Guaro Big, But Also, Go Home

500 RCs. One country. Nine days. Welcome to Colombia.

I’m sitting in the Orlando airport, smack in the middle of a four-hour layover, as I start this article, feeling a level of exhaustion best characterized by the fact that, when setting my alarm for 3:30 a.m. this morning, I said to myself, “Four hours? That’s more than enough,” considering the hours I’ve kept this week — and I’m an eight-hour sleeper. So forgive me, readers, if this doesn’t meet the bar for coherence you would expect from a former consultant. And forgive me, Professor Mugford, for whatever I say if you cold-call me tomorrow. (Note: I missed the cold call the next day, arriving five minutes too late to class.)

I don’t know if my inability to make sense of this trip — by which I mean file away its happenings in a neat album of goings-on with candy cane captions for posterity — is purely due to the mental fugue I’m in. I’ve been picking at this thread all week and found myself unable to unravel it. Here’s my first thought on why that is.

It’s All So, SO Much: The HBS Way of Scheduling

In true HBS fashion, where even a hot date gets a calendar block, I — and 500 other HBS students — showed up to Colombia armed with spreadsheets accounting for every daily activity, with hardly any free time on the books.

“I’d scheduled all my dinners before I came to Colombia. One of my favorite things to do is have dinner with friends and eat good food, and I don’t think I can spend the whole trip with the same people!” Riva told me.

“I didn’t do too much scheduling myself, but stuff was scheduled!” Sofia added.

“I just call Khushi to find out what I’m supposed to be doing at any time,” Shaswat explained when asked about his lunch plans.

In essence, a calendar existed for everyone, whether they were personally privy to it or not. While a vacation implies “getting away” from one’s day-to-day, Colombia defied that expectation by transplanting over 50% of the RC batch en masse to a new location. Running into batchmates in the hotel lobby, on the streets, in the local pharmacy buying electrolytes, and in the bathroom of Andrés Carne de Res lent to the humming, slightly frenetic energy of Spangler pervading the streets of Colombia.

“I planned events by the hour,” Ella shared. “I never had more than 15 minutes to get ready.”

I often unsuccessfully defend the MBA student’s “busyness” to my friends still holding down real jobs. While being a target of derision for the outside world, in the context of this trip, I feel it represents a carpe diem sentiment I’ve never felt so strongly. Isn’t it commendable, waking up after two hours of sleep, falling asleep on a bus to a rainforest, slipping down some rocks hungover in the blazing sun? The haze of exhaustion settled softly on me that week, numbing my ability to worry, think beyond today, or even be anything other than honest — the real “high” at the center of this trip.

“The day after the flower party, I went to throw up in Guatapé and had to pay to use the bathroom. After hearing me, the lady managing the loo gave me my money back,” a friend laughed. “I definitely mortgaged my next day for the party, but it was worth it!”

“People are more present,” Gabriella remarked when asked what she loved about the trip. 

When your horizon shrinks to the next two days in a city, the next week in the country, the next two hours of surviving seasickness or an overambitious hike — people are in the moment. I measure the success of a year in my life by how many days I remember in it; this trip far surpasses that bar. I have so much information in my head for each day that I can’t even recall it all.

The flip side of this zealous appetite for everything is a tendency to overbook and overschedule one’s time. Students at HBS go through a novel delusion for two years of pricing our time so highly, possibly because we’re aware of the high price tag we’ve paid for every minute of this delirious freedom — around $7/hour.

“People were collecting Partifuls like Pokémon cards. There would be 100 ‘goings,’ and only about half the people would show up. HBSers love optionality,” Ella reflected. This led to last-minute cancellations, events and conversations left halfway, and constant recalculations of how best to allocate one’s time — sometimes to rest and sometimes to something better. In this intensely social environment, what does it mean to be among the people in the half-filled party bus or largely empty dinner? It belies our tendency to think of ourselves as only a small part of a collective, which is ironic for a group so strong on its collective image.

