1. Teach a classmate something about your country, state or hometown
2. Do something that scares you (e.g. hangliding, wallclimbing, asking a sectionmate on a date)
3. Learn a new skill unrelated to your MBA (squash, skiing, flip cup, how to tie a knot in a cherry stem with your tongue…)
4. Take all of the keys off of your laptop and move them around to improve your typing skills
5. Go to class not having read the case at all, just so you chill out a bit about case preparation by finding out it isn’t so bad
6. Visit Boston (you think I’m joking..?)
7. Have a conversation with a Professor about something unrelated to the course
8. Write an article for the Harbus (it can’t be hard if they let me do it!)
9. Understand the bit in the TOM Cranberry case about trucks (including the graph)
10. Stop being impressed by people who know Excel shortcuts
11. Stop being impressed by people who did Economics at undergrad and talk a lot in BGIE
12. Stop being impressed by ex-bankers who understand FIN
13. Stop being impressed by ex-consultants and their phenomenal ability to spout bunk
14. (Americans) Stop being impressed by how much International students know about International events
15. (International Students) Stop being surprised by how little Americans know about International events-can you name all 50 states?
16. (International Students) Stop making fun of how little Americans know about their own history. It’s not their fault.
17. (Americans) Stop being impressed by how much International students know about U.S. history
18. Have lunch with some prospective students, and remember what it was like to feel that enthusiastic about HBS
19. Go to a Red Sox game
20. Go to a Celtics game
21. Go to a Bruins game
22. Go to a Harvard football game (and tailgate)
23. Reveal to your professor that you did your thesis on the topic of the case under discussion, just to see the look of fear in their eyes
24. Read a book recommended to you by a classmate
25. Try a completely different look (haircut, beard, goth make-up, all three…)
26. Go to an interview not knowing what the company does to test your ability to think on your feet
27. Disagree completely and vocally with someone in your section during class
28. Disagree completely and vocally with one of your professors
29. Say something in class that you think may offend people
30. Go to a party on a boat
31. Go to a very full party in a too-small dorm room
32. Help someone in your section prepare for an exam
33. Seriously consider a complete career change
34. Go on a retreat at the place in Vermont that has the hot tub under the dancefloor
35. Sign up for an online photo gallery (pixamo, smugmug, etc.) safe in the knowledge that you will stop using it within a month
36. Sign up for online DVD rental (e.g. Netflix) and then realise that you will never have time to watch DVDs.
37. Go to a restaurant knowing nothing about it except the name
38. Throw a party
39. Sit on Spangler lawn at night and talk to the rabbits
40. Add to the impoverished student image by spending Spring Break sailing round the British Virgin Islands
41. Start a campaign (e.g. for condom machines in the restrooms)
42. Put up a poster of Milton Friedman on top of your image of Che Guevara
43. Buy some “cool” snow shoes
44. Donate some “old” snow shoes to charity a week later
45. Buy a piece of Harvard branded clothing
46. Vow to never wear your Harvard branded clothing off campus
47. Come up with a wildly unrealistic business idea that at 4am you are determined to quit your MBA for and by 11am you have forgotten
48. Take a photograph you couldn’t show your parents
49. Allow yourself to be persuaded to go to a party that you really don’t want to go to
50. Have a conversation with every single person in your section