As some of you might know, I created a blog called “growth pain” the summer of 2017, while I was interning at bw and here’s the first post that I wrote explaining the expectation and motivation of my summer experience.

The title of this journal came from Ray’s book, where he constantly mention the phrase “growth pain”, a kind of PAIN that is associated with growth, that generates and promotes personal growth. It’s like the saying “failure is the mother of success”, but with much more real cruelty. The word “pain”, just associates itself so strongly with the sensations and memory that one would normally not want to remember. But here, it’s not only good, but great.

I expect this growth pain to be a key part of my experience this summer as well, and thus, I want to document this journey. Someone said that bw is a social experiment that does investing as a hobby. And hence, I am finally putting myself through this social experiment that will give me the true color of bw and myself.

My emotions for bw have always been a very ambivalent one, a combination of many different facades, often in contrast or conflict with each other: indifferent, hopeful, desperate, curious, despised, angry, excited, scared… It’s as if fear and curiosity are two people on different ends of a see-saw, trying to out-compete each other.

But I need to always remember the reasons why I chose this company: the culture and my personal cultural fit; the industry and its unique position in it; curiosity as to how this company machine works in reality; personal growth, potentially associated with pain and frustrations; exciting and bright people, both full-times and interns; benefits; the uniqueness and the impressive amount of dedication in the small intern program…

The scared emotion comes in waves and the last wave hit me when I started talking to a friend before leaving Zurich about bw. One thing led to another, although I’ve been describing it for many times by now, I opened up Glassdoor reviews about bw culture and it hit be quite hard. The next morning, I scanned through some more at the airport waiting for my flight. A lot of good stuffs, very harsh words representing very sharp feelings. The old scary part of “you will be criticized, almost in a way that you’ve never experienced before in life” came back. Through many reviews talking about how Principles were used unjustly, I decided to take another look at it. This time, specifically at part III – the part that I did not look into before, the part about company management. I was stunned. Stunned by the number of articles it has, by how much I don’t understand just by looking at them, by how relentless some can sound even without explanation. It feels like someone slapping you but everything happened too fast and afterwards you only remember the spicy feeling left on your face but not how it all happened.

Reading it once again creates strong unsettling emotions deep down and I decided to keep a journal, and not just to myself, but to anyone who happens to see it, also to friends in case they will need a more thorough picture of the entire event in order to help me (haha, we shall see). Whenever I think of the possibilities of bad things happening (bw will argue that you are not using the right word here), I would always imagine having good emotional supports from friends and family. People who can help me talk through my feelings, and talk through the problems. I even wanted to share this with my parents. I thought about it at night, wondering if I can somehow show them Principles in Chinese. I found a bilingual, nicely translated version online and called them, assigned homework to them: to read the Principles.

Somehow, I have a feeling, an urge, telling me that I am on a path to change, some pretty big ones. I am not sure what, or even if they are positive or negative. But one thing I know for sure, and I need to keep reminding myself: you cannot get by this summer. It takes real effort this summer to accomplish tasks and to “get by” in the bw standard.

I am not just scared. I am excited, for a new period of my life, the new people, new environment, or finally being back in the States again. I need to remind myself of the reasons that lead me here, the genuine wish to dissect myself, voluntarily and involuntarily, and to become stronger mentally.

Before, I was having the slight hope that growth pain will not happen. But it’s time to realize that it will come to you, sooner or later, or maybe even, the sooner the better. You will need to look at things objectively, as if you are not emotionally invested at all, in order to see the implications behind it. So then, face it. Maybe the journal helps, narrating in an analytical voice through time.