The End of Funemployment & My Columnist Debut!

Three and a half weeks down, 1.93 years to go!  Our first almost-month here has been a total whirlwind in the most wonderful way.  I wish I could post everything that’s happened so far in a chronological and organized manner, but I feel like adfawoefbAUHDFWEHNWEF and it’s just not gonna happen.  So let’s start with the biggest updates in my life that both happened this past Monday (note: there are no updates about Ed’s life in this post.  Sorry Eddie!  Rest assured, he is thriving per usual):

1) I am employed!

2) I am a for-real, legitimate columnist at an accredited (?) newspaper!

Here is proof of both:

RIGHT?!  I mean, don’t mind if I DO.  Let’s break down the job situation first.  I went on 15 interviews within the first two weeks of moving to Boston, straight hustling.  I was handshaking at private equity firms, MIT Sloan Business School, consulting firms, fi-nahnce firms, and executive search firms.  In the end, Egon Zehnder won my favor, and my first day was this past Monday, 9/15.  Egon is an executive search firm, and I am an Executive Assistant there to the head of the Industrials Practice Group (and the only female partner in the Boston office) named Lisa Blais (pronounced “blaze”, which is sweet).  Egon lures established professionals out of their fields (Lisa graduated from HBS, is an engineer, and was a leader in the industrial manufacturing field) and turns them into consultants that then recruit other executives, just like they were, to be CEOs, CFOs, COOs, board members, etc. for Egon’s clients.  The good news here is that the searches seem to always be interesting (a candidate ended up being a felon once!  Another time a female executive showed up to an interview full of pain meds and bombed!) and I understand the executive search business 100% more than I understood exactly what investment banking was (leveraged debt…no).  The bad news is that I know roughly zero about industrials.  For example, what is simulation-based optimization? – I have no clue.  I will be hot on The Google.

Judging from my first three days of work, this will be the best job I’ve had, to-date.  There is only one truly crazy person in the office (we have about 32 people total, which is scary considering my previous experiences) but they are rarely in the office and I will never have to work with them except to answer their phone when everyone else refuses to (I have taken the time between 2008 and present to conquer my phone phear).  I am finally starting to feel like I’ve over-paid my insane-in-a-bad-way-coworker dues and am getting a break.  Luckily the candidates and clients we work with bring their own brand of crazy so I’ll still have stories to tell and embellish when in front of a group.  They probably won’t be as good as my Kmart stories, but close.  Check out my name badge:

Do you see the red clippydo thing?!  It’s like they KNOW ME.  I had to mask how thrilled I was with it’s color when I got it.  Everyone else’s is a terrible gray.

Here’s my cube situation:

That photo was a snapchat, and for those who may not understand my snap-English, the bottom text means: “My cube…America”.  The office is better in real life than this photo lets on.  See that wood mini-closet thing in the bottom right-hand corner?  It’s my own mini closet!  With two cubbies for personal items and a drawer!  Trust me, it’s cool.

That is what corporate heaven looks like, people.  I can do roughly one million things at the same time with this set up.  And my phone?  It has caller ID like all phones in 2014 should.  I have a headset that doesn’t have some else’s old makeup on it, and reception will order me whatever brand of red pen I want.  There are mini york peppermint patties in the breakroom, and no one steals all of the bananas to hide them in their desk drawer every Monday, which was the d*ck move everyone pulled at my previous job.  IT’S  LUXURY.

Ok  life update #2: I am the proud new volunteer columnist at the Harbus (Harvard Business School Newspaper)!  Here’s how it happened:

I emailed the Harbus last week being all, “Hiiiiiii, my name is Emily and I was the editor of the DePaul Honors Newsletter seven years ago so please let me write for you in some way I don’t care how.” Then last Friday morning the editor wrote me back and was like, “Yay!  I’m British and if you can write an article in the next two hours I’ll put it Monday’s edition.  If you’re lucky.” So I did it and a few hours after that he wrote back and was like, “This is graut!  I’d like you to write an article for every edition (every other week) from now until forever about your experience as a Partner at HBS.  Cheers!” and I was like:

and a little:

but also:

You can see in the first photo in this post that I have a scripty, 56 pt font signature under the article that says “Emily’.  I did not request that, nor am I the photographer of any of the accompanying photos.  However now that I know they use stock photography, I’ll definitely be sending in my own selections going forward and see if they make it in.  I’ll also submit an author photo, but I need to find the perfect one that says, “I’m a serious writer.  But also a lot of fun.  And extremely smart.  But relatable.  And adorable.  But still serious”.  Maybe this?

