Our First Week at HBS, A Photo Series, Part I

October 8, 2014 by foryouloveemily 2 Comments

HI HI HI!  Long time no blogs again, but hey.  I have found myself regularly being swept away, living life and yolo-ing, instead of blogging.  Which is why Ed’s and my first week at HBS is coming in hot and four weeks behind schedule.  I had to go back through my photos to remember what we even did, so this post will be led by the pics and snaps I took during those first days, instead of my ironclad memory.

Let’s start things off with a selfie of two people who have zero clue about anything:

Don’t we look fresh and excited?!  I will remember this photo as “Before” two years from now.  That’s the Bloomberg library behind us as we gave ourselves a little self-guided tour around campus.

This here is Spangler Hall, the hub of HBS.  It’s where the main cafeteria is, the business center (which charges an OUTRAGEOUS $2.65 for a ONE PAGE SCAN.  I cannot even TELL YOU how incredulous I was when I got ONE PAGE scanned and had to USE MY VISA to pay for it), student’s mailboxes, a place called “The Coop” that sells overpriced Harvard merch, and this beautiful common room that people can study and network in:

Spangler is where Ed and I got our official HBS ID’s, check them out:

Snapchat translation: I’m an official HBS Partner – party!

I’m sorting through all my photos and I think there are enough exterior/architecture shots to make this Part I of a two-parter blog.  Are building pictures boring?  Whatevs, it’s the only way I can stay organized.

Here is the church steeple from our balcony (terrace, as the HBS Euros would say):

Omg, isn’t that GORG?!  Here let’s zoom in:

Does anyone else think that’s cool or is it just me because I see it in real life off my balcony terrace?  It’s very hunchback of Harvard.  One night we were enjoying ourselves al fresco, like this:

And along came this amazing storm (below) that no one saw because no one (MOM, DAD, SISSY, JOEY,  MOM #2) answered their ding-dang FaceTime.  It was majestic rolling in, and made us grateful that we lucked out with a penthouse fifth floor unit:

Want more of that hunchback of Harvard steeple?  Me too:

It’s the steeple of the church down the street from us (it’s Catholic, praise JESUS), and that is the view from our side of the street.  Ed and I have been to mass once together here, and it was lovely with an all-boy choir that those Lutherans don’t have.  Ed has gone solo to the Sunday service, which is an hour and 45 minutes long, and is why he goes solo.  Guess who else goes to church?  The neighborhood turkey!

Snapchat translation: Turkey goes to church, amen

See him in the bottom left?  Now that I no longer feel the need to take pictures of him (seventeen is enough, right?) I see people stop in the middle of traffic to get a good shot of this guy.  He just keeps on truckin’.

A little further down the way is the Harvard Community Garden and another New England-y steeple:

Snapchat translation: Harvard Community Garden – plant plant flower flower

Other side of the steeple from the road:

Walk towards the Charles river and you’ll get this view from the bridge:

There is a huge regatta rowing race when Sissy, Anne, Matt and Joey are here in two weeks, so I’ll post some better pics of the river then.  But this is basically what it looks like, only slightly better in person.  I feel lucky that I get to see the calm of the river and feel the neighborhood-ness of Cambridge, but also get to be downtown during the day and feel like a hip young professional.  Which I am.  Here is a shot of the city, looking towards the ocean:

I took this while waiting to be interviewed at a private equity firm.  It was high risk, as the next interviewer could have walked in at any time to see me snapping pics out their window, but it was also high reward.  (I didn’t get that job, but I did get this photo).  That green space you see on the left is the Boston Common – it’s like a Central Park.  There is a beautiful rose garden, a pond with swans, willow trees, plenty of benches to eat your froyo on, a merry-go-round that I’ve never seen working, and lots of grass and trees.  Beyond the buildings is the ocean where all of my favorite seafoods are waiting to be put in my clam chowda.  Behind the camera is the Charles river, then Cambridge, then HBS.

Here’s Eddie and I in the Boston Common, amongst the willow trees:

Also in the Common are street performers – balloon artists, Asian men playing an instrument that is basically a piece of wood with one string attached abut somehow it sounds like a symphony, and this guy:

Ed and I both agreed this gentleman reminded us remarkably of my cousin Dale Dean.  Similar in stature and facial features, clearly a collector of things, and a guy who probably has mooonshine to share with you.  If I knew how to upload a video to my blog, I would share 10 seconds of this guy really killing it.

Also of note regarding Boston buildings: they have crazy elevator call buttons.  I don’t think these have hit Chicago yet (I sure haven’t seen them) so I had to stand in front of the keypad for a minute and think about what to do.  Here’s what you do: to call the elevator while in the lobby, you need to punch in your floor number on the giant keypad:

Then once you’re in the elevator all you see is this:

So if you mess up your floor, you’re totally screwed.  Even though I had correctly requested the right floor, I felt panicked, seeing that there were no extra buttons to push.  There are also these neat little TVs in all the elevators that show how miserable the weather is about to make you:

Snapchat translation: F**k my life, I’m about to feel like this fireball emoji

 Those are my building pics from week one, so that wraps up that…and now it’s my bedtime.  Part II to follow with pictures of large groups of people you don’t know.  It’ll be great!

I’ll leave you with this headshot of a business student on his way to his very first class:

Serious.  Focused.  Professional.  Student.

Edward Patrick Kennedy III.

Goodnight!

Emily