Memories of life at HBS for the last two years and especially the classroom environment fostered by the school’s teaching philosophy were the hot topics among student speakers at this year’s HBS Class Day Wednesday.
In the featured student address, Daniel Senor, OB, stressed the HBS’ teaching model’s heavy emphasis on peer learning, citing poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once said, “I pay the schoolmaster, but it’s the schoolchildren who educate my son.”
“While the degree we will receive will be conferred by the trustees of Harvard University, it should bear the signatures of the other people in this class,” he added.
In closing, Senor called on his classmates to repay the people who served as mentors to them by actively mentoring others.
In a joint address, Student Association co-presidents Stephen Moret, OB, and Mini Desai, OK, remembered everything from the fear they felt before opening the decision letter from HBS admissions to the complex Elective Curriculum course selection process, which they described as a “cross between the Florida election ballot and an itemized tax return.”
Shalini Srivastava, OG, presented awards to four professors selected by the class as outstanding, noting that the HBS faculty generally “woke us up, in more ways than one.”
In the required curriculum, Mihir Desai was recognized for his work in first-year finance, while strategy guru Michael Porter received an award for his work in Competition and Strategy with OI. In the elective curriculum, awards went to Benjamin Esty for Large-scale Investment, and Andre Perold for Investment Management.
