Student Reflection by Mia Liu (C’28 W’28, French target)
My love for cinema instilled in me a desire to take as many leaps of faith as possible. I had always believed in the necessity of risk, change, and reinvention. Yet, when a cold email in March led to a dream-like summer job and hit ground in Singapore, the free-fall I had romanticized suddenly felt real – achingly real.
As a Summer Analyst at Analog Capital working on tech growth equity and venture deals, I was immersed in the rhythms of investing. The venture team taught me to market-size in more ways than I thought possible, to judge the “mission-critical” nature of startups. The growth equity team pushed me to move quickly, walk assumptions back from a pro forma with clarity, and transform messy spreadsheets and slides into clean arguments – like an Excel and PowerPoint Jedi preparing for battle.
Singapore demanded a kind of internal stillness — the ability to sit with uncertainty, show up unprepared, and trust that capability grows only when comfort falls away. I learned to ask better questions, admit what I didn’t know, and rebuild confidence through discipline rather than perfection.
Exposure to industries as varied as coffee, agritech, beauty, equity management, and shipping taught me to appreciate sector – specific nuances and tailor growth strategies. In three months, I learned to refresh pipeline models, draft investment memos, and translate raw numbers — margins, working capital, billings — into insights that shaped real decisions.
Work is one thing, but much happens outside the job. When you find yourself away from home, be ready to bend without breaking. You may face odd neighbors, seemingly impossible tasks, and broken washing machines in your cheap single-unit rental. You will be scared. You will be challenged. And you will miss home – sometimes a little, many times a lot. But, in the end, you learn to be okay, alone.
Once you’ve learned to stand on your own, joy arrives. You try the most bizarre of fish, navigate clean but confusing MRTs (Singapore’s metro), take yourself out on Saturday dates, and meet people whose lives look nothing like yours – people you somehow want to keep for lifetimes to come.
And when you return, you’ll find yourself sharing stories with those who supported you before you leapt and fell. They’ll want to hear your adventures, and you’ll want to rediscover what makes your heart beat faster – whether a new hobby, a new career direction, or simply more reasons to return to what was just a foreign land fifteen weeks ago.
The funny thing about Penn – and especially Huntsman – is that “home” extends far beyond King’s Court and Locust Walk. Halfway across the world, I met Quakers with the biggest of hearts and sharpest of minds. One gave me a job. Another walked me through advanced math. One flew across continents to visit, and one welcomed me into their home with dumplings and an afternoon stroll.
