development side) and assessing applications from school kids for grants to fund their conservation projects (on Roots & Shoots side). Unfortunately, as it turned out, the internship was only 2 days a week in the office, with the others being virtual. This meant I had a limited amount of work, which was disappointing, although it did allow me lots of time to explore the city. I particularly enjoyed a tour of Capitol Hill, as well as late sunset walks around the Washington Monument State Park.
The highlight of the internship came when I travelled up to New York to hear Jane Goodall speak. It was amazing to see her in action; even at 89 she was remarkably energetic and had the whole audience cracking up with her witty jokes and amusing anecdotes. After, I had the privilege of meeting her backstage. I introduced myself and mentioned that we had actually met the previous year, when she came to speak at my school as part of the Environment Society (I had the honour of closing the event). She smiled at me and said, “Ah yes, you were the boy with the suit!” (Referencing my rather formal school uniform). It was a wonderful moment, and I couldn’t help laughing out loud as I confirmed I was indeed the boy with the suit.
Amazingly, I got to see Jane a second time, when she came to the JGI office in DC. She kindly signed my Jane Goodall autobiography, with a personalised message – “Dear Thomas, follow your heart” (a book I’ll cherish forever!). This time, rather annoyingly, I missed out on a group picture due to an ill-timed trip to the bathroom – I could only sit in disappointment as I heard a distant “Cheese!”. Nevertheless, I got a solo picture, which is even cooler in my books.
And so, with Christmas around the corner, I got ready to say goodbye to DC. In my final days, I got together with a close friend of my dad’s, who I had not yet had the opportunity to meet. We hit it off, talking for hours in his office (he runs a regulatory consulting firm). I mentioned that my internship at JGI, although a great experience, was not quite as rigorous as I would have liked, and so I was looking for one more internship, preferably in something finance/law related. He kindly offered that I could interview for a position at the firm. And so, with a piece of good fortune, and some great timing, I had the opportunity to come back to DC once more!
So, 3 months later, after a great ski season (described in next blog!), I found myself back in DC, experiencing a bit of déjà vu. I was working for a regulatory consulting firm, which advised other companies on how to comply with rules established by financial regulators – principally the SEC, CFTC, Fed, and OCC. With a rather preliminary understanding of financial regulation, I was super excited to learn as much as I could. Diving straight in the deep end, within the first week, I was tasked with writing reports on 2 CFTC subcommittee meetings, each about 3 hours long – one on voluntary carbon credit derivatives, and one on regulating AI in finance. This was a pretty steep learning curve, given that the week before I could barely explain a derivative, let alone how they related to carbon credits. But, as I discovered, this was the best thing that could have happened to me – I was forced to work hard, just so I could keep up, and in doing so learned a remarkable amount in quite a short window.
The internship was a dream come true. With lots of other young interns and analysts, I made some great friends, and have very fond memories bonding over group research projects and team coffee runs. The senior team at Patomak was remarkably impressive, with former SEC Commissioners, a former CFTC Commissioner, and even a former Comptroller of the Currency. It was amazing to watch them operate during all-staff meetings, being some of the leading experts in their fields, and I was even fortunate enough to do small research projects for a few of them.
It’s interesting, looking back. Going into my gap year, I was so excited for my JGI internship, so sure that it was going to be the perfect learning opportunity. And not to say that it was a bad experience – there were some amazing aspects to it. But as it turned out, the Patomak internship – an impromptu and rather last-minute change of plans – proved to be just the adventure I was looking for, exceeding even my highest expectations. This episode of my gap year taught me a few lessons – namely that you may have a plan, but ultimately life has a different plan. And so, while you can try design a gap year perfectly from the start, like you can try map your whole life out, it never quite pans out in the way you imagined. One can only connect the dots backwards, as my gap year showed. With this in mind, I’ll try to remember, moving forward, that just because I may not see an obvious benefit in something, that doesn’t render it useless. You’ll only know looking back, and oftentimes the things you least expect can turn out to be the most rewarding. Finally, my last takeaway would be, always say yes to meeting someone. There’s just no harm in saying yes, and you never know what may come out of it. I certainly got quite the opportunity!
