Business school

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….

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…

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…

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…

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….

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…

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…

At HBS all courses are taught in tiered classrooms with U-shaped desks. A first-year class has five rows of these, which take on their own names in HBS slang. At the very top is the skydeck, whose vantage point allows…

Over the last few days I’ve been fortunate to have some long and substantial discussions with classmates, both on campus and at the Christian Fellowship retreat in New Hampshire. Last night I was talking with a friend in a dormitory…

These are some of the busiest days of my life that I can remember. A lot of us are experiencing utter exhaustion. Nevertheless things remain, interestingly, exhilarating.