Skip to main content

Flying with time

It seems I just got here and next week the flight will take me back. The most worrying thing is that I have five finals before getting on that plane and the amount of studying is still pretty much at zero. I guess being a banker ruined my studying habits and I now do not believe in the mystique of studying in advance. I have a feeling the memory may fail me and so the afternoon before does seem like a really appealing studying timeframe for me. The truth is, it is not worth to do much more for what I am aiming for. Harvard has thought me one really good thing by now, one thing that will be crucial for every single exam I sit through: being top of the class is being too much of an over-achiever. More of an over-achiever than trying to get into Harvard itself. It is not that cool. Being top 10% is something that should only happen if it comes out naturally. The odds of that happening here are way lower than in most places I have been before. As such, after striving to be in that top piece all of my life, I now know that the marginal benefit is lower and lower as time goes by. Moreover, I would not mind the small marginal benefit if it was not for the so high marginal cost that makes my NPV so negative (yes, I am taking a finance course). And that cost has been growing exponentially. Time is at a premium here and, as someone close to me would put it, sleeping just takes too much time. So I guess I will enjoy the ride through the finals, fly my way around them and try to start putting some bags around the Christmas tree as we go!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

It is official, I now like Malbec

Yesterday the internet in Argentina did not cooperate so no update. The day in Mendoza was great, with the nice and small family Vineyard of Altos de Hormigas being one of my favourites. They were very nice and the Malbec reserva the one that finally convinced me to like Malbec! We still had one more vineyard to go, Familia Zucatti, where we had a great lunch but the tours was already too much, we prefered to walk around on our own. But again, very different and very worth it! Today, we added Tevia to the group (after she came in my room at 5am) and repeated the Cemeterio since Tev and Shilps had not seen it, and then Malba. Surprise, surprise. Buenos Aires is not a small city but we still managed to run into Nitin and Ted in the Museum! We had a nice lunch with them and went for some more sightseeing in the afternoon. We went to Plaza de Mayo where the Casa Rosa is, walked down Calle Florida, the shopping street and up to Plaza San Martn for an excellent night view of the city. No

Cover Letters

When it takes you six hours to write a cover letter, what the hell happened? I can find a handful of explanations and let you decide i) I have a hard case to sell; ii) I am too full of myself and spending too much time praising my beloved skills and experience; iii) I don’t know the company well and need to spend hours educating myself first; iv) I am watching NCIS and House in parallel, v) I am a perfectionist. For the ones that know me best, I can bet you started with number v). Bernardo is clearly betting on number iv) though wondering why not my favourite Law & Order SVU. It is nice of you to think that but, even though it is true that those are pieces of me to blame, number i), ii) and iii) also apply. First, I do have a hard case to sell. As impressive at it may seem to have worked in Morgan Stanley, how do I guarantee that it is not because the market is down that I am not going back there. As impressive as it may seem to have worked on the ground in Mozambique, what does i

What would you do?

It is the new buzz word - or should I say sentence. What would you do if you were not afraid. I like to think I am not - I guess man or woman, we all do. But my answer to that question would not come blank for me - at all. And it is not being afraid because I am a woman, it is really because life can pose a threat big enough to some less expected things. The one that comes to mind today is ' I would write my book '. Note that I did not say I would write 'a' book but 'my' book. In fact I should probably even say 'one of them'. I think i have started 3 real ones by now, and 2 have a decent shot as well. But the reality I face is - what if no one wants to read it? Who will want to read what I have to say?  When I was a kid, I would write a ton of poetry. I wrote the first poem on record about the moon and the stars and as I received some first prize on my fourth grade, my parents found out about it. For many years, no matter what I bought as a gift for my d