(Morris) EC student Max Handleman’s “classcards viewed” total surpassed the 1,500 mark last Sunday when he looked up RC student Erica Jamison’s classcard, a woman he met while working out in Shad, and the ten other RC students who went to Princeton, worked at Goldman Sachs, and are interested in cooking and travel.
“It’s taken up a lot of my time, but I’m really proud of my classcard accomplishments,” said Handleman, whose list of accomplishments includes knowing that James Tripplehorn prefers to be called “Jim” and that Jeanne Stevenson is conversant in German and is interested in “anything Texas – go Longhorns!”
Handleman believes his extensive classcard research has given him a better understanding of his classmates and has allowed him to be a better networker at school.
“When I meet a student, there’s a pretty good chance I have already scoped out his or her classcard,” Handleman said as he beamed with pride. “Because of my research, I’m able to focus my discussion on things that are important to that particular student. And I’m therefore able to make a better, more long-lasting connection.”
“For example, I remember meeting EC student Wang Dawei at the Mormon club talk titled ‘Who are the Mormons?’ Well, I didn’t bother with all the formalities of ‘What section are you in?’ and ‘What did you do before HBS?” I jumped right in to talking about family, scuba diving, snow skiing and international politics, because that’s what Wang is interested in.”
“Also, we spoke in simple Spanish, because Wang is only conversant in the language. At one point I asked him if he ever managed a team of 17 people and an annual budget of $8 million and he was like ‘Yeah, I did.
Let me tell you more about it.’ That is how you make a connection at HBS.”
Handleman’s classcard prowess is also believed to be useful for general conversation. “The other day I was at Redline and I was struggling in my talk with RC student Daphne David. But I salvaged it by asking her ‘Did you know that New F has five students who went to Harvard undergrad but Old F has ten?’ She was amazed with this and other data points like ‘Did you know that more than 60 students are interested in movies? And 13 students keep their home region private?’ I think she was pretty impressed.”
Ms. David has a different view of the alleged conversation.
According to David, “That Max guy must be a stalker or something because he comes up to me and was like ‘Tell me about Gary, Indiana, USA’ and ‘Let’s talk about interior decorating, marathons, volunteering and US History’ and ‘Is your partner Mike Tulewicki a boyfriend or fiancee?’ and ‘Do you like your apartment at 193 Harvard Street #5D?’ I was totally weirded out.”
“When I tried to end the conversation by going to the bathroom,’ his creepy response was ‘Did you know that nine people at HBS speak Farsi?'”
Handleman plans on studying the remaining 300 unread classcards by the end of next week, but fears that this may not be enough.
“19% of students don’t list interests or fill out the “duties” section on their classcards, so I feel I’m really not getting the complete picture.”
“But the great thing is that I just found out that I can access every student’s resume – which has even more important information. I started reading them last night.”
“Did you know that 312 students are ‘avid hikers’ and two EC students got 800s on the GMATs?”