Photo courtesy of Andie Herbster at http://www.a-leigh.com

That’s it for this post!  Ed is leaving me tomorrow night to go to Portland, Maine a day early with the Section D peeps (I will be joining Friday night) so hopefully I can turn my loneliness into productivity and post about our lovely trip to Gloucester, MA (wait till you see the photos, they’re gorg and #nofilter all over the place).  I can no longer distract myself with Real Housewives Of All The Cities anymore since we became Basic Cable subscribers, and that’s probably a good thing for this blog.

Good night!

Emily, Columnist and Employed Person

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18 Banks Street & 93 Names

Can anyone else not believe it’s September 1st?  Seems like yesterday I was debating whether or not I really needed to bring the rice steamer I’ve never used to Boston (I did) and today I’m actually in Boston enjoying Labor Day hot dogs!  Up on the to-do list this week: nail more interviews, attend a Great Gatsby-themed  party, celebrate Julie’s birthday, move in to our apartment, and charm my way through dinner with some HBS students who refer to themselves as “The Chilean Mafia”.  That to-do list looks A LOT different than a to-do list of mine I found while packing two weeks ago…all items were crossed off on it except for “clean poop off floor of 2nd bedroom”.  Which reminds me, Juicy probably has a remote blog she’d like to post soon.

So our move-in date is this Thursday and we’ve never seen the inside of our new home.  We have seen these nice floor plans though:

That’s what 686 sq ft looks like.

Not interested in fancy architecture symbols?  Check out this 3-D one:

 

 

I think the 3-D is worse because you can tell just HOW SMALL the place is.  Do you think a bed, two nightstands, two dressers and all of my statement necklaces are going to fit in that bedroom?  Um, NO.  I will have to keep that giant box of shoes out on the balcony along with Ed’s gross hockey gear and our rice steamer.

Here’s a street view, with our unit high-lighted by my snapchat skills:

Balcony zoom in:

When we rounded the corner of the building to check out the neighborhood, we ran into this wild turkey:

That guy snapping  a picture probably thought the same thing as me – ‘”WTF, TURKEY?!  What are you doing here?!  Cambridge, get it together.”  But, it turns out, wild turkeys are common in the Boston and surrounding areas, and they are mean, just like geese.  I mean, they’re probably harmless unless provoked (like geese), but they are extremely hideous (unlike geese), and that makes them scarier.

I don’t have a good transition from talking about urban turkeys to talking about Ed’s classmates, except for the fact that one guy is from Turkey and is literally named Turkur.  Which of course makes me call Ed Illernerr from Illinois.  The first day of class, all 94 students in Ed’s section (Section D, for DOHSE) went around and introduced themselves.

HBS has also put together “classcards” which all students can search when they log into HBS’s student site.  There you can find tons of facts about everyone in the business school (both first and second years), along with contact info, interests, partner info, education and work history.  Here is a screenshot of Ed’s classcard:

See that little megaphone next to his name?  Click on that and you can actually hear Ed say his own name.  That tool is incredibly useful for knowing how to pronounce difficult names.

I’ve had a lot of fun quizzing myself with classcards on who’s who after meet-and-greets and parties.  It’s hard learning 93 people’s names plus about 30 partners!  Not to mention all nine other sections with 90 scholars and partners of their own!  It’s interesting to see who makes a unique first impression and who I meet once (or twice) and I still look at them and think, “Who are you?  I have no idea.  Mike?  Dan?  F**k.”

My next opportunity to try and get names to stick is this Wednesday at the LatAm Great Gatsby Welcome Party, which over 1,000 people have registered for so far.  It’s at a cloob downtown and costumes are “requested.”  Unfortunately, Ed and I only picked certain things from our costume box to bring with us (the wigs, duh) and those are in the pods.  Luckily, while packing my suitcase, a little voice told me to include my clubbing top “just in case” that is covered in fringe on the front and is now the only thing I have that will remotely pass as a Gatsby outfit.  CRISIS AVERTED.