Illustration by Angel Jiang

In lieu of a Senior Wisdom for Nashoba Santhanam, CC’13, check this out.  Staff writer Naomi Cohen hops passenger seat with Nashoba, who’s driving a cab until he starts in sales and trading in the fall. Pick the May issue of The Blue and White up on campus, or, if you must, read it online.

Before stepping into the 38-story Bank of America Tower in Hong Kong to begin a career in sales and trading, Nashoba Santhanam, CC ’12, took a detour. His destination: wherever you’re headed.

Santhanam drives a yellow medallion taxi, a decision that seems to raise the eyebrows of everyone but his parents, who’ve stopped being surprised by Nashoba’s taste in “day jobs”. When other students ask about his motivation, Santhanam answers with a routine, “might as well.” He might as well explore the city before leaving; he might as well get paid for it. When asked by other cabbies, he explains that money is money. To customers, he calls it just a part-time job—if you call 12-hour night shifts part-time.

Anyone expecting a portrait of a disillusioned Ivy Leaguer, piecing together his soul in the metaphor-friendly alleys of New York, will be disappointed. Santhanam neither romanticizes the working-class mentality nor has any interest in trying out pop sociology.

“I like doing a lot of different jobs,” he says, “and it’s sort of interesting to do something different. And that’s what this is.” (more…)

 
• Remember when J.P. Morgan lost more than $2 billion of other people’s money by irresponsible trading? Well that’s caused a lot of people, including politicians, to urge Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of the company, to step down from his position on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York—but not PrezBo. He’s been subject of controversy, because he supports Dimon. He went as far as to say Dimon’s critics are “foolish” and posses a “false understanding” of how the board works. (NYT, LA Times, Business Week)
• After Paul Krugman sarcastically insulted Estonia’s economy in a blog post, Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves rebutted him on Twitter. Not only did he disparage Krugman’s Nobel Prize, but he bitingly accused him of reducing the conflict to a “Princeton vs Columbia thing.” (NYT, Twitter)