15 Lessons from My First Year at Harvard Business School
Learnings on life, friendship, and the pursuit of profit maximization
Over 8 months and 300 cases later, here we are! As of last Friday — and barring the fact that I bombed any of my final exams — I am officially done with my first year of HBS. The day after it all ended, I slept for 12 hours straight. That probably captures best what the experience felt like for me.
As I now take the time to step back and reflect on the year, I thought to share some ‘marbles’ I’ve added to my jar of learnings from a few months at this special, crazy place. A lot of these lessons are specific to my experience, but I do think they transcend the HBS environment and are applicable in other situations too.
ACADEMICS
Some context: At HBS, the first year is called the RC — the “Required Curriculum”. This means that all 900+ of us take the exact same courses, discuss the exact same cases, and operate on the exact same schedule. We are placed in sections of 90 to 95 classmates who we see everyday and take all of our courses with. We have assigned seats, name cards, and a set order of readings. At times, it definitely felt like we had regressed back to high school!
