The start of a new school year is leading to bold new interpretations of standard HBS norms by this year’s EC class.
For starters, “Section Events”, which last year meant, “something that the whole section is invited to,” now means, “Something that you’ll get an evite for, but are actually not expected to attend.” Creative ways of getting around seeing sectionmates you don’t were hoping wouldn’t show up include creating an exclusive VIP room in parties and putting a fake address and wrong start time on the evite sent to some people but not others. “I just love seeing the whole section get together!” gushed EC Lizzie Kinnaman, “Unless of course, that includes that witch that sat in the sky-deck last year, or that guy that always hogged air-time, or, well, about 70 other people in the section. Aside from that though, we should totally all get together more often!”
Creative license is also being taken with the definition of what constitutes an “excused absence”, with friend’s weddings, friends of friend’s weddings, and pet neutering appointments all now being seen as perfectly valid reasons to miss a class. “Yeah, I know that we’re only supposed to miss class if we’re like, lying in the ICU unit in critical condition or something,” said EC John Scannel, “But there was an on-campus presentation last week for a company that I might want to work for, even though I’ve never really heard of their company or even their industry before. The thing is, the presenter’s first name was ‘Jeff’, and I used to know a guy named Jeff in college, so I figured it was a pretty strong sign that I should ditch class in order to attend.”