The Sorry State Of Business School Love

First-year Harvard MBA student Megan Fischer

Theory #2: If you’re not at HBS, it’s hard to understand this life.

“It really is true that unless you live inside the bubble, its hard to get what the bubble is all about. We live a very insular life with – dare I say it – little connection to reality or the outside world. Our conversations are dominated by inside jokes, references to cases that we’ve studied, chatter about things going on within the section, or the next social event on our calendars. If I were sitting on the outside and having to listen to this all the time, I would get really bored (and irritated), really quick.

I would also feel really left out; I’d see my other half having all this fun, making all of these new friends, and doing all of these cool things without me. Pangs of jealousy and resentment would likely set in…I’m pontificating of course – but its easy to see how rifts and cracks could start to form. And to this end, my hat goes off to all the partners out there who’ve hung in (and joined in!) – putting up with the madness that is HBS life deserves a medal. A giant gold (or diamond-encrusted) one in fact.”

Theory #3: The single people are well, still single.

“Coming to HBS, there’s a lot of talk about people who’ve met their husbands or wives while here. So this expectation gets stuck somewhere in people’s heads about, “Well, maybe I might just meet someone…” But, with a few exceptions (to my knowledge anyway), there has been a lot of “fun” being had to date, but not too many relationships have spun out of said fun. Why? Well, my theory on this still holds as it did near the beginning of the year: the notion of “casual dating” has pretty much been thrown out the window.

“Things like going a few days without speaking to someone (what we used to call playing “hard to get”) is a non-starter; you can’t walk 5 feet without bumping into someone – inevitably the someone you’d rather not bump into. And don’t even get me started on the campus rumour mill – everyone knows everybody’s business, which adds this crazy pressure and feeling of being under a microscope. Plus, with all this focus on “the future” we’re forced to look at potential partners with a lens of whether we’d see them as a serious candidate. Yikes. So the net result of all of this? Dating paralysis.”

And how will Fischer be spending her Valentine’s Day? “In true HBS fashion,” he confides, “I’ll be throwing an event that relates to a start-up idea that I’m working on and then hopefully celebrating its success with my co-founders afterwards. Romantic indeed!”

DON’T MISS: LOVE AT B-SCHOOL: THE EIGHT LAWS OF MBA DATING or A BRUTALLY HONEST LETTER TO ALL B-SCHOOL SIGNIFICANT OTHERS