Other

Everything else, including notes about business school and travel.

Browse by tag Business school Humor Lessons Travel

  • Debrief

    Semester one is officially over. This is the most intense of the four terms, both in the number of classes and in the flurry of extra-curricular activity. Most of this has settled down, and the second term will probably be…

  • All quiet

    The student center is nearly deserted, with the only sound that of the fireplaces burning softly in the background, on yet another icy Boston evening. For first-year students four out of five final exams are behind us, and the one…

  • Home stretch

    All first-year students had their last case discussions today. During the next two days we have wrap-up classes for each of the five courses, and then we go into finals, one per day, roughly four hours each, for five days….

  • Break through

    Today’s Leadership and Organizational Behavior case was one of the most powerful discussions we’ve had yet as a section. For the first time, our conversation reached the point where, in the wake of an especially personal comment, someone had to…

  • Section advance

    One of the annual rituals for incoming HBS classes is the fall section retreat. This generally involves an excursion to a semi-rural part of New England in the company of almost all of your 90 section mates, plus a few…

  • The best medicine

    We laugh a lot in our section. I’d never considered this feature of HBS life before coming here, but it’s a plus. It’s not unusual for us to break out in laughter two or three times per class. This happens…

  • In the bubble

    One of the phenomena that comes with having a complete, self-contained campus is the HBS “bubble.” It’s very real, particularly for those who live on campus; our entire worlds can be found within a 2-minute walk of where we sleep….

  • More than meets the eye

    A word that is strangely absent from the HBS recruiting materials but that crops up with some regularity here is “transformational.” The MBA experience is designed to foster this transformation by setting up all the conditions and interactions needed to…

  • Minuteman

    Punctuality is not an option at HBS. This is a characteristic I find extremely appealing, though I suspect most prospective students are only dimly aware of it when they think of what student life is like. (It reminds me of…

  • Time capsule

    One of the most remarkable elements of President Faust’s speech yesterday was her allusion to a letter that had been left in the University archives by James Conant, then the president of Harvard, with the instruction that it be opened…