SelfSTE(e)M: First Steps

Now that I'm just a few months away from continuing my studies in mathematics and statistics in the UK (and later, wherever the winds of finance may take me), I've decided to start a series of articles on a topic that many friends and students have frequently asked me about: how I transitioned from studying economics, with aspirations of working in central banks, to delving into statistics and mathematics (particularly applied to finance), and hopefully pursuing a PhD. I'm certainly not the first to make this shift, but I believe no one has done it quite like I have. Of that, I'm certain. So, I'll begin by explaining how I embarked on this path, leaving future articles to detail my evolution and other significant experiences leading up to today.

I often discuss how information asymmetry is the most critical issue that students in Spain must confront due to its short- and long-term effects. One of the best examples of this is the very beginning: my high school years. I'll always remember the day my mother took me to the interview for the high school I eventually attended because the principal asked me a very important question: did I want to pursue the social sciences track or the technological one? I've always been obsessed with Fallout (the best survival video game series, in my opinion) and books, and this combination led to a deep fascination with two things: the creation of machines and other technological artifacts, and how societies functioned. Even as a child, I was quite good (though not as much as now) at mathematics and tinkered with Arduinos. I also sold my drawings to classmates (taking advantage of photocopying them at home and leveraging network and scale economies) and discussed economics and law with my grandfather. This decision was very difficult for me, but I knew that, being who I am, the social sciences track would be the most efficient path to pursue a degree in Economics at Pompeu, so I chose that.

This was the first time information asymmetry worked against me: if my parents, those around me, or I had known that mathematics and statistics typically require a more rigorous and analytical foundation and naturally appear in economics and many other areas like finance—as other students apparently knew, according to what I later learned—I would have chosen the technological track without hesitation. But since the social sciences track was supposedly for those who wanted to study humanities and "social" sciences, the choice seemed clear. In any case, I spent the first year fairly normally (it wasn't very interesting, and I spent more time hanging out with friends and gaining "street smarts"), and since it went quite normally, in the second year, I buckled down and significantly raised my GPA to achieve the necessary grade. I must say that, although I took the social sciences track, they did prepare me quite well for the university entrance exams because I even studied the mathematics from the science track (I studied their topics a month before) and scored very well. However, my high school GPA was still notable, and although I got into my desired degree program, I was the second-to-last admitted (the cutoff grade is one of my great friends, who has ended up quite well).

Figure 1. Sometimes I would sit at the table doing derivative exercises and think, "The science track students seem more interested in physics and their mathematics; why do I not care about what's being explained in geography?"

When I got to university, another reality check (courtesy of information asymmetry) was realizing three things:

• You're completely on your own: Professors generally don't care about you, and there are too many students (many of them unprepared) to ask them about important topics in the subject. Therefore, it's better to fend for yourself.

  
  

• There's a jump discontinuity in the academic difficulty function: Since high schools prepare students as they see fit, inflate grades to give them more opportunities to enter degree programs, and don't teach them to think (only to mechanically repeat procedures), reaching a point where you now have to think critically and be self-taught is quite challenging.

  
  

• There were students who either easily overcame this game or already knew it: Somehow, I managed to connect with people who already had information about how this would be, and therefore took advantage of the time others wasted partying to build a solid foundation in some important academic aspects and seek academic and job opportunities from the moment they started.

When I understood this, I pushed myself quite hard and literally planned the next five years of my life to reach the positions and results I wanted (I still have an Excel file where the plan has been written since 2018), but I ended up only in the top 20% of my class in my first year. This was quite disappointing, given that I liked the subjects and thought I had already done a lot, although clearly, it wasn't enough. Therefore, in the second year, I pushed myself even harder, reading many more economics books and doing quite a few exercises, and I significantly improved my grades, now ending up among the top 20 students in the class. During this "push," I discovered something very interesting about economics studies: a good mathematical foundation and an interpretative ability of these mathematics made absolutely all subjects easy. The first-year mathematics didn't go so well for me because I didn't pay much attention to them, but once I started seeing microeconomics, macroeconomics, and finance models, I understood their importance, and by reviewing the fundamentals from books, I was able to handle everything with incredible ease. However, it turns out I stumbled upon something much bigger than I thought.

