#20. Tower of London (Monday, November 15, 2016)
What was your best day…of proving yourself in your field of work/study?
It was a tough call whether to put this or my similarly successful New York City conference (#23) higher on this list. What ultimately pushed this one ahead is that, here, I’m only in my third year as a professional economist. A year that was, relative to age, arguably my most successful.
I was promoted at the start of the year (a year earlier than planned), and through the year I had taken a considerable analytical and leadership role on two big projects (#35); while taking on a lot of the operational responsibilities.
And, to wrap that year up, I was invited to go to a pair of conferences in Europe in back-to-back weeks. First, an OECD meeting of debt policy people in Paris; then a debt modelling workshop at the UK Debt Management Office (DMO) in London (#42, #29), where I would be presenting this modeling project I had been working on in the past few months.
The OECD meeting went well. Our department’s managing director did all of the talking at the center table; while my director and I mostly sat on the side. I didn’t really have a role there, except to meet people and take notes. But I did those well.
The night following the last day of the meeting was the 2016 U.S. presidential election. So I stayed up to watch on CNN (they’ve got that in France). It was six hours behind there; so at around five in the morning, just when it started looking like Trump was going to win it…I fell asleep. I woke up at eleven to the news that Donald Trump would be the 44th US President.
Following that, after a few days’ vacation in Paris, on Saturday I took a flight to Frankfurt and then to London (it’s cheaper that way, somehow).
In London, I check into my hotel in the St Katharine Docks – a really cool area on the southeast part of the city that’s basically a harbor with a giant tower hotel and boardwalk and a lot of nice restaurants. The hotel is amazing: it’s just this huge open space with a fancy spiral staircase going around. I’ve never stayed at a luxury place like this before. I get a pizza at one of the places on the dock, then spend the night developing and practicing my presentation.
On Sunday, I stuff myself with the hotel’s full English breakfast buffet (for two hours). Then I spend the rest of the day preparing, plus reviewing the presentation that Camilla, my counterpart at the UK DMO, had put together. I do find a three-hour block in the afternoon, though, to go visit the Tower of London. And, as a big fan of old, historical man-made shit that’s still standing (#30), my rush tour through it is a fascinating experience.
Monday morning, I meet my director, our research representative Neerad (#55), and Denis from the government. Then, after the introductions, I do the first presentation.
It goes beautifully. It’s clear, from the captivated reaction of the twenty or so other economists in the room, that my work is just as interesting to everybody else as it is to me. And after I’m done, my colleagues and several others make a point of telling me how well I presented.
And for the rest of the day, I take part actively in the many discussions going on regarding debt modelling approaches. Going back and forth and sharing my opinions with senior debt policy officials from around the world – all of whom are much, much more experienced than I am.
Not bad for someone two and a half years into their first job.