Wharton Journal

First of all, I want to thank my esteemed column-mate, Chloe Thompson, for covering for me on late notice last weekend. She overcame a raging case of PMS and a fashion emergency to come to my rescue by writing a moderately funny column, and for that, I am deeply grateful.

It’s been a while since we last spoke. What have I been doing all this time, you might ask? Having 8-hour brunches at Parc with a herd of Mexicans? Walking my beautiful dog around Rittenhouse Square and watching equally beautiful women lose their minds fawning all over him? Playing endless hours of guitar with people who sing AC/DC with anguished Argentinian accents? Lying on the couch at the Penthouse and pretending I care about sports while all my friends watch, so as not to seem socially awkward? Taking Mike Bloom’s cat to the vet to be declawed so it can do weird Asian-inspired sex things with Arie? (yes, Mike Bloom is a guy, and yes, he has a cat… get in line, ladies). Making fun of Sharon? Playing beer pong? Having dance-offs with Rema? Helping Joey Zwillinger strike the right facial-hair-to-short-sleeve-shirt ratio for the day (see photo)? Amusing myself with questions like why Wharton has a class (no joke) whose abbreviation is Operation Perform Anal? (And yes, I see the opportunity to make an incredible joke about who would be the TA for that class, and I’m passing on it).

The answer, tragically, is none of the above. Instead, I have been looking for a job. Jobs, you might recall, are things that we used to do before business school that soaked up our time and effort and energy and that we couldn’t wait to be done with so we could get back here. But now, we second-years are pounding the pavement trying to get right back into that game. And it’s taking up a sh*tload of time, and having an adverse affect on the weirdness that is the zeitgeist (look it up, quant people) of business school.

Now I remember last year that Profs Siegel and Allen kept talking about some sort of crisis, or something about the economy being bad, or something about apples and bananas on an indifference curve (to be honest, every time Prof Allen talked, I felt like I was being told a bedtime story by a delightful British gentleman, and a feeling of womb-like warmth washed over me and carried me into a deep trance). I’m not too sure exactly what they meant, but apparently their point connects to the idea that we can’t breeze into an interview, 2-3 mimosas deep, and as our first question ask what color our company Ferrari will be (I’m pretty sure everyone who graduated in 2005 and 2006 got to do this).

Instead, we are writing cover letter after cover letter. We are flying halfway around the country to have informational meetings with the lucky bastards who graduated 4 years earlier, and jumping for joy when they tell us they enjoyed meeting us and hope something opens up in the spring. We’re saying things like "sorry, I have to be up early tomorrow." We’re getting rejected more times than Gavin Cassar at a sorority party. But in some way, I think it’s actually good for us. Because if we can continue to have fun despite all the uncertainty, and keep our heads on straight, we can find it within ourselves to have fun at any time in our lives.

So I will simply say this. It has been, and will continue to be, a challenging ride. But it’s still our last year at this rodeo. Let’s be sure to keep the fun-to-job-seeking-stress ratio in proper balance. After all, nothing helps you relax for an impending interview more than dressing up in a costume and getting elevatingly, inspiringly weird (Dave Gilboa wrote a book on this). If you need a more systematic approach to doing that, take Operation Perform Anal.