It’s nearly Easter. Spring has sprung. Shouldn’t we be seeing some Section Love to report on by now? Sadly, your correspondent has failed to detect any romantic blossoms in the Garden of K-sorry, mere Cohort Love doesn’t count-so this bulletin must focus instead on the public activities of the finest class to grace HBS in living memory.
This week’s Section Guru Speaker Series featured Carl Harris, who generously gave of his time and effort to run a tutorial session on the ridiculously complicated FIN1 Netflix case. Awestruck poets in the audience remarked how the McKinsey man’s presentation materials were worthy of a professional consulting project and must surely have consumed more than the two hours’ prep time he admitted to. Well worth a round of applause.
Such generosity did not, however, grant Carl any concessions in the cut-and-thrust of classroom debate. On offering his own unique interpretation of JJM’s market research data during the Pepcid AC case, the poor lad was floored by a heavy tackle from Aussie Bruiser Paul Tranter: “If you were right, Carl I’d agree with you. But you’re wrong!” We trust such robust treatment doesn’t bring about a recurrence of Carl’s recent sickness.
Other classroom stars of late include Jon Rousseau, who earned a just ovation for his 25-minute Continental White Cap LEAD opening. Prof Nitin Nohria’s probing questions rained down, but Jon just kept the content coming and-more importantly-the nonchalant air intact. In normal circumstances, Bong “Butt Man” Choi would have scooped the section comedian’s award, but this week even Bong couldn’t match the comic timing of our faculty. Their best lines were reserved for the women of the worm deck. No sooner had one professor suggested that a certain student enjoyed having her butt kissed, another had managed to infer sweetly that Nicole Hanrahan’s mother was a cyber-porn junkie! Perish the thought, Nicole. Maybe the prof in question was just evening the score-didn’t you shark him in class a few days ago?
On the faculty theme, our TOM professor demonstrated a healthy sense of humor on April 4-Sandra Sucher Scarf Day, when the entire section, girls and boys alike, modeled dashing feminine neckwear in sartorial tribute to our instructor. Such evidence of professorial humor must have come as a relief to daring Ed Rep Anand Radhakrishnan, now famed for his barbed remark to Prof Sucher in the midst of multimedia meltdown in her Tyrrell Pizza review class: “You mean you didn’t beta-test it?” Never fear, Prof Sucher came good in the end, and the class was treated to a display of four fine pizza websites. Kudos to the winning team of Keyne Monson, Lou diLorenzo, Nicole Hanrahan (her again), and Jos‚ Fernandez, whose astonishing graphics had to be seen to be believed.
Who says the Kids of K get up to no good? Volunteer coordinator Olga Swiatkiewicz convinced nine Ks to do plenty good last weekend as part of Project Outreach. Saturday saw Olga and K-mates Campbell, Russell, Goepfer, Gerster, Danforth, Evans, and Morrish (plus family) report for forestry duty clearing trails with the Metropolitan District Commission in Needham. One exhausting day moving rocks, sawing timber and (best of all) feeding whole trees through a terrifying Fargo-style chipper later, smiles were abundant as the chain gang basked in the warm glow of consciences salved.
As this article goes to press, our very own Mark Plunkett is sitting alone in a dark room somewhere, chewing his nails and awaiting the results of the SA Presidential Poll. Imagine having the SA President in class. Now THAT would be something to write about next week! Who needs Section Love after all?
