What I Should Have Done This Summer

Jake Goodman (MBA ‘26) shares his musings from an empty Spangler.

Empty Spangy. So empty. Large cavernous spangled emptiness. Roaming the halls in the July heat, hearing laughter from students of yesteryear. I am a holdover. A lonely summer boy. 

I may work remotely in this space. I may do my work and do Boston summer as I am held over in these halls. I get the Spangy food without any interference from mutual bodies shuffling into these halls at 12:10 PM EST. I now eat at new times, times with standard deviations around 12:30 PM EST. I have the freedom to consume in Spangy without the incoming deadline of a 1:30 PM Aldrich Herman Miller crimson chair calling my name, beckoning me as its tagged semester-long owner.

Am I a lame boy? Should I be doing the AI in the San of Frisco? I can say things like AGI. I can say it! I have dribbled the word in my mouth: “Ah, Gee, EYE.” Or I can say “agents.” It’s no secret. Non-secret agents! Non-secret agents can automate your workflows, unlocking efficiencies and saving you time today. Let me embed them into your workflow. I can embed. I can! On remote days, I could embed… from bed! This summer, I could have been embedding every day, out in the open, unmasked. That’s what they do… out West, in that foggy bay. I could be knowledgeable about micro-climates and explain these pockets of climate to locals.

Yet, in Boston,  these small town blues are upon me. The Charles is a sad, satin river. Should I have bitten a three-month-old Big Apple? Should I be cruising the West Village in the humid hum of the New York night, complaining wildly with my hands out as I explain how tragic the price of my three-month sublet is, a tragedy worthy of being documented in the esteemed pages of The Harbus newspaper? I mean, it is outrageous after all. I could have done New York AI. The computers make it so I can do the AI outside of the San of Frisco. Or maybe there’s something else. In New York, I could have been a person who invests at the earliest stage, backing founders with visions to create generational companies. Oh boy, I could have picked a decacorn, plucking golden apples like a good New Englander. 

Instead, I have gained dominion over this campus. Oh Shad bench, you are mine. I have become a quiet mouse moving his weights on this bench. To think one day I will have to share this bench again. To think one day I might have delayed access to such bench given the newcomers in Shad who have also taken a tender interest in this bench, this bench that I had been so accustomed to this summer.

Maybe I need to be free of this place. Yes! I can be a pre-EC dropout! But what should I drop out to do? What about taking The Fiducaries, Harvard Business School’s one and only rock ensemble that has fulfilled its duty of caring for the music scene in this Allston bubble, on a tour of other business schools? We can start in the green bubble of Tuck, then bus over to the clam pizza bubble of Yale, then the concrete bubble of Columbia, then one day the Silicon bubble of GSB. Yes! I can tell my sectionmates I am exploring the intersection of AI and live music and that I need some time to get some real-world experience that I just can’t get in the classroom. Could the Rock fellowship support us? No, we must break free! And the covers of High School Musical shall ring from our amplifiers. Is it worthy enough to drop out for this?

These questions whirr in my head when I return to the Spangy as it sits warm in the sun like an empty filing cabinet. Sad Spangy shall come to life. Deck these halls with students. The weather shall turn soon, and this hot Aldrich lawn shall be full of leaves and shoes. It is now the season to be jolly.

Jake Goodman (MBA ’26) is originally from Davie, Florida. He graduated from Brown University with an honors degree in English and Economics in 2019. Prior to HBS, Jake worked in corporate development, strategic finance, and retail strategy and operations at Gopuff, a rapid convenience app, in Miami, and for Barclays in New York City. He is an avid banjo and guitar player and misses the Florida sun dearly.