When I started reading books on linear algebra, calculus, and differential equations, the theory absorbed me much more than my degree subjects did. I loved the tools I could use to solve problems, and it seems they were even more abundant in finance than in other areas of economics (although there was a lot in macroeconomics too). During the summer, I began studying many more topics than necessary in those books, and I wondered if there was something that combined these mathematics and the areas of macroeconomics and finance (that wasn't econometrics). And that's when the subject "Financial Derivatives and Risk Management" entered my degree.

In that subject, I understood that the answer to that question was affirmative: quantitative finance. I became utterly obsessed. I read books, watched many documentaries, followed YouTube videos, and fully immersed myself in LinkedIn. While my colleagues talked about how they admired Messi and the people from "La Isla de las Tentaciones," I was waiting for my opportunity to talk about Jim Simons, Ed Thorp, Paul Wilmott, Jim Gatheral, etc. I literally had posters of them in my room; these were my idols now. Seeing my obsession, the level of mathematics required, the combination of various economic areas that had previously interested me, and the multiple possibilities in the finance area, I spoke with the subject's professor, Dr. Raúl Merino, and he recommended that I talk to Dr. Elisa Alós for more guidance. And that's when everything changed for me. She was very kind to me and was pleased that I liked mathematics and finance, given that she worked in this area. She taught me quite a few things related to what would be my final degree project and the derivatives subject, but she always told me the same thing: a strong mathematical foundation was needed to do this well. Moreover, I noticed my inability to follow some of her developments, and it burned me quite a bit inside.

Figure 2. Jim Simons, the best "quant" that ever existed, founder of the Medallion Fund and Renaissance Technologies, which have had the highest returns from market investments in history.

It turns out I had found something I loved, but the best way to pursue it was literally to study a mathematics degree or a double degree with economics. This burned me a lot inside, and in the end, I made a drastic decision. I told Elisa that I wanted to be one of the best "quants" on the planet and that I would study pure mathematics from scratch to achieve it, and asked if she could guide me. She herself told me that I was right about the mathematics, and recommended that I enroll in the advanced study program for undergraduate students at BSE, where she taught an even more advanced derivatives course and there was another called "macro-finance" (trivially obvious from the name). This gave me, therefore, a goal from the first term of my third year: I had to create an unofficial double degree in mathematics and economics, doing everything I could in pure mathematics while maintaining a very high GPA in the other.

This was obviously very difficult, but somehow it motivated me a lot, and I went all in. I understood, possibly from watching too many movies and anime, that success in this would never be determined by my intellectual capacity because I was born without any talent, and I knew it. I wouldn't be like Jim Simons, like Ramanujan, or other talents in their fields. But I could always be like Cristiano Ronaldo: I could always put in more hours than anyone else because "la letra con sangre entra" (learning through hard work). And all those hours would compensate for my lack of extraordinary intellect if I assumed I had enough to read the books and do several exercises. It was all a matter of my personal vision of my capacity and where my leverage was in this task. It was all a matter of self-esteem and self-awareness.

It was from that moment, the first term of my third year, that my life was going to take a massive turn, and I was going to discover what I want to dedicate my entire life to: mathematics and statistics (finance, to this day, is just an application area of what I like, although it all started there). I took the five-year plan of my degree, changed it entirely, and considered every detail about what to study, what to apply for, when, etc. Starting here, the tempo of my life accelerated infinitely, but I think it's one of the best experiences of my life. In the next article, I will explain what happened from the third year onward and how I was able to study everything and get into quite mathematical master's programs without a STEM degree. I can only say that, since 2020, my plan is still in motion, and I have achieved everything that was written in the Excel file to the letter, so I hope this series of articles can help someone else.