Entering Wharton, I had two major concerns. I’ll get to the second one in a later post, but I am pleased to announce that my fear that all my classmates would be scary investment banker robot frat boys has proved wildly, gloriously unfounded.
Coming in, every one of my classmates seems to have had the same concern. From the conversations I’ve had, it appears 800 people showed up to class the first day bearing a thick padding of optimism wrapped around a secret core of suspicion and dread. Having more tact than I do, they were less likely to mention this dread in the course of idle party chatter. But once broached, the topic has been a source of enthusiastic consensus.
Party attendee: “So how have the first three weeks been treating you?”
Me: “So far, so good. The most pleasant surprise has been my classmates. I really can’t get over how likeable this crowd is.”
Party attendee: “Yes! I’m shocked. I was expecting much worse.”
It’s a funny conversation to have. Another way of reading it is:
Party attendee: “So how have the first three weeks been treating you?”
Me: “So far, so good. I’m pleasantly surprised that you’re not a complete asshole.”
Party attendee: “Yes! I too assumed right off the bat that you would be an insufferable prick.”
But no one seems to read it that way. The fear ran deep, and the relief is palpable. Many people, prior to enrollment, had constructed Business School Social Scene Escape Pods, or drafted Sanity Preservation Emergency Back-up Procedures, elaborate contingency plans that for the time being have been mothballed.
In a way, the normality of this group is almost disappointing. Aren’t these the Future Business Leaders of America? Doesn’t the administration keep telling us that we are the Best Wharton Class Ever, based on the dubious metric that this was the heaviest application year in history?
But if that’s the case, where are all the junior corporate raiders sporting power ties, perfectly parted hair, and grotesquely jutting chins? Where is the sea of blue suits and leather briefcases? No wheeling, no dealing? No grade competition, no backstabbing? No informal apartheid system based on the calculated net present value of our future income streams? What gives?
Instead, Wharton looks very similar to my undergraduate class at Stanford, minus a few subcultures and plus a whole lot of international students. Students tend to be inoffensively preppy, pleasantly nerdy, enthusiastic, and preoccupied with the mundane sorts of concerns you would expect of good corporate self-improvers. Most worry about their presentation skills, because no one, regardless of age or worldly riches, enjoys public speaking. Most fret over their managerial skills, because anyone with any sort of experience in the matter knows that managing is difficult, thankless, and crappy. Everyone worries about jobs.
In truth, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived. One friend who attended Harvard Businesss School painted a fairly unpleasant (to me) portrait of my future class. The average businesss school student, she assured me, was the type who as an undergraduate was smart but more concerned with socializing than academics. This average business school student (let’s call him Skyler) probably attended a well-regarded party school and vocally supported its football team. Upon graduation, Skyler discovered that his intelligence and well-honed social skills were valuable business assets, and achieved a measure of success at a young age, maybe in sales. Skyler is attending business school both to recapture some of the glory of his party-hearty days and also to do as much networking as possible prior to conquering the universe. Skyler continues to vocally support his college football team.
In this scenario, I will like Skyler, because Skyler is an inherently likeable guy, but I will not have much in common with the Skylers and Sallies who make up the vast majority of my class. Their pushy extroversion and general sameness will begin to depress me, and the depression will lift only when I discover the small cadre of fellow nerds, estimated by my friend to make up 10% of my future class. It will be hard to detect these people in the crush and swirl of the first few months, but if I keep my eye out for the people who, like me, are keeping their heads down, I will be pleasantly surprised. According to this niche theory of business school survival, I will struggle at first, and then thrive when I settle into a comfortable corner of the Wharton social scene. Based on past experience, this scenario had a frightening plausibility.
Other friends assured me that business school would be an unequivocally fanstastic experience, but that I would have to fight hard to resist the competitive pressure to lead an ever more fantastic lifestyle. In this scenario, all of my classmates would be coming off of plum investment banking jobs. They will be unencumbered with spouses or children, flush with cash, and giddy with the freedom offered up by the light workload of our unchallenging business school coursework. Clad in Prada, accustomed to spending $15 on a cocktail, familiar with the price of a lift ticket at Vail, and assured of an even plummier investment banking job upon graduation, these classmates will lock me in a vicious aspirational spiral that will prove even costlier than my tuition.
All of the scenarios shared a common denominator: whatever their virtues or vices, my classmates will be one-dimensional. A delicate little fractal such as myself will find their sheer sameness to be the biggest challenge to my sanity.
The first Wharton classmates I met, on my first day of school, were in a small knot gathered at the bus stop near my apartment. One was a former engineer for Black Entertainment Television and an amateur musician. Another, an Indian woman, worked as a technical manager at Lucent. A third was just coming off a stint at an NGO in Cambodia. (I later found out that a fifth Wharton student was on the bus, a hideous sorority girl who refused to mingle with us.) Standing in line a few minutes later to get my name tag, I met an American who was doing development work at a bilateral institution in Instanbul. That night, I fell in with the Brazilians.
Since then, I’ve met a bevy of former peace corps volunteers, a mess of people who share my interest in international development, some fellow world travelers, and even a UN worker recently returned from a rebuilding project in Afghanistan. Significantly, these contacts have not been a result of my hanging around in the headquarters of the Wharton Misfits Club, down in sub-basement D. You know, the one with the exposed wiring and the dripping walls.
No, these contacts have been the result of the brownian motion that is the Wharton social scene, and it is largely because of meetings like these that I remain frankly shocked at how appealing my classmates are.
Of course, the majority of Wharton students are planning careers in banking or consulting, and that, I suppose, is as it should be. The good news is that these folks too are thoroughly likeable, and I frequently find myself lamenting the fact that basic time constraints preclude me from forming more than superficial friendships with most of the people I have met.
No one is decked out in Prada. Banana Republic seems to rule the wardrobe. People do support their college football teams, but that’s OK. All students worry about jobs and complain they they are falling ever more behind in their studies and wonder aloud how we are possibly supposed to take advantage of all the clubs and seminars and social events whose invitations clog our inboxes.
I don’t know to what to attribute the mismatch between expectation and reality. Part of the answer might lie in Wharton itself, which has always had a reputation for being a fairly number-intensive, technical program. Such a program possibly attracts a different — and for me, preferable — crowd than the programs that bill themselves as CEO boot camps. Certainly Wharton’s academic policies — such as the lovely grade nondisclosure policy — are geared toward creating a friendly, student-focused environment.
Maybe Wharton’s status as a top-tier program that is nevertheless a perennial number two to Harvard injects some needed humility and camaraderie into the student body. Maybe Philly itself, which is a fairly cozy place to spend two years, contributes something to the atmosphere.
It is also possible that the makeup of business school student bodies is changing. The first question I always ask the former World Bank-types among my classmates is, Why are you here? They generally say something about wanting to apply the methods or mechanisms or discipline of the private sector to social enterprise. This is a good answer, but also an answer that I’m guessing reflects a relatively recent shift in zeitgeist.
Or maybe the stories that everyone threw at me were just plain bullshit. I don’t know. All I know is that for now, the escape plans have been shelved, and my mind has been freed up to worry full time about how I’m going to get a damned job when I leave this place.
