Running Out of Things to Mock in My EC

Is the disappearance of my sense of humor a sign that the EC year is but a pale encore of the RC?

It’s Saturday afternoon. I’m already a day late on my submission this month, and I haven’t even started writing. Brewing a cup of chai in the hope of jogging my brain to action, I add the ingredients in completely the wrong order (tea leaves, milk, sugar BOILING!!!!!reduce-heat cardamom, more-milk-this-is-the-wrong-color) as I ponder: which facet of life at HBS do I make fun of this month?

I’d started out with the idea of writing about why RC fall sucks, until I found this primary-researched article on it from last year. The only thing left to do on this topic is to include it in MBA marketing material so every batch can come prepared to collectively combat depression in mid-October.

Why did I want to write a piece catering to RCs anyway? Their frenetic, buzzing presence has been encroaching on the boundaries of our lives, with vast encampments of lawn chairs outside Spangler and smatterings of laughter and chatter near Aldrich 012 from 10:50 to 11:10 a.m. In my first year, I remember the feeling that the campus was ours and ours alone, as we turned up the speakers during parties, drank till late on the porches of Morris Hall, and rallied large groups all over campus in the fading summer heat. I remember already wondering then where this bustling, sprawling socializing would go in the bitterly cold winter.

I remember speaking to my EC friends back then. The picture they presented seemed quieter, more self-contained. No real section experience? No Colombia-equivalent EC trek? “You get to be more intentional about the things you do, the people you spend time with,” they said. This year, “intentionality” hovers on the lips of my batchmates. Free from the shackles or support of pre-scheduled programming, intentionality seems to just be the release of choice-making entirely to yourself. 

Academically, it feels like the people you know have been put through a fractionation column and released into classrooms of like-minded peers. PE Finance, at the start of some of my Wednesdays, brings all the finance hardos you have ever met together for an intense volley of comments, clutching cases densely annotated with calculations squeezing every number in it dry. Meanwhile, The Moral Leader, at the end of those same Wednesdays, brings a reflective crowd with run-on comments from the kind of avid readers who choose to participate in this soporific afternoon bookclub as a part of their curriculum. What’s left for me to joke about? We’ve all slipped into a groove of making class comments, and the friction of a would-be Baker Scholar enthusiastically punching the air next to a hungover party victim trying to survive FIN 1 is gone. After hearing a particularly supercilious, well-crafted answer in PE Finance, I had to reflect on whether the worst of HBS was gathered in a class of which I was also a part. “Do I sound like this?” was the thought waking me up more than the preceding cappuccino ever could have.

With less pressure to participate in any kind of socializing — coffee-chugging-speed-chatting, alcohol-fugue-2-a.m.s, or those interminable evening large-group-hangs with neither coffee nor alcohol to soften the need for verbal creativity — I now spend time in interactions that one can call friendship. Recently, I found myself at a party, mildly drunk, needing to make conversation with people I didn’t know. I found myself staring at my sweat-smudged makeup for several long minutes in the mirror of a quaint Cambridge bathroom instead, winded and out of practice. As more warm, enjoyable exchanges fill up my day, I have no thinly-veiled gripes in store to release as humor.

What about socializing’s dirty politician cousin, casting a long shadow on conversation and the embarrassment of an illicit ask: romance? There is no tantalizing thread of discussion on the topic to subvert. Almost all commentary around romance falls into two subcategories in HBS:

1. A long list of trite sentiments around being single which, while contradictory, all hint at dissatisfaction. “No one in HBS is having sex!” (no one???). “In every corner of the party, people were making out!” (the people, the state, the vast populace which never includes me or anyone I know). The extreme embarrassment and covert playing of cards is nowhere as well highlighted as in the graveyard, un-updated Section S group chat, which can’t admit its own desire to the point of even organizing a singles mixer. This Victorian prudishness lends itself only to a Lady Whistledown commentary sheet not befitting of The Harbus (Michelle was not amused by the pitch).

2. Engagements and marriages. I would hardly make fun of the institution of marriage. I might be called bitter if I did so.

That leaves me with recruiting, on which front I suspect I am in fact the subject of the joke. With a priceless ($100K) punchline. 

In the background of my thoughts, my dryer whirrs, the hooks of my bras knocking around tinnily, much like the existential crisis in my head. I moved off campus to Continuum this year. A friend who has made the reverse move to campus would tell me that this is the reason for my drab, humorless existence. “I threw a frisbee around with a few people on campus” does definitely have more congenial storytelling potential than “my corner apartment has a great view of the Trader Joe’s entrance, and I saw you buying six bottles of booze.”

As I turn into bed, glutinous layers of skincare caked on my face, breakfast protein smoothie made and stored, cases read and filed away, the thought briefly occurs: is the lack of humor a symptom of a well-adjusted life? Is it true that my humor was a coping mechanism, a verbal drywall preventing incursions into vulnerability?

Well, I can feel less bad about not getting into Crafting Your Life now.

Ramya Vijayram (MBA ‘26) is originally from Chennai, India. She graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, with a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Biotechnology. Prior to the Harvard MBA, Ramya worked at Warburg Pincus in Mumbai, India, and McKinsey and Co. in India.