It’s new student orientation in the fall of 2022, and I’m standing in Steiny-D across from the Stock Exchange post. As a senior shows me around and shares his nostalgia, it hits me for the first time that I’m at the Wharton School. He speaks of pressures to choose safe career paths, and I nod along, though my mind is wandering. At Wharton, one student comes from Wisconsin and another from Kazakhstan; one plays the flute and the other, squash. Yet most of them want to be bankers or consultants. That senior’s advice about taking the road most traveled echoes in my head. Is that the kind of leadership we’re taught in class? I spend days pondering: What is a business education for?
Catapulted from a lethargic Sicily to the bustling hallways of Huntsman Hall, I came to the United States in search of the intellectual stimulation promised by the liberal arts system. Growing up in Palermo, where many people don’t attend college and work to live, I fantasized about exploring worlds and careers that would allow me to express my values and perhaps even self-transcend. Here at Penn, I was quickly humbled by the 5 a.m.-to-9 p.m. live-to-work mentality. I still smell Sicilian flowers too much to fully adopt the Whartonized performance culture, but I am too American for the communal coffee breaks in my hometown. Tension to reconcile this dichotomy has shaped much of my undergraduate experience.
In the race for prestige and financial security, the principle that we ironically hope to master as financiers — risk-taking — is precisely what we avoid at all costs as students. We acquire safety nets with easy-A classes, join the “right” clubs that will get us the “right” jobs, and thus downsize risk. Yet taking chances is what a liberal arts education demands by its own definition. As William Deresiewicz, author of Excellent Sheep, puts it, the liberal arts “make you question everything you thought you knew about yourself . . . The process isn’t comfortable, but it is exhilarating . . . If it happens right, it feels like being broken open — like giving birth to yourself.”
Read the full story at Wharton Magazine.
—Francesco Salamone, W’26
Posted: June 27, 2025
