Kellogg commands a great deal of clout in the world of distinguished lecturers. I'd read about this phenomenon on school websites, and in Philip Delves Broughton's book, *Ahead of the Curve.* But only recently have I come to appreciate the number of thought leaders that come through our doors to lecture in an auditorium that resembles nothing short of a bomb shelter. (You can kind of see it in the photo to the left.)
I'm not sure how they make it happen, but Paul Krugmans and Robert Muellers occasionally drop in to tell us about the state of the world through the lens of say, a Nobel-winning economist, or a current FBI Director. I guess the only difference is that the latter had a bomb-sniffing canine detail team.
Krugman was making his first public appearance since the announcement of his Nobel Prize, and the auditorium was packed with lots of grownup and undergraduate faces that I did not recognize. (Sidenote: This caused a huge uproar in the Kellogg community as graduate students were displaced by Ugg-clad young economists. Apparently events like this in the future will be ticketed. This is also a good example of the kind of thing we get uproarious about in business school.)
Anyway, he was extremely off-the-cuff, soft-spoken and his outlook on the state of the world was, well, grim. He confessed that he did not see a global collapse of such immense proportions, and he talked about a new book.
I liked him. In general, I have found that I sort of like economists. They don't have a lot of positive things to say right now (true also of my microeconomics professor), but at least they have a small sense of humor about it.
But then, there was question time. People asked really sort of annoying esoteric questions of him, using a lot of acronyms. In general, I hate question time. I have very strong, irrational feelings about people who speak to hear themselves speak, or make grandiose assertions and don't end up asking an intelligible question, or who ask questions that only apply to their individual situation, or who are deeply intellectually insecure and feel the need to ask things in code to prove their intelligence to everyone else in the audience. There are so many more things wrong with question time. I think question time should be eliminated from distinguished speaker events, another of which is happening tonight.
Jon Meacham of Newsweek! Hurrah! Journalists at b-school! World saved!
Occasionally I am reminded of how exceptionally diverse and international the student body at business school is, particularly when I receive invitations like this one:
"ONE HOUR OF INTENSE FOOTBALL EDUCATION." Awesome, no?
I would go to this in a heartbeat, although the sport on which I really need a primer is rugby. What the hell is going on in rugby? Why do men lift men in that sport, and move up and down the field, uh, pitch, in that odd-looking spider-like huddle, uh, scrum?
For some reason unbeknownst to me, people who don't know me seem to think that the "Y" at the beginning of Yee is an "L". No matter where I go, I am Jennifer Lee.
Today, for instance, at the health center, where I went to get some vaccines, the nurse referred to me as Jennifer Lee even though she was looking right at my medical record on a computer screen. I could even see it as I sat beside her: Jennifer Y-E-E...and yet...nothing.
To be fair, this has been happening almost my whole life, at reception desks, scheduling doctor's appointments, resolving issues on utility and telephone bills. The list goes on. It's very weird. I didn't think it was remarkable and then today for some reason I just found it extremely bizarre that even when I am looking a person in the eye, they don't seem to hear "yuh-ee." "Yee."
Eight hours after the health clinic, I went for a long run on the treadmill to burn off some business school steam. When I went to retrieve my student ID card from the woman at the towel desk, who asked me for my name.
"Yee. Jennifer Yee."
"Lee?"
"No, Yee. Like with a 'Y'."
"Oh! Ok."
I don't know what to think. Do I have a lisp? Is that what people have been trying to tell me for the last decade, and have just been too polite to say so?
Business school career counselors are like shrinks with action items.
Well, that's what it felt like last week, anyway.
No one really talks about the fact that once you are enrolled at a top b-school, you will rely on your career office for emotional support more than, well, anything else. Think about it. These are the people who report to work every morning to tell you and your 600 classmates that in spite of the economy, your grades, your extra-curricular load...in spite of yourself, even...you will get a job.
Recruiting season's started, and classes are peppered with students in professional attire floating in and out of mock interviews, company presentations, lunch 'n' learns. New phrases have entered people's vocabularies such as, "What have you dropped for?" and "I can't come to happy hour, I have case prep." (Which mean, respectively: "To which companies have you submitted a resume?" and, "I am subjecting myself to the unique torture of sitting in a windowless study room for two hours with another person with high job search anxiety, reading and answering questions on cases about steel and aluminum companies.") God love 'em, those peers of mine who are recruiting for management consulting jobs.
Even the word "recruiting" seems semantically misused to me. I mean, how can I, business school student, be recruiting? Aren't companies recruiting me?
Nevertheless, I occasionally make appointments with a business school counselor, who I like a lot. She is boisterous and emotionally intelligent and tells me that I am doing all the right things by asking myself what I actually care about, and what sorts of things I really do and don't want to do when I get to my summer internship in June. There will be plenty more posts on this, I can assure you.
Right now, though, I need to get to my action items from my last meeting with her, one of which reads: "prioritize." Now if I could just remember what I meant when I wrote that down.
