Essay: Trying to pull myself back, little by little, in a season of confusion
I wrote this when I was applying for internships, doubting myself, and having no idea where the answer was. Less a conclusion than an honest interrogation of my own mind.
personal site / SWUFE / still exploring
<Ray />
|
Exploring
#ENFJ #Undefined #Nontraditional
#Exploration #Creation #StayingAliveToLife
I'm Ray Wang, an undergraduate at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. What matters more to me now is not locking myself into a final answer too early, but continuing to try, to look, and to make vague ideas turn into things that actually happen.
Writing & Notes
These are the experiences that have stayed with me most recently. Not a resume summary, but the things I actually remember from doing the work.
Latest Notes
When an AI agent starts taking real work, the problem is no longer just the model
The challenge is not just getting it to run, but designing onboarding, memory, skills, and permission boundaries together.
After interning at CICC and Shenwan Hongyuan, I started to understand what it really means to make work reliable
From materials and spreadsheets to communication and pace, I slowly realized that trust is built less by talking well than by being able to truly hold the work.
In the SWUFE HSBC Young Club, I slowly learned that what a student organization leaves behind is not excitement, but growth and continuity
Starting from our theme of internal development, I realized more clearly that the point of a club is not how many events it can produce, but whether it can leave people with room to grow, better judgment, and the ability to bring the next cohort forward.
In MCM, we tried to estimate a number that is never publicly released
What fascinated me was not the formula itself, but the inverse problem: information is incomplete, yet you still have to offer an answer that is logical, interpretable, and coded into reality.
I have come to think that the hardest part of studying-abroad applications is not stacking credentials, but making the materials prove who you are
GPA, internships, competitions, IELTS, and GRE can look like separate checkpoints, but schools really want to know whether they add up to a coherent and investable person.
During our innovation project, I built a research framework from a real-world problem for the first time
From regional rice brands and traceability to platform data and review text, this project taught me that the hardest part of research is often not the idea, but grounding the problem.
Experience
Internships
CICC | Investment Banking Intern | Beijing | 2026.03 - 2026.06
My first real exposure to a high-standard project environment, with all its pace, detail, and collaboration.
Shenwan Hongyuan Securities | Bond Execution Intern | Beijing | 2026.01 - 2026.02
A period that made me care more about clear expression, initiative, and dependable execution.
Hengfeng Bank | Corporate Finance Intern | Chongqing | 2025.07 - 2025.08
An early encounter with real business work, and an important one for me.
Campus & Projects
Campus & Projects
SWUFE HSBC Young Club | President | 2025.06 - 2026.06
A year that brought me closer to organization, coordination, and the work of carrying people and projects forward.
Project Practice | Innovation Project / Modeling / Ongoing Experiments
I am drawn to turning vague questions into structure, and structure into something others can actually understand and use.