Ninety-hour weeks? No problem, he's been doing it for years.
For former Wisconsin basketball stand-out Clayton Hanson, the life of a full-time investment banker has come almost naturally.
""Hour-wise, if you compare schedules to a typical student-athlete—between practice, class, studying... depending on the time of the year, I would say they're pretty similar,"" he said.
The 2006 graduate has now permanently traded his basketball shoes for leather loafers and a job as an analyst with The Goldman Sachs Group in Chicago, one of the world's most prestigious investment banks.
The hours Hanson split between the basketball court and a finance and real estate double major during his tenure at UW-Madison seems to have paid off.
""He was a very, very intelligent player,"" said Wisconsin assistant men's basketball coach Gary Close. ""[He] picked up things quickly, just a real student of the game. He was probably our best defensive player—in addition to being a really good shooter—not because he was real quick or real athletic, he was just very smart and anticipated well.""
Playing for four years under two-time Big Ten Coach of the Year Bo Ryan, and alongside some of the best basketball players the Wisconsin program has seen—Sharif Chambliss, Devin Harris, Alando Tucker and Mike Wilkinson, to name a few—the walk-on-turned-scholarship Badger was anything but overshadowed.
""He was the first person I met when I transferred up to Madison, and we laughed about it because we both wanted No. 13,"" said teammate Sharif Chambliss, who transferred to UW-Madison from Penn State as a senior and played his final season with Hanson. ""We said if we'd shoot for it, we'd still be shooting right now.""
Hanson made a name for himself as both an athlete and a student on the team that won Wisconsin's first Big Ten Tournament in history (2004) and advanced to the Elite Eight the following season. In his senior season Hanson led the Big Ten in three-point shooting and was also named Academic All-Big Ten.
""When I think of Clayton, well, he obviously brought our team GPA up higher,"" Chambliss said. ""He was one of the hardest workers on and off the court""—""the kind of player you'd love to play with,"" as Close put it.
As his basketball days drew to a close at the end of the 2004-'05 season, Hanson just happened to be the kind of player Goldman Sachs was looking for as well.
After spending the summer of 2005 working for the company as an intern, he accepted a full-time analyst position in their consumer retail group, where he has been clocking his weekly 90-hours—give or take, he said, depending on the week and projects at hand—since July.
""I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, and I knew that going through a great program like this, with a company like Goldman Sachs, I wasn't going to close any doors, and most likely I'd probably open up some additional opportunities,"" he said.
Thanks in large part to the job's consuming hours, Hanson said the transition from full-time basketball to full-time banking during the last five months has been relatively smooth.
""I think that just from talking to some people, the consensus is that in your first five years out [of school], you're really focused on establishing your career,"" he said. ""Then five to 10 years out is where you really start to look back and miss things.""
For the time being, Hanson said the prediction holds true for him—all thoughts are focused on building a career. Instead, most of the post-graduation adjustments he is facing are those of any recent graduate—things like moving and keeping in touch with family and friends.
""There's a lot of things I miss about school,"" he said. ""But at the same time I'm excited. It's been just an awesome experience so far. It's a lot of hard work, but there's check points along the way that make you realize, ‘hey, I'm doing pretty cool work.'""
And although he's now a world away from the Kohl Center, the similarities between his college basketball days and current life at Goldman's Chicago office are striking.
""You're surrounded by people that are driven and working toward the same things you are,"" he said of his experience at Goldman thus far. ""If you were doing this on your own it'd be pretty tough, but you're working on teams and everybody's contributing, so that part of it makes it pretty manageable.""
Though the time he now spends on the court is, not surprisingly, a fraction of what it once was, Hanson still manages to find time in his weekends for a little bit of basketball, when he plays in a league with his co-workers.
""I view it as just kind of a chance to get out of the office and get a good workout in,"" he said. ""You kind of have to change your expectations, both for yourself and for the level of play because it's amazing how quickly you lose things.""
Anything he's lost in basketball, however, Hanson has certainly made up for at Goldman—though he's also the first to acknowledge the insanity of the job.
""It's pretty intense work,"" he said. ""I don't know if ‘normal' is the right word, [but] it's stuff I'm interested in ... If this was something that you kind of liked—and it's the same with sports in college—it's just not worth it,"" he said, ""you're just going to be killing yourself. But if it's something that kind of excites you and that you're driven by, then it's really rewarding.""
And as for the future, Hanson has committed to two years in his current position with Goldman, but beyond that, anything is possible.
""I just take it day by day at this point.""
