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...