Give Me an A!

Louder now! C'mon, I can't hear you! Let's hear it for Section A! Rah rah Section A!

Last night there was a dinner for Adam's camp--I mean, HBS--section. For those of you who are blissfully unaware of what a section is, as I was just a few happy months ago, HBS is a mammoth school. They talk a big game about how selective and prestigious they are, but really, there are 900 students in Adam's class. 900! How selective is that? If I were that selective when I got married, I'd have a harem of husbands by now. But, anyway, 900 students. So what they do is break the class into ten sections. Each section is given an assigned seat in an assigned classroom, and there they stay the entire day. The teachers come to them. (Are you following me? So not only is Hah-vahd "selective," it is training its students to believe that if they just sit tight, things will come to them. Nothing like teaching an HBS student that the world revolves around him/her. It will make them all excellent bosses.) Adam is in Section A, aka Absolut A (I'm not making this up! This is the name they chose for themselves! Connotes tigers in the business world, doesn't it?). Section spirit is paramount. Because Section A rocks. Section A rolls. Section can outdrink, outtalk, and outwit anyone! But most importantly, what I learned last night, is that Section A is waaaaaay better than Section B (as will be proven at tomorrow night's Robopounding competition. Now, I'm not exactly sure what Robopounding is, but I do know it involves copious amounts of beer. Adam will be playing just so I have something to write about on Saturday).

In all fairness to Section A, the evening was a pleasure. A buffet dinner at the Bombay Club, a genuine attempt to make the partners feel included, and a lot of good-natured mockery. I had an extremely enjoyable semi-political discussion with the Libertarian sitting to my left, who was so kind that he didn't even mock me when after my third glass of wine, I could no longer pronounce "Libertarian." But, there were a few things that did annoy me to no end:

1. The "Girls of Section A Calendar." Now, before you get your panties in a wad, let it be known that the images are harmless. Just picture after picture of the women in the class flipping off whomever was taking their picture. Harmless. But what's with this "girls" crap? The women in that class are all adults as far as I can see, and I don't hear the males calling themselves the "boys of section A." C'mon folks. Time magazine may have declared feminism dead, but that doesn't mean we've all gone back to being girls.
   
2. That they speak good. What is so difficult about the English language? All this time I've been picking on the CWITs for their tenuous grasp of basic grammar, when really, it's the Hah-vahd folks who don't know that "is" is a verb (so cap it damn it, when you use it in a headline!) and fail to understand the distinction between "fewer" and "less." I elbowed Adam in the middle of a conversation when even he used "less" incorrectly. Of course, that just proves a theory I developed long ago at Amazon: HBS actively sucks away the part of the brain that holds the ability to speak and write correctly. I have yet to meet a single HBS grad who can use the word "literally" properly (how many times did I have to say, "No, actually, your brain is not literally going to explode, although I would pay good money to see that, if you could make it happen"). (And NO, this does not give you leeway to write me with spelling/grammatical errors in this blog. This is my journal that I am kindly allowing you to be privy to, and if I have to take the time to start editing myself, then I'll never get anything posted, and I'll get harassing e-mails from people reading, "Why haven't you written anything? I keep going to your blog, only there's nothing there," and then I have to feel guilty, which leads to resentment, which will make me really not like you, so if you have a comment about what I say, post it in the comments. If it's about how I say it, then friggin' keep it to yourself!)
   
3. The forced bonding. As I said, the evening was pleasant, but there seems to be a false camaraderie, as if someone early on said, "Ohmygod, we've only got two years here so we better cram in all of our friend making and develop some team spirit superfast! Second semester is practically here! [insert smiley faced emoticon here]." Something about all the merriment just didn't feel natural.
   
4. The waaaah factor. The evening provoked yet another minor temper tantrum on my part on how I refuse--refuse, I tell you!--to become a Hah-vahd wife. Adam, who never wanted me to become a Hah-vahd wife in the first place, took it pretty well. Luckily, this nasty fight shouldn't rear its loathsome head again until the next HBS event...which is Saturday (okay, I confess, I'm not really going to make Adam Robopound a beer, whatever the hell that is).
   

As I write this, it occurs to me, yet again, that it would have been much smarter had I started an anonymous blog where I could talk about these things with no thought to repercussions. But then again, what the frick do I care? Bring it on Hah-vahd boys and girls!

I must go feed my crankiness with sushi and clean the house, for tomorrow--sheer heaven--we have a maid coming to really clean. (And did anyone just notice what happened there? Yep, that was me, starting to turn into the ultimate Hah-vahd wife: the dreaded CWIT! The proper CWIT always deals with her servants with a kind, yet firm hand. Although a true CWIT wouldn't go home every night for over two months, close her eyes and say, "I believe in fairies!" as she walks into the bathroom, only to burst into tears when she sees that, once again, no cleaning pixies had come to scrub her bathroom, and then to not bother to scrub said bathroom, knowing that if she waits just one more day, somehow said bathroom would clean itself [who said bathroom?]. Now how was that for a convoluted sentence?)