Today, I had the last class of the first year HBS :-(
My camera broke the other day, and I felt paralyzed not being able to take any pictures. This felt like an incredibly important moment in my life, so I convinced myself that I was better off just really concentrating on the moment and soaking it in. This has worked 3 other times that I can easily recall:
- The last day of my summer internship at Bain & Company in 1999. I had never been around so many brilliant people at the same time before that summer, and I was afraid to move out of my cubicle, because I didn't want to risk that something might happen that would keep me from being in such an environment ever again. I remember putting items in a big box on the last day and just saying, "If you never have a job again that you love this much, no one can take this summer from you." As it would turn out, I'd be back in nearly the exact same cube about 20 months later.
- The night after my college graduation. The ceremony was nice, and so was the dinner with my family afterwards, but I hadn't moved out of my form room yet, so my family drove back to Boston and I had a lovely, quiet evening largely to myself where I walked around the school and just soaked in as much of Providence and the campus as I could. Didn't take any pictures, but I remember it like it was yesterday.
- The day I finally sold my first car. It was really sad to say goodbye to Saabina. She had stuck with me through 40K miles worth of amazing memories and milestones. When the time had come to move to San Francisco, I needed about 10 minutes to pet her and relive all that we had gone through before I could turn the keys over to the dealership buying her.
It's always a lot easier to say goodbye to people when you know exactly when you'll see them again. Well, I know that I'll see almost all of these people next September, but as much as I'll miss the individuals, I'm also going to desperately miss the context surrounding this year. We came together each day, at the same time, in the same seats, thoroughly prepared for 2-3 seriously engaging conversations about fascinating topics. Next year, I'll be meeting at different times, in different, rooms, with different people each day. For a guy that has more than a mild case of OCD, this is just not nearly as good. The other thing is, the first year bonds me, not only to my section mates, but to all those who have ever walked the halls of HBS. Their first year experience was largely identical to my own, all the way down to the silly jokes that get passed on each year. This school became part of our identity somewhere between the first day, when we were nervous as hell to even talk, to today, when we felt so comfortable in class that one student spontaneously began playing his trumpet while the professor was talking.
What's nice day about this is that I'm starting to see a pattern. I don't need a camera to hold onto a memory, and I don't ever need to think that a period of my lie is unbeatable, because things just keep getting better. If all goes well, I hope to be stepping outside for a breath of fresh air on 9/20/2008 thinking, "I want to hold onto this night, my wedding, for all time." And if I've learned anything in business school, it's that that memory won't fade away.
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