Living the Privileged HBS Life

Charity auctions are great. Really. But there’s something I just don’t get about a room full of ninety mostly twenty-something students (some with partners there) who are able to raise $33,000 dollars in an evening. Where are these people getting this money? And the things donated! I can’t recall a single person in my MFA graduate program who would have been able to donate tickets to the Olympics in Athens, lodging in Bermuda (or Aspen), or a weekend in Nantucket. Of course, those HBSers won’t let you down, even in a classy event like this. You could still bid on [grammar mistakes theirs, of course]: “Inflict punishment on your classmates. For every dollar you bid, X and Y will eat tacos at lunch on a three case day. Will eat one taco for every dollar bid up to $25. From $25 to $50, will eat 1 taco for every two dollars bid. Above $50, will eat 1 taco for every $5 bid. A and B, remember that X sits behind you.” For the record, they’ll be eating 139 tacos. Of course, I made a few bids myself, which I lost. Tennis lessons and snowboarding lessons (for after the baby is born, you dolts!) went out of my price range quickly. I did win my bid for four hours of manual labor, which I’m very excited about. I’m not sure the donor fully understands what he’s gotten himself into (ah, the backyard mess will finally be cleared out thanks to the work of my manual laborer and my slave laborer aka Adam). And Anupam, our auctioneer for much of the evening, saved himself tremendous publicly inflicted grief as he, at the last second, got my name right (I could hear “Jenny Medros” emerging from his lips before he quickly corrected himself with “Jenny Brown”) as I placed the winning bid. By the way, in case you were curious, the highest bid went for a party week for six in Ibiza for $5,400. And no, we didn’t buy it.