To my loyal column reader,
It has finally come down to this, my last anonymous article for the Harbus. From now on, I will have to put my name at the end of my articles, and risk public ridicule, humiliation, and potential persecution by those that disagree with my views. I find it hard to imagine that anyone would ever disagree with me, but comments in class seem to have proven otherwise. Oh well, the anonymity has been nice, but all good things must come to an end. (That “good things” comment is from my perspective, if it’s been torture for you to read this column for the last 12 months, too bad.)
I will apologize to all of you that had to bear with me through both RC and EC hell weeks. Only my summer employer and whatever poor soul finally gives me a full time job will have suffered more than you. I also apologize to anyone I referenced by name, nickname, or ridiculous action performed while at HBS. Oh, I’m not apologizing for ridiculing you, I’m apologizing for not getting to enough of you. It’s just that the list was so long that I only got to some people and did not spread the humiliation around evenly.
As a parting gift for slogging through all the verbal rubbish that has poured from brain onto the Harbus pages, I will leave you with some hard-learned pearls of wisdom that I have collected thus far.
1. No matter how much you think you will like the courses, DO NOT sign up for four paper/project classes in any one term of your EC year. There is no method humanly possible for me to adequately convey how serious I am about this. I have spent the last week doing everything short of falsifying interviews (I said everything short of breaking community standards, relax) to try to get my projects done. I have recently become intimately knowledgeable with the requirements for hitting the academic screen. I now know where I will be taking my threes (that’s right, there’s an “s” on there for a reason), so for those of you in my classes, there is probably one less person you need to worry about. I’m taking one for the team. Or many of them, as the case may be.
2. Each of you will probably say at least one absurd thing in each one of their classes. Try to get it over with early because it is much easier to relax and enjoy the class once you have done it. And besides, you will remember it far more distinctly than anyone else will (unless someone is kind enough to immortalize it in skydecks for you). You’re welcome, OE.
3. Reading your cases is a good idea. Reading your cases on days when you get cold-called is a better idea. Reading your cases and having a study group that can teach you everything you missed (sometimes this is a disturbingly high percentage of the material in any given case) is the best idea.
4. It took me until very recently to discover the plentiful resources at the Library at Kresge (remember all of those papers from takeaway #1?), but it has proven to be very useful, and everyone there is extremely helpful. Last week, I used microfilm for the first time in my life, and it wasn’t nearly as painful as I had expected. My doctors are predicting that I will recover to 80% of my pre-microfilm self within three to six weeks.
5. You will never have the opportunity to participate in this many drinking games again, so take advantage of these last few precious chances. One note of caution though, no matter how tempting those scorpion bowls at the Kong look, it’s never a good idea for two people to challenge a group of four, five, or ten to a race. And if you happen to win, this is not a good time for you show your magnanimity and acquiesce to a rematch so that they can try to regain their honor. What if there are only three people you ask? Well that’s another story completely, let the games begin!
6. Let me end by assuring you, some how, some way, we will all graduate. Eventually. I think. There have been/will be days when we question whether we will make it. There will be days when we question whether we even want to make it. There will be days when we will want to get more than four hours of sleep and it will seem like a better idea just to stay in bed. All I can tell you is that if I have made it this far, then you can certainly make it through to the end.
Well, that’s it. That’s all I’ve learned in 16 months, so that’s all I have to share. The collective HBS faculty, and any company that succumbs to my employment requests sincerely hopes that term IV is a real barn-burner. It has been a pleasure downloading my brain into our newspaper or The Harbus for the past year. Have a great holiday, and I will look forward to reading the phenomenal articles by the incoming That Guy in January. He should prove to be funnier, more entertaining, more insightful, more up to date with campus gossip, but sadly less Canadian. Or maybe not. Keep reading to find out.
Sincerely,
The Publisher’s Boyfriend.
P.S. I am a CoMa survivor and I have the t-shirt to prove it.
