Home Away From Home

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There is just too much on my mind. At all times. And it seems to have gotten worse as I do not have more cases to read, not deterred by the fact that I have exams in less than 48 hours. I know, reading that book last night did not really help. So in one of these discussions about Social Enterprise that I attended, someone recommended a book called “Leaving Microsoft to Change the World”. It is written by John Wood who, after realizing the dimension of the illiteracy problem in Nepal vs. the dimension of the problems he used to have such as will Microsoft beat IBM or not, left Microsoft to create Room to Read. I opened the book at midnight, thinking I would have a quick read before an early night of sleep and, an hour and a half, some tears and strong heart beats later, I realized how much it moved me. If I ever have any doubts whether I am going in the right direction, a moment like this makes it all very clear to me. He has not even left Microsoft yet and I can already feel the thrill...

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 t...

So when is it that you decide what you want to be when you grow up? I remember that when I was a kid, I used to say "I want to own dad's company!". It was a pretty good dream as a start. I liked going around in the offices, talking to (or bugging) people, driving the machines around, picking up the phone in my super important voice… Sitting here at Harvard, amidst the rush of the cover letter deadline to send to the companies that I have not decided about yet, I wonder where all that went. Some say I grew up to be an over-achiever. Some say I was always on my way to come here. The truth may be found somewhere in between. So ok, I made it here. And so what? I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Or maybe I know some days, and I am just wondering what that means. If you are wondering what the only Industry Week that I attended was, it was Social Enterprise. For those of you that are not sure of what that is (as I was not as well), it includes non-profit organi...

I have to admit, it has been a long long time since I was awake on a Saturday morning on my own free will (last week, with Patricia waking me up at 8am jet lagged does not really count, it was really not my own free will). And in a way it feels good. I mean, the sun is beautiful. The biggest reason for it to feel good is probably because I have not set my feet out of the door yet: I am claiming that I will study this weekend, and for that I have been out of bed for a couple of hours though it is still barely lunch time here. Well, I am reading about this Mountain Dew drink that is apparently super famous and I never heard about before, I read last night about the Iridium failure by Motorola and some finance case that I will have to negotiate on Monday. Things are fun fun overall but it is not exactly my cup of tea for a Saturday morning. Soon I will start doing my recruiting activities; going through immense websites and try to figure out what is it that will make me get out of be...

As I wrote my first come back to my blog after a long time whilst I was trying not to fall asleep in class (which happens a lot), I realized how much I missed writing. My “desk mate” looked at me inquiringly and asked what was it that I was writing, and I just ended up replying “you know what, I really love writing”. Well, readers of this post could truly say: ”oh really, I can’t tell!”. As I got home, prepared not to leave my thoughts half way through this time (as I did the last two times I wrote something that I never published) I got an email complaint. Bruno really is having too much time off as an analyst in banking and likes to get entertained with my brain leakages but went to my blog to find out that I had not been there for a while. And he attacked me bluntly. First, he went on as how I should not ever have started a blog if I was not a geek, because the ability to keep it going required me to be a geek and as such I was not up to the task. But he just did not leave it t...

The last classes in Leadership try hard to make you think and figure out what to do about yourself. So we talked about our best self, not just about what it is but more of when it happens. We had to ask a couple of former colleagues, friends and family to give us three examples of when we were at our best. The point is not to skyrocket your ego, don’t worry. It is about understanding what are the environments that make your strengths come out. Because if you know what they are, then you will look to pursue a future that exhibits these characteristics. A “what brings the good in you” kind of thing. It was interesting to get that feedback. More than interesting, it was insightful. It was amazingly consistent throughout and it was curious to see the examples that people remember about you. I do recommend to anyone in need to find a bit more of where they should go. The thing about the examples is that they do have something in common, whether they came from people I worked with recently o...

It's been a while, I know. But time is really a precious asset and I have not been leveraging on it well enough... But today I did and I am proud. I threw all the plans out of the window and took the irrefusable offer I was made "Do you want to go flying today?". How does no work as an answer there? Here is one of the c. 30 airplanes you could see there. First reaction from our pilot: "Why are all these planes here, don't people realize it is an amazing day for flying?". Well, I had not untill he told me so! But the best is still to come, as the only girl in the group I got to ride in the front, get first view in take-off, listen to the radio of the air control all the time (we get Boston airport frequency), check the map, speeds, everything... I guess throughout the way we were some quiet passengers, in the wonders of realizing you are on air, the curiosity of identifying different places and the struggle to take the best pictures as we pass the Harvard...

To whoever ever wondered what it would be the first day at business school, here goes my piece of information. If you have never really wondered, I am not that sure why you would be reading something with such a title, given the obvious relation of what is going through my mind to the laptop right now but I will just assume you are so nice you can not avoid reading these lines. To those curious of you, I will undo the myth for you. I had a really fun day. I did lego, I had my eyes folded to figure out colours and shapes of the foam weird objects I was given, we built a wood puzzle against the time. What, you actually thought I was actually going to spend my first day on the case method? Well, I might have, but in fact the day was beautiful and hot so we changed the plans last minute and decided to go for outdoor activities instead J Naaaa, I know your thinking that it was just vacation, I still get those jokes every day but that is actually not right. I did get to learn a lot today....

So here is the story. I just wrote about a page and a half on this thing, and it was suddenly all gone. It only took me an hour, so why getting upset about it. But I do get the message, it only tells me that I was writing too much. So I will make life easier and shorten it (after my first reaction of “I don’t care I am not writing it anymore”). Your first thought looking at this blog (assuming i) you actually looked at it and ii) you actually thought about it for more than a few seconds) might have been, “why the hell is she starting it at day 3”. Well, the thing is I was “told” to write this blog because I was away and “everyone has a blog when they are away, so you are supposed to”. Therefore I decided to start reflecting my away days, in my new home, away from home. (I could have said something simpler as “Sara in Boston”, but truth be said, is it really going to be my last home away from home…) And you might wonder (again, assumptions) why I have not written before, if I already be...

After all the suggestions (or shall I call them ultimatum) saying that I should have a blog, I have now surrendered. I tried convincing some friends that facebook or smallworld would do just fine to post some news and pictures, but that message did not get through. Some advocated the use of email as preferred way to communicate but on that one I do agree that a blog replaces quite some emails and works as kick off for further communication. So I decided to give it a try. Not sure how long it will last, how often I will post, not even what I will post, but I will try something out. After all, I always had writing ambitions (long ago put inside a box with a rusty lock) so who knows this may bring the spirit on again. Shall the posting begin :-)