EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece appears in the April 24, 2006, issue of National Review.
Director of Summer Programs
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.
140 Broadway
New York, N.Y. 10005
April 10, 2008
To Whom It May Concern:
I am a current Yale junior seeking a position in your summer intern program.
My background as a part-time spokesman for the former government of Afghanistan prepared me well for a job at Brown Brothers Harriman, and I feel that my language skills–I speak eleven languages: English and ten Pashtun-based dialects–and my organizational abilities–I was responsible for all internal and external communications for the government, and I was chief “go-to” guy for organizing stonings, whore lynchings, and the crushing of homosexuals beneath large boulders–are a strong fit for the fast-paced world of equity capital markets.
While at Yale I have concentrated mostly on studying political science and philosophy, but I have strong “quant” skills and an ability to work well with numbers and complicated metrics. During the last six months of my work in government, I served as comptroller of the currency as well as chancellor of the Taliban Savings Bank in Kabul. Although many of my supervisors are currently missing and/or presumed dead, a good deal of my “direct reports” are incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and are therefore technically “reachable” for reference purposes. I would be glad to facilitate this.
Having spent so many years in the nonprofit world of government service, I believe that the time is right for me to explore opportunities in other areas, and the possibility of continued learning and growth at the “crème de la crème” of private banks, Brown Brothers, is exciting. I look forward to the challenge.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I will telephone you early next week to follow up.
Sincerely,
Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi
Summer Associate Program
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
51 West 52nd Street
New York, N.Y. 10019
April 10, 2008
To Whom It May Concern:
I am a junior at Yale University (class of 2009) who has maintained a long and deep interest in law, the judiciary, and legal affairs. For that reason, I am applying to be a summer associate at your firm.
In my capacity as spokesman for the former government of Afghanistan, I developed a fascination with the inner workings of American jurisprudence. Many times my colleagues and I would marvel over such concepts as “privacy” and “free speech” and “no crushing of gays under big boulders” and other such American ideals. In my work for the government, I was tasked with explaining and clarifying the governing philosophy of a classical Islamic leadership; that experience prepared me well to work in your corporate litigation department.
I am an organized and tireless “detail freak”–I occasionally annoy my friends with my attention to such details as Koranic law and justice, and my wife often complains of my 24/7 work ethic when I allow her to speak or look at me directly. . . .
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