In the bubble

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. Almost all of the buildings are also connected by subterranean tunnels, which means that come winter it's possible to go days without ever setting foot outside a campus building. Even the main Harvard campus, separated from the business school by the Charles River, can seem distant. This past week recruiting for summer internships began in earnest, with numerous employers giving presentations each day for the next few weeks, ratcheting the intensity and activity level up yet another notch. It's amazing how quickly the world inside HBS becomes the only place you think of , and how everything outside of it is temporarily set aside. The fact remains that one day in the not-too-distant future, the HBS bubble will go away, and the real world, for better or worse, will once again be all that we have.

More than meets the eye

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 help make it happen. For some people the way these things are done may not make sense initially: fixed courses for a year, assigned seats, assigned study groups that meet early every morning, classes five days a week. I love the structured aspect of it all. There's something about the environment, this particular life stage, the constant thoughts of careers and visions and other deeper questions that add to the general ferment this environment creates. I suspect experiences like this aren't unique to HBS. You can probably "transform" wherever you are, if you want to, but this is a particularly exciting place to do so.

Minuteman

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 the military, and incidentally there are a lot of students here from the armed forces.) For a class with an 8:40 AM start, when the second hand on the classroom clock sweeps past the 12 you'd better be planted in your seat, because things will get rolling. My learning team meets every weekday at 7:30 AM, and I try to never arrive past 7:30 and zero seconds. It's an unusual norm for graduate schools, from what I can tell, but when you think about lecture-based classes it shouldn't be too surprising: they can commence without all students present and engaged, since the conversation isn't necessarily two-way. Classes also end on time, almost without exception, and professors are apologetic if they run three or four minutes over. When I worked for CBS News I remember seeing a tightly choreographed Evening News production where every second was scripted and accounted for. We're not that extreme, but I've been surprised how aware of the time I've become here, sometimes getting scheduled down to the minute. Somewhat paradoxically, it seems to be going by even faster.

Time capsule

One of the most remarkable elements of President Faust's speech yesterday was her allusion to a letter that had been left in the University archives by James Conant, then the president of Harvard, with the instruction that it be opened by the first Harvard president of the 21st century. (According to the Crimson blog, this letter was lost until recently, which is why previous president Larry Summers was not the one to open it, although he was the president who should have done so under Conant's stipulation. The fact that the salutation read,"My dear sir...", was a source of some mirth, but it appears that it would have been technically correct.) Written in the aftermath of World War II, the letter was apparently filled with concern as to whether the existing political and economic order would even survive the century. The full text has yet to be made publicly available, although it should provide a very interesting glimpse into the prevailing mindset of an earlier era. The unfulfilled predications it contains may be interesting, but I suspect it will be more remarkable for just how much of it still applies today.

Hit the deck

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 the students seated in it to observe the entire class. Their observations culminate in a weekly skydeck awards presentation, in which members of the section are singled out for good-natured (so far) ribbing over various gaffes or comments made in the preceding week. Anything a student does, in class or not, is skydeck fodder.

First row comprises the worm deck, which is smaller than all the other rows and whose members may find themselves disproportionately singled out for the professor's attentions.

The middle row is the power deck, which most closely aligns with the natural line of sight of the professor.

Rows two and four have no commonly-known name, although they are supposedly referred to as the garden deck and the warning track, respectively. For the past five weeks and until the seat reshuffle at the beginning of the next semester, this latter row is my home.

Investiture

Today marked the installation of Harvard University's 28th president, Drew Gilpin Faust. (She was a professor of American history at Penn for a year while I was there, and I remember hearing about it when she was "poached" by Harvard to head up the new Radcliffe Institute.) Her ascent has been exceptionally rapid, as she takes up one of the chief posts in academia less than seven years after leaving her professorship at Penn. The ceremony took place in Harvard Yard (or Tercentenary Theater, a term apparently never used by the locals) in front of the august Widener library, whose massive Corinthian columns evoke the awe that many modern buildings cannot match.

This brings to mind an interesting conversation I had with an architecture student, a modernist, who advocated in favor of many of the newer building styles which I often find lacking. It forced me to articulate why, exactly, older seems to be better. Looking around Harvard Yard, I'd say it's partly due to the substantial physical presence of masonry buildings, along with the readily evident craftsmanship and detailing that has been lost in virtually all modern construction. (For example, the stone in which the name of Widener Library is carved reveals itself, on closer inspection, to be scored with a subtle grid pattern that's barely evident from ground level.) This ornateness reveals thoughtfulness and care in design, but also generates continuous visual interest.

But perhaps a more enduring reason is the link these traditional styles have with a global architectural heritage. I remember scrambling over the almost completely deserted ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Baal Heliopolitan in Ba'albek, Lebanon in April 2006. Chunks of the buildings and arcades are scattered all over the site. Only a few of the enormous stone pillars from the main temple remain upright, but those that do are virtually identical to the ones that hold up the portico of Widener Library, 5,000 miles and 2,000 years away.

Temple at Ba'albek, April 2006

No comment

From a classmate: "We're yet to do the things that will define us."

Connection

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 nook that overlooks the courtyard and has a view of the main bell tower that symbolizes the business school. This is what I imagine the university experience should be, marked by conversations that endure.

Red line

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.

Markers

A few days ago HBS unveiled its Centennial Bell, a scaled-down replica of the new one which now resides in the cupola of Baker Library, itself replacing a bell which was sent back to its original home in a Russian monastery. The bell sits on a granite pedestal outside my dorm room window in a newly-constructed circular brick plaza that I have watched take shape over the last few weeks. This will presumably stand as a reminder of the occasion for many years to come, long after those of us who were present are no longer on the scene.

When I was nine years old I sat on a low stone wall with a number of other students as we watched our principal plant a maple sapling in honor of our elementary school's 25th anniversary. I remember the day well, and I remember that our principal said that in 25 years we would come by with our children and show them the then-towering tree standing in its small grass enclosure. It's been 17 years, and that tree is quite big now.