The other day I was at a career fair and I overheard a funny comment from a student .“Why do all the people in the world want to price options ? " . He was irritated by the fact that there were so many people who were actually interested in pricing options for a living . As simple a statement it might sound, there is much more to what the statement means if one tries to generalize.

Most of us take up jobs in the field that is hot or that is going to be hot in our life times. Job prospects, career progression , earning potential are some of the parameters that we based our job and probably the field of our study too. For some it makes perfect sense. For some it sounds a little strange that you are going to work on something for which there is a external demand and there might be no internal demand. What I mean by internal demand is whether you would like to work on it irrespective of market conditions. Put it simply " would you do the same job for free because you like the process of doing it rather than the outcome ? "

Now this is where some of the folks get mixed up. I think they do not pause in their lives to really question themselves and try to meet their Internal demand first. They just get busy and get institutionalized.There is a terrific statement by Morgan Freeman in the movie " The Shawshank’s redemption” . He compares prison walls to prison inmates behavior. In his words " Strange are these walls. First you hate them, then you get used to them and then you cant live with out them". I think thats what happens to people who don’t pause and think about internal demand. They get sucked up in to the world and live amidst the walls built by somebody else. Initially they hate it..Then they get used to them and finally  I guess they can’t live with out them …In the long run, come what may, Internal demand is something which is more controllable than external demand.

This blog post is mainly the outlet of some of my thoughts , after I went for a career fair. Come to think of it, it is a fair question.  Out of all the people that turned out, how many were there who actually wanted to enjoy derivative pricing. I think it will be only a handful. This brings back to Paul Graham’s point of doing something you like rather than anything else.Is it that difficult to implement in one’s life ?