You’ve just turned off your HP 12c and handed in your FRC exam and realized that those 40 questions (and a couple of confidential letters from your profs) are what you have been stressing over the last several weeks. After all of the section bar crawls this week, now is a good time to step back and think about what your HBS transformational experience is all about.
You have probably come to the conclusion that we are ALL two’s. Sure we might get a one in a course, but we are just as likely to get a three – and what is the average of one & three? Given the inevitable, you might begin to wonder: what exactly do you have to look forward to? You might actually be pleasantly surprised. When was the last time you could ask a CEO of a Fortune 500 company a pressing question or learn about a country from its Prime Minister? These are all things that have occurred within a 10-minute walk from your classroom but that you might have been oblivious to as you pored over your Cranberry case.
On a more personal level, you might have a list of normal HBS folks who you have not seen or heard from since Modern Capitalism. Having memorized all of the classcards of your fellow sectionmates (the good, the bad, and the uber-inflated) now might also be the time to venture off into non-section territory and have a dinner or drinks with one of these potential “friends” for life. On the flip side, now might also be the time to stop canceling on people because you haven’t quite cracked that marketing case. And there is that $300 you spent on clubs this year.
Wouldn’t it be nice to finally attend one of those Wine and Cuisine activities on a Tuesday; or how about one of those Public Speaking seminars that you signed up for?
As you stop to think about your to-do list, I do want to mention the inevitable recruiting season that is just around the corner. Before you start tackling those cover letters you might want to remember that your classmates are the best source of information on companies as well as on parties. Without their invaluable support and information the case method just would not work and the same rationale might be applied to HBS life in general.
