The Shadow Curriculum

 What high-functioning rooms quietly teach us about being taken seriously

My case preparation approach metamorphized in an interesting way over the last semester. My first few cases started with aggressive underlining of case facts and exhibits, to the detriment of the structural integrity of its paper. You could have almost mistaken me for an attorney headed into litigation with the heavy abuse of my highlighter, cascading tabs, and mental preparation for arguments and counterarguments—only to manage to make a nervous 30-second case fact comment or narrate the 50^th rendition of Porter’s five forces, if I even managed to get called on.

Arriving with the generous assumption of being dead average of a cohort of highly intelligent classmates, I at first ignored the underlying reinforcing patterns recurring in the class. Yet, as I gradually spent less time worrying about aggressive underlining and more on the content of class discussions, I began identifying cues on what was actually being evaluated in class discussions. In order to effectively contribute to the “co-production” of the classroom, the ability to contribute legibly, succinctly, and eloquently was often as or more important than the content of a comment. 

My learning algorithm gradually and instinctively overfitted to micro-rewards of subtle nods. It learned to reduce the friction of discussion by self-correcting the length of my comments to optimize for listeners in a packed case discussion. It learned to make my comments digestible to both the overly-prepared classmate and the sleep-deprived recruiting zombie. Of course, how quickly you adapt seems to depend on whether you’ve previously survived high-functioning, attention-scarce, continuously monitored environments. 

The existence of this learning outcome, or the Shadow Curriculum, as I like to call it, feels undeniable. 

While deviating from the formal curriculum of discounted cash flows yet with no associated formal grading metric, the shadow curriculum serves as a fantastic precursor to almost all high-functioning environments we might encounter in the future. Our cognitive ability, for better or worse, cannot be handed out as laminated one-pagers for others to prep beforehand. It is assessed through our ability to convey it through speech, which becomes a proxy for it. 

Thankfully, to ease the burden of proving this theory’s legitimacy (which apparently won a Nobel Prize in Economics), economists have already theorized this concept and aptly named it Costly Signaling. My Claude prompt—“explain it to me like I’m a toddler”—worked like a charm, and I can explain this theory through the following paraphrasing: your legitimacy in environments where you cannot directly prove competency stems from your ability to emit “costly” signals. Costly signals are tough to replicate and show real cognitive control. For example, demonstrating confidence or using jargon are not costly signals, as you can demonstrate them without substance. However, staying calm when challenged or being specific when under pressure are costly signals. Revisiting my elaboration on curriculum deviation, the shadow curriculum serves as the rehearsal ground to hone these very signals. 

On a similar note, personally, as someone who for no good reason turns their nose up at performative practices, they ironically aren’t categorized as such signals. Performative speaking may seem like intellectually pandering, but the true objective is to provide a transmission method for your thoughts. As a data engineer would say, that’s just plumbing. 

Now, as I spent the better half of my Sunday executing this semi-futile exercise of reverse-engineering the very pedagogy that has outlived all of my career convictions, I couldn’t help but ponder if there are some signals that are costlier than others, and wonder whether we truly indulge in the right signals. 

Somewhere down this rabbit hole, costly signaling revealed to me a second, far more visual layer: the Red Sneaker theory. A darling favorite of marketeers, it’s as visual and apt as the name it was given. It describes, psychologically, the presence of red sneakers in a boardroom—an intentional deviation from the conventional “dress code.” When executed correctly, it shows authentic contrast and reframing of predictable patterns. It’s contingent on only one condition: it has to be sequenced after credibility is established. 

Whereas red sneakers on a CEO seem intentional, red sneakers on an intern seem like poor fashion choice, or worse, a lack of workplace etiquette. All this is just a dramatic way of saying: figure out what differentiator you can bring to conversations. Deliberately take the risk to introduce that differentiator once your credibility is established. In the classroom, once you’ve proven you can sufficiently understand case progression, leverage that credibility to pull your red sneaker out. It could be naming the assumption everyone is stepping around, or it could be reframing the very perspective of the protagonist. The reward to this intentional risk is the ability to expand the horizon of conversation. 

If you’ve managed to read this far, I trust the shadow curriculum to teach us the “dress code” that elevates the finesse expected from an HBS graduate. But I’d urge you to figure out what your red sneaker is.

Esha Chalamalla (MBA ‘27) likes reading and writing observational and opinion pieces. She also enjoys sports, travelling, and food. She has basic tastes and cannot comment further on why.