Monday night, and I went back through the Bank of America virtual internship I finished on The Forage, because the slides were still sitting in a folder named as if they were important. They are only practice. I know that. The language in them still feels heavier than homework.
The first task that stopped me was not the SWOT table, which IGCSE Business already taught me to draw in four boxes. It was a list of companies, and the instruction to pick a target. I had to read the word twice. A target, in my head, is something you aim at in PE, or a number you try not to miss on a test. Here it meant a whole firm that another firm might buy. The spreadsheet did not care that people work there. It only cared whether the numbers lined up.
Choosing took longer than a practice task is supposed to take. I highlighted one row, then another, then the first one again, which would be a very expensive habit if anyone were billing the hour. Nobody was. That is the point of a simulation. I still felt oddly responsible, as if the wrong row would embarrass a client who does not exist.
The pitchbook was the part I thought I would like, because I like putting things in order. I let an AI tool help me tidy the slides, and it did so with a confidence I do not have. Whole sentences arrived already sure of themselves. Some of the figures, when I checked them against the sheet, were not as sure as the sentences. That is a useful kind of embarrassment. A pitchbook is supposed to look finished. Finished is not the same as true.
In class we talk about mergers as if they were two boxes becoming one box. On the screen, a merger starts as someone deciding that another company is an object. I keep thinking about that when I walk past a shop I actually like. I do not want to become the sort of person who only sees a target. I do want to understand why the word is used, because finance will keep using it whether I am comfortable or not.
The certificate is a PDF. I saved it next to my Business notes, which feels slightly too proud, and also accurate. I did not intern at a bank. I sat at this desk and practised looking at a company the way a banker is trained to look. Tomorrow I have actual homework, with no client and no target. The folder can stay closed. The word, I think, will not.