The last two days have been quite relaxed. Yesterday, I did nothing but sleep. Blissful. I couldn't imagine I'd be one of the "losers" publicly declaring this on my blog a year ago but here I am... In the evening I went out for dinner with VK, an EC friend whom I'd met at a Dinner on campus. For non-HBS people, a little note, EC stands for Elective Curriculum, that's what we call second years on this campus. Us, greenhorns are RCs, required curriculum. The three of us braved the drizzle to get ourselves some tapas.
I highly recommend Small Plates on Harvard Square. They started us off with these lovely crepes with mushroom and cheese and then we had some Sangria, some raclette which VK highly recommended I try given my love for cheese. Some pork ribs, bruschetta with pesto and two or three other things which were just as nice. VK, K and I chatted a lot, she's quite the globe trotter and she told us all about her first year where she travelled wherever not. She's planning a new year's trip to Argentina and a spring break trip to the Galapagos islands. She asked us to join. It sounds inviting, only if my student budget doesn't run out by then!
VK and I chatted a lot about FOMO ( Fear of Missing Out) and dealing with it. Basically, accepting that you can't be everything to everybody. There's no way you're going to rush to ALL the speaker sessions on campus, have seventy board positions, be a Baker Scholar and attend every networking dinner. The sooner you make your peace with that the better. I think I was majorly FOMOing till a couple of weeks ago, now I'm just chill. This is the last time I'm going to be at school and I want to tailor it just so that I have extremely fond memories when I look back. Nothing more, nothing less. Was walking back when I bumped into a friend from my dorm on the way back, there was a mixer at Tommy Doyle's and she asked me to come along. Didn't enjoy it too much. Don't really enjoy hanging out in divey bars where I can barely hear the other people speak anymore.
The weather eased up today. My friend from my section ME and I kept up our tradition of studying at Starbucks. Basically, she studies and I chatter and then we chatter and in the middle of it we get some work done. Hung out, working on our cases for a while and then came back to campus. I'd promised myself I was going to go back to Shad from today. Shad is our gym and I love their exercise classes! Today, there was a Zumba class. The instructor was Latin American and she switched from Salsa to cha cha cha to Bollywood dancing to my favorite *drumroll* Bellydancing... I went in feeling pooped and left feeling fresh and energized, can't go to sleep now. It was SO much fun!! Definitely going to do more of this.
Went over to D's after that, our sectionmate LV was hosting a potluck dinner for the ladies in the section at her place. A very cute place too, very nicely decorated with little things like a Mexican batik painting, Dutch wall art, and a whole bunch of other things. Very artistic. We had lasagna, pasta with pesto and pine nuts, lots of wine, a beef stew, cheese, hummus, a selection of breads and if you think I'm done we had four cakes for dessert. No less! One of us had her birthday and we celebrated it as well. Was nice hanging out with the girls and chatting about a whole bunch of stuff! D and I have decided we're going to do this much more often.
And now, I'm sitting down with my cases. Got to get some studying done at some point I guess, no?
Sunday, November 15, 2009
There are times...
When you've just got to stand up and say I no longer want my flag to hang on the walls of this classroom.
Let me explain, because this is one thing I don't want to be glib and blase about. It left a very huge impact on me and since this is my blog, I'm allowed to think aloud.
School has this rather nice rule where each section has people displaying their different flags on the walls of the classroom. The flags are "hung up" one night and then through lunch next day, different people make presentations about their countries. Ever been in a situation where travel agents were making a pitch for Mauritius versus Langkawi? Well, that's how I felt sitting through those presentations. Every moment my mind would go, dude I've got to go to Bulgaria, then oh my god, Brazil. Ok, maybe, Brazil, Bulgaria and squeeze in Colombia? OK let's just kick it and do a South America trip... oh but wait, then what happens to Greece or HongKong or Taiwan?
Which brings us to Taiwan. One of my best friends in the section is Taiwanese. And she wasn't allowed to have her flag up on the wall. This will make a long story short.
So, my friend made her presentation on Taiwan, she pasted a Taiwanese flag on her name card in class and life ambled on. What I guess we missed is how bad someone could potentially feel when you walked in to class and all your classmates were displaying their flags except you. Whether it was just or otherwise is for someone else to debate. We got back from a break and right when we were leaving class a French guy in our class stood up.
He said he felt it was unfair that we talk about leadership and we were all complicitly allowing this to happen, he said he was the only French guy in class and he wanted to take his flag down because he'd rather two people feel isolated than one. I think that action deserved serious respect. I mean anyone could have done it, but they didn't, what does that make the rest of us? Fence sitters? Or, just people who look the other way? When do you decide when you want to get involved?
Let me explain, because this is one thing I don't want to be glib and blase about. It left a very huge impact on me and since this is my blog, I'm allowed to think aloud.
School has this rather nice rule where each section has people displaying their different flags on the walls of the classroom. The flags are "hung up" one night and then through lunch next day, different people make presentations about their countries. Ever been in a situation where travel agents were making a pitch for Mauritius versus Langkawi? Well, that's how I felt sitting through those presentations. Every moment my mind would go, dude I've got to go to Bulgaria, then oh my god, Brazil. Ok, maybe, Brazil, Bulgaria and squeeze in Colombia? OK let's just kick it and do a South America trip... oh but wait, then what happens to Greece or HongKong or Taiwan?
Which brings us to Taiwan. One of my best friends in the section is Taiwanese. And she wasn't allowed to have her flag up on the wall. This will make a long story short.
