Summer At HSBC's Strategic Transactions Group | Debdut Mukherjee

In many ways, the world of Her is similar to the world we found ourselves in at the outset of the internship. The COVID-19 pandemic had obviously ripped through the world and a respite seemed beyond any imaginable horizon. For a B-School student, the situation was grave, with internships at jeopardy. So an email from HSBC stating the beginning of the virtual internship was for me a respite. Well, it was more than a respite. It was probably the most positive piece of information I had read for quite some time.

A virtual internship comes with its entirely new shades of tediousness. The mind takes some adjusting to balancing the rigours of excel sheets and zoom calls amidst the whiff of your mother's cooking. Stephen Covey's advice of being proactive and not reactive rings true, as the onus falls on you to engage, learn and imbibe the most out of the tenure.

What helps of course is having the right people around you to help you through the process, and I had an immensely helpful and imaginative group of colleagues to keep me firmly on the track. I will definitely reserve a special thanks to my mentor who kept an ingenious balance between aiding me and giving me enough independence to learn through mistakes. The best lessons are after all learned on the most thorny roads on the most stormy nights.

So again, why Her?

For me, just like AI Samantha in Theodore Twombly's life in Her, the internship in more ways than one drove more meaning into my life during a time when the world is hanging on the precipice of meaning and normalcy. The brilliant experience vindicated my decision to choose investment banking as a preferred career pathway. The work helped me get over the negativity of a population and the economy plunging into the bottomless abyss of the pandemic. And most importantly, it gave me a glimpse of what the future of the workplace might be; the comfort of your own bed.

I know there isn't much finance that has gone into my story about my investment banking internship as people might have expected, but then, do any expectations hold true anymore in the 2020 we find ourselves in.