Whom Do You Spend Your Time With?

Over the course of far too many flights largely taken over by HBS students, I inevitably found myself seated next to someone I didn’t know too well. This was the most democratic mingling experience of the trip, with LATAM Airlines’ abstract check-in process deciding who ended up where. Doing what any of us does best, I struck up a conversation. When I asked how my seat-mate was finding the trip, he said, “I’m finding it to be a nice mix of depth and breadth in terms of meeting people,” which reminded me of graph theory — and the fact that I never scored more than 80% in any math course in undergrad.

Once I finished grappling with my insecurities regarding math (I submitted one of my college entrance papers — JEE — for math, so empty it was practically not attempted), I could move on to the real human question behind that quantitative statement.

Starting with the official trek of 300 strong, organized by Vaova, the trip afforded the most opportunity to mingle broadly by simply signing up for activities and showing up.

“I think a lot of people sign up for the official trek because of the security it affords them,” a friend remarked at the dinner table.

“I just booked activities and showed up. It took off a lot of the pressure of planning,” said Alejandro.

“So many people I knew signed up for the official trek. It afforded me the convenience of knowing I was going to events with people I already knew. I could just join in on people’s plans. I didn’t make any plans of my own!” Nick shared.

What are you paying for with the official trek? Most importantly, the flexibility of being around 300 people — with the real magic being in their buy-in.

“I thought I had met everyone I was going to meet at HBS, but it felt like yacht week again — everyone was so willing to meet new people.”

“I’ve spent so much time with people in my section I hadn’t spent time with before.”

“This trip does a great job of shaking up pre-drawn boundaries, like those of the section, by putting people in different activities or mingling with a friend’s roommate.”

Then, of course, there are the parties. The flower party, one of the three included in the official trek, was reportedly “so much fun it gave people not even in Colombia FOMO.” (I, not on the official trek, went to bed at 12 a.m., resentfully telling myself that I needed the sleep. The events of the party shall remain behind a paywall.) If we believe Modigliani-Miller’s theory of perfect markets, the value of a ticket was $100.

Trailing behind the official trek was a series of “shadow treks,” the biggest of which was Section C’s, with 64 people staying in similar hotels to the main trek and several Airbnbs full of others (Section D had ~15 people, for starters). Paying ~$800-$1,000 less on average (considering just flights and accommodation, not including parties, food, and the inevitable large alcohol tab), shadow treks are the ultimate trade-off of breadth versus depth.

“I got very close to the group I was staying with — one week together in Airbnbs, and now I know that my roommate likes [redacted],” Gaurang declared (I was unable to collect comments from his trekmates).

“It was a little bit like Cape Cod, where you tend to go for activities with your group,” said Gabriella.

“When I started planning this trek, I just wanted to plan a trip with my friends,” explained Vidhan, one of the organizers of Section C’s shadow trek. “The panic around the official trek, the way prices shot up — we decided we’d do it on our schedule. Itay had been before, he handled the itinerary, and I took care of the logistics. We initially reached out to some of our friends, promising them a good deal and asking them to sign up. We negotiated with the same hotels released by Vaova. I’ve realized [that], at HBS, once something gains momentum, everyone wants in. Eventually, we had more people than we anticipated, but we didn’t want to say no to anyone. I must have exchanged 150 emails, all in Spanish, using Google Translate to set it up. It was worth it, to come to breakfast every day and see all my friends together.”

Nothing HBS is complete without discussing the section. Sitting together at dinner, I found myself privy to yet another discussion about which sections were strongest and which ones were struggling. With one month left in the RC year, Colombia felt like a test of unity, a premonition for the year to come.

“Many sections crumble after Colombia,” confided an EC.

From sharing an open spreadsheet to coordinate activities to organizing section-wide events and dinners, to rallying on the dance floor after sharing “the move” for the night, it became starkly evident where each section saw itself. I’ve always found the section to be a saving grace that HBS offers, with pre-programmed events and friendships handed to you as a neat package on Day 1, alleviating the anxiety of two years of networking.

