Monday night, and I go back through the Bank of America virtual internship I finish on The Forage, because the slides still sit in a folder named as if they are important. They are only practice. I know that. The language in them still feel heavier than homework.
The first task that stop me is not the SWOT table, which IGCSE Business already teach me to draw in four boxes. It is a list of companies, and the instruction to pick a target. I have 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 mean a whole firm that another firm might buy. The spreadsheet do not care that people work there. It only care whether the numbers line up.
Choosing take longer than a practice task is supposed to take. I highlight one row, then another, then the first one again, which would be a very expensive habit if anyone bill the hour. Nobody is. That is the point of a simulation. I still feel oddly responsible, as if the wrong row will embarrass a client who do not exist.
The pitchbook is the part I think I will like, because I like putting things in order. I let an AI tool help me tidy the slides, and it do so with a confidence I do not have. Whole sentences arrive already sure of themselves. Some of the figures, when I check them against the sheet, are 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 are two boxes becoming one box. On the screen, a merger start as someone decide 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 see 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 save it next to my Business notes, which feel slightly too proud, and also accurate. I do not intern at a bank. I sit at this desk and practise 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.