Strength

It was a Tuesday night - 3 days before the case competition - and we were working on the case. 2 of my friends were working on the financials and 1 was loafing. I think I was re-reading the legal write-ups and the case itself. Soon, 2 of them left and the 3rd dude finally finished. I asked him to wait for a bit while I quickly reviewed some of the entries. We discussed some matters and made some changes.
The case was such that we had to choose one of two suitors based on certain criteria. Preliminarily, it seemed that Suitor A was clearly the winner.

I remember, the 3rd dude leaving at about 145, 2 am. I thought I'd stay back and work on it for a bit and try to figure out who the real winner was. It turned out that Suitor B was the real winner. The pass-through calculations I made were simple and smart and I was really satisfied when I looked up at 330 am. That was when I laughed.

I laughed because I would have to wake up in 3 hours to get ready for a lecture. But I laughed more because I remembered then what it was like to be really engrossed in what one was doing and how satisfying work is when you really like it. I remember thinking to myself that finance is not particularly difficult and that most people can learn enough to succeed. What is difficult is the gut and the intuition. Something, I believe, I have. What I had done was not particularly ingenious, but it was logical.
Proof: 12 teams competed; only 3 came up with the winning scenario.We were one of those 3.