“Not everyone is bought in,” an RC noted with veiled mentions of cliques forming. But where does one draw the line between a clique and a friend group? It’s a self-unraveling paradox, where the collective section draws the boundaries of social duty, but any subgroup can redraw it.

What HBS gives you in expansiveness, it takes from you in discomfort. I always come back to a line an EC told me when I joined: “When you come back to your room, no matter how many friends you have calling on you outside, you’re always alone.”

For all the dazzling nights of pithy conversation, drunken camaraderie on the dance floor, and sunlit shenanigans with a new group of friends, there will be moments of asking questions of an empty chair, missing an absent friend at dinner. You will ask yourself if you can really take that cab back alone, intoxicated at 2:00 a.m. You’ll hear murmurs of events no one invited you to, catch glimpses on Instagram, overhear a stray line the next day, or even pass by a party on the street. You’ll ask yourself, “Who’s really there for me?”

“I think maybe everyone feels this way,” a friend assented when I wondered aloud if I should include this part in the article. In the end, maybe I’ll leave it in — if not everyone feels this way, at least it’s not no one. I felt it.

The Moments Outside the Clean-Cut HBS Experience

“I feel like a lot of social barriers were broken down over this trip,” Ella mused. “I don’t know if it was the booze or the weather.”

“I feel like people are so uptight about dating at HBS — that changed a bit in Colombia,” another RC observed. “I heard the worst pickup lines, including one from a guy who couldn’t decide if the conversation was business or pleasure. ‘If I was a CEO, you would be my personal assistant.’”

“There was plenty of TOFU and MOFU, but I don’t know how much BOFU,” reflected another, academically. (For those who have erased MKT from their memory, TOFU = Top of Funnel, MOFU = Middle of Funnel, and BOFU = Bottom of Funnel. Yes, we’re discussing dating, and no, I don’t know what each one signifies, but I believe that was another topic for debate).

Known for their scintillating conversation (read: inability to shut it), even the loquacious HBSer found themselves stymied by their nights in the Land of the Lotus Eaters.

“At some point, people would just say, ‘run it back,’ when asked what was up,” Ella shared. “It was like their mouths were in gear, but their minds were in neutral.”

Traveling is inherently a messy phenomenon. Throwing oneself to the mercy of a new place and the vagaries of a lack of routine — much as one might believe this is an experience prescribed like FIN1 — this exists beyond guardrails. 

Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor of a boat being violently rocked at sea, drenched, fighting off (in some cases unsuccessfully) seasickness is as far outside the purview of a semi-professional relationship of peers as you can imagine. Luis running back and forth to fetch life jackets, navigating a ladder to the lower floor, and squeezing through a narrow corridor to the front of the boat, whose rooms were filling with water.

Caught by the police on suspicion of drugs, checked with hands behind your back against a car, and then let go. Not only were there no substances, but there wasn’t even a single peso in the wallet.

Losing a passport.

The Small Moments

“One of my favorite days was a day I took to myself, worked at a nice coffee shop, and got lunch with Alex and Daniel,” Nick noted.

As I think back to my week, I go back to a day walking around Medellín unplanned with two friends, ending up in a plaza washed clean by rain which, pointlessly, reminded me of Delhi. We spent two hours in a coffee shop getting to know each other better and ended the day with dinner among friends.

What’s the point of traveling so far from home, only to feel nostalgic joy at its memory? I don’t think you can really control what the small moments are, but against the backdrop of madness that is HBS, I think we all need our small moments of unfiltered joy.

Ramya Vijayram (MBA '26) is originally from Chennai, India. She graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, with a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Biotechnology. Prior to the Harvard MBA, Ramya worked at Warburg Pincus in Mumbai, India, and McKinsey and Co. in India.