Winter Travel: IFC Edition

Combining the joys of education and the wonders of travel to get a secret-third thing

Our final semester of Harvard Business School started in a spirit of irreverent disruption which belies the severely regimented nature of this MBA—with a snow day and cancelled classes leading into the chaotic add/drop period which comes with course selection. This is the only time you can (i) show up in class having brazenly not read the case (sloth) (ii) not show up at all (sloth pt. 2) (iii) show up and commit the worse, eighth deadly sin—using a laptop in class. This laissez-faire period explains how the first brain cell I am exerting this week is midway through it, on writing this article.

HBS’s mandatory courses go on for the entire first year, unlike most other MBAs—which allows us to coin truly unique lingo with ‘RC’ and ‘EC’, unlike the unfortunate and widespread ‘LEAD’ which graces every school’s promotional material. The fact, then, that we are actually expected to make academic decisions comes as something of a shock in second year. You confront the difficult question of what truly counts as a business education—a soft-skills leadership course or a hardcore finance class with a balance sheet tagged on every case (trick question! You will get your personality diagnosis regardless of which one you pick). Is learning really on the cards, or is it one of those things you say when asked why you’re not gainfully employed at twenty-eight? 

The Indian immigration officer gave me a judgemental look suggesting he didn’t buy it. Why are you asking me what I do anyway, officer of my own country? What’s with all the questioning? Where else can you send me? 

As you navigate the maze of the philosophical, the mundane contrives to drag you down. What is this cross-registration petition that one needs to submit to take classes in other schools? How emotional does it need to be? Is the begging-my-ex-to-get-back vibe too much? Is it too little? Do we think the Taylor Swift lyric increases or decreases my chances?

Then you confront the strange beast: the IFC. International Frathouse Circuit. Interlude From home-Coming. I yearn For three holiday Credits. As a winter-term course, why am I forced to sacrifice my fall-term seat in MITI for it? When I asked my EC-advisor-on-retainer about it—a disgruntled graduate (please request for time slots two weeks in advance), a visionary and a heretic who doesn’t believe in taking Negotiations—he promptly shot down my suggestion of taking IFC Japan.

Yet there I was, armed with visa, passport and one empty suitcase for shopping. You might wonder—how did I get there? Surely the illustrious newsletter of the business school, which is definitely not going to get replaced by a TikTok account in the near future, should have advice on such matters pertaining to the school experience?

Disclaimer: Although I have been operating on the comfortable assumption that no one reads my articles, least of all professors, I have been proven wrong in the past. This article is SATIRE, and does not represent my actual views on the course. I actually have no strongly held views. None. Complete sellout.

Disclaimer 2: My opinions on learning in this article should also be held in 0 regard; I am writing this article instead of the final paper on the day of submission.

Disclaimer 3: Again, for professors who’ve made it this far. SATIRE. 

Moving on.

IFCs are HBS’s attempt to not allow TourHero to corner the “trek” market; owing to the high demand from students who enjoy foreign travel in a 20+ people-sized MBA bubble but cannot rally up their closest friends to a single destination. It’s what you do when you want to run back FIELD for any reason. Maybe despite the extensive personality testing, you did not vibe with your project team. Maybe you ended up as the eighth Dunkin’ Donuts team in Boston instead of in Egypt. 

However, a mere three months after this debacle, you are offered the opportunity to once again gamble with US immigration in the not-so distant future (there goes the one line of current affairs commentary I am allowed per article). Did I mention to you that it would be free, if you’re on any amount of financial aid? 

I could end the article here, with my main takeaway - I love a good deal, and have terrible risk calibration (as one can see from the discount Doordash orders I make from unknown restaurants). However, so that I don’t have to title my article “A series of miscellaneous time-bound grouses”, I shall use a derivative of the framework helpfully provided by HBS to write my paper, to offer some actual insight into the course. 

However I have made most of the jokes I wanted to make, so I had to run my feebler attempts from here on through ChatGPT to tighten them up. Nothing to make you question your sense of humour more than AI saying blandly, like a bored first date, “Haha, great line already.”  This is the real reason I am against usage of AI in the arts.

1. In-class Learning (and the nebulous pre-work one is supposed to complete over the semester and break):

…….

2. Project Work: About one week before we were due to land up in Japan, I opened the itinerary to promise our client a time we would end up at their office; only to see that we have a total of four designated working days. I spent more than four days planning my first trip to the US; yet here I was, delivering a US go-to-market strategy.

I see why there is a first section now.

Not every IFC has a project; many of them don’t, including only the perks of HBS’s vast network (network!!! That would’ve won over the immigration officer!) in the form of visits with companies and local luminaries. So if you don’t have any latent passion for a one-week McKinsey-style sprint culminating in disappointed eye contact with the CEO of an eminent company, you have options!

3. Cultural Experience: Versus FIELD (why do we always write it in all capitals? Free International Experience Leading-to Disaster??), IFCs focus more on cultural immersion—so HBS plans certain activities for you. Is it really cultural immersion if you’re not navigating new traditions in a foreign country with your peers—such as potentially meeting your classmates nude in an Onsen? 

The advantage of cosplaying as working professionals also allows a chance to dabble in the ordinary—the daily commute, the working lunch, the team dinner with sake, and the judicious leveraging of 7/11 hangover cures the day after.

Memo: Post-IFC Travel: A study of Instagram over winter break offers a compelling, multi-faceted analysis on just how long a trip it should be possible to take, and with how many different people. For a group of people who are told that the MBA is a two-year long holiday, it is unsurprising that travel should feature so prominently and frequently in it. 

Naturally then, if you are already positioned in a foreign country, why not make the most of it? Make that two-week trip a week longer, make that day-trip through at least two other countries on the way home. 

My mom always used to say that travelling with someone was a good way to test your compatibility with them. She didn’t provide the corollary that travelling with a group of people is actually an evaluation of your personability (anything is a personality test in HBS if you’re willing to look at the results!). Never fear though! You have a 20+ hour journey to get home, with nothing to do but reflect on whether your middle-school ‘friends’ ditching you for a birthday party has led to you being a control freak who has to take the final call on which izakaya to go to post dinner.

At long last, then, you reach Boston. Ready to start a new semester with three fewer credits to lob around in add/drop - when you’re done submitting your paper and the reality-TV-vote-coded peer review. Which you can write in those sweet, sweet pre-dawn hours when your persisting jetlag wakes you up in a Conjuring-esque fashion at 3 a.m.

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.