So, my friend made her presentation on Taiwan, she pasted a Taiwanese flag on her name card in class and life ambled on. What I guess we missed is how bad someone could potentially feel when you walked in to class and all your classmates were displaying their flags except you. Whether it was just or otherwise is for someone else to debate. We got back from a break and right when we were leaving class a French guy in our class stood up.
He said he felt it was unfair that we talk about leadership and we were all complicitly allowing this to happen, he said he was the only French guy in class and he wanted to take his flag down because he'd rather two people feel isolated than one. I think that action deserved serious respect. I mean anyone could have done it, but they didn't, what does that make the rest of us? Fence sitters? Or, just people who look the other way? When do you decide when you want to get involved?
Saturday, November 14, 2009
A thing or two about Sugar
Look at the time stamp on each of the posts on this blog. Chances are it'll never be written at a sane hour- sane for normal people that is. Which isn't to say I'm not normal * gets defensive* but the life I'm leading is anything but.
Let me give you a little example, a friend of ours let's call him Vinay, wants to know what are the chances of his friend getting through to this school that we call home... so he sends out an email, to the entire Indian listserv, to do a "dipcheck".
The responses range from "imho" ( in my humble opinion) don't worry even I didn't know what it meant- "if he can get a 740 he should take it again." Read, I know the website says scores range from 500 to 770 but I HAVE to assert at this point what a huge perfectionist I am..
To " I got a 760 but everyone knows the Chinese and IITians are clever", followed by "Oh my god I didn't mean to spam everyone" Read, life is difficult when you're competing with IITians, add the Chinese to that and you've got a deadly mix of sambar noodles or some such.
To " 770 for me!" Yeah, take that bitch I'm 10 whole marks higher where does that put me y'all?!
To dead silence after this last response. Long may silence last.
Well, to give you a sneak preview of Sugar's approach to this blog- what you won't hear about is my GMAT score, we'll leave that to the IITians of the world to debate. Unfortunately, you will also not hear about hook ups and one night stands and business school lust. First, I'm a prude- well if you read my other blog you'll know I'm not but more importantly, well, I'm in what this lovely place glibly calls an LDR.
Long Distance Relationship- in this case my fiance is in India.
Which means Airtel is my new best friend.
Which means I see women at HBS and men playing their games around each other and abstain.
Which means I'm thankful to have someone in my life who pushed me to move abroad and live my life here and make the most of my opportunities. Take that, all you disbelievers in the concept of supportive male partners!
I'm your average girl. Seriously. I go on shopping binges. I love seafood and sangria. I PMS, I have mood swings, I want to be lonely and walk around on my own and I need people to hang around with. Personally, I'm getting to that stage where I find a lot of my old habits have slowly died a death... don't like bars anymore for instance, like lounges better. I'm slowly acknowledging I'm a grown up- commitment and love does that to you. I'm emotional- terribly so.
But in spite of all this, I'm intelligent, ambitious, care about doing well and that's why I'm writing this blog- in the hope that it speaks to you and says that women don't need to trade off between being girlie and doing well. Much as I love watching them, I guess I'm sick of sitcoms, books and shows which represent women only as people who discuss clothes and relationships. What about women like Lemon and me?
So that's it- that's going to be my story- a little edgy, a little intense, but very emotional, caring, impulsive and a tad bit clumsy.
Let me give you a little example, a friend of ours let's call him Vinay, wants to know what are the chances of his friend getting through to this school that we call home... so he sends out an email, to the entire Indian listserv, to do a "dipcheck".
The responses range from "imho" ( in my humble opinion) don't worry even I didn't know what it meant- "if he can get a 740 he should take it again." Read, I know the website says scores range from 500 to 770 but I HAVE to assert at this point what a huge perfectionist I am..
To " I got a 760 but everyone knows the Chinese and IITians are clever", followed by "Oh my god I didn't mean to spam everyone" Read, life is difficult when you're competing with IITians, add the Chinese to that and you've got a deadly mix of sambar noodles or some such.
To " 770 for me!" Yeah, take that bitch I'm 10 whole marks higher where does that put me y'all?!
To dead silence after this last response. Long may silence last.
Well, to give you a sneak preview of Sugar's approach to this blog- what you won't hear about is my GMAT score, we'll leave that to the IITians of the world to debate. Unfortunately, you will also not hear about hook ups and one night stands and business school lust. First, I'm a prude- well if you read my other blog you'll know I'm not but more importantly, well, I'm in what this lovely place glibly calls an LDR.
Long Distance Relationship- in this case my fiance is in India.
Which means Airtel is my new best friend.
Which means I see women at HBS and men playing their games around each other and abstain.
Which means I'm thankful to have someone in my life who pushed me to move abroad and live my life here and make the most of my opportunities. Take that, all you disbelievers in the concept of supportive male partners!
I'm your average girl. Seriously. I go on shopping binges. I love seafood and sangria. I PMS, I have mood swings, I want to be lonely and walk around on my own and I need people to hang around with. Personally, I'm getting to that stage where I find a lot of my old habits have slowly died a death... don't like bars anymore for instance, like lounges better. I'm slowly acknowledging I'm a grown up- commitment and love does that to you. I'm emotional- terribly so.
But in spite of all this, I'm intelligent, ambitious, care about doing well and that's why I'm writing this blog- in the hope that it speaks to you and says that women don't need to trade off between being girlie and doing well. Much as I love watching them, I guess I'm sick of sitcoms, books and shows which represent women only as people who discuss clothes and relationships. What about women like Lemon and me?
So that's it- that's going to be my story- a little edgy, a little intense, but very emotional, caring, impulsive and a tad bit clumsy.
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