‘What Is It You Plan To Do With Your One Wild & Precious Life?’

Tara Hagan, Harvard Business School Class of 2014 (Photo courtesy of Tony Diefell)

1. Married by 20
2. Long hair
3. Nice job, maybe a receptionist

In high school, I wrote myself a letter not to be opened for five years. It ended with the above list of dreams for future Tara. When I rediscovered the letter, the person who wrote it felt so far away, and yet I have carried her with me every day.

As the second-oldest child adopted into a multiracial family of nine in small-town Oklahoma, I almost didn’t go to college. We couldn’t afford it. Besides, I didn’t know anyone who had finished college. — — Tara Hagan

Austin Dirks, Harvard Business School Class of 2014 (Photo courtesy of Tony Diefell)

My gaze fixed upon the exposed beating heart. There was an infant lying in front of me. Its heart rate 150 beats per minute. The monitor next to me beeping faintly with each twitch of the revealed organ. The skin, the muscle, the ribs, all pulled back, exposing an unseen sight: the human heart. The doctor’s hands worked back and forth in the rhythm and grace of a painter. I could feel my breath beat back against my mask, into my face. My scrub cap began to stick to my forehead with perspiration. Something was wrong. And I was alone.

The pacemaker, a device able to control the human heart, a device co-existing with human life, was in my power.

Say something…

The doctor was closing the chest.

Say something… — Austin Dirks

DON’T MISS: WHEN HARVARD MBAS TURN INTROSPECTIVE or WHAT HARVARD MBAS REALLY WANT TO ACCOMPLISH