The Road Not Taken Is Actually Filled with Boring Potholes

For about five minutes at the beginning of the school year, I regretted not following my former manager’s advice and applying to business school myself. After all, how tough was it? Adam was busy cutting out cards and drawing things. I could do Crimson Greetings. I could excel at Crimson Greetings. But the minute the school year started, that thought fled from my mind. Believe it or not, I actually read a couple of the cases that I thought were the more interesting ones. But over all, I just can’t get passionate like Adam can about making those numbers flow. As I read the cases, all I thought was, “These could be crafted much better. Arg, how can they have missed that comma there?” The feeling was validated when Adam was picking out his classes for next year. This boy agonized. He debated. He spent five—yes, five—hours merely making up a draft. So many wonderful courses to choose from, and he could only take a max of six (although he wisely decided that five was probably more advisable in the fall, given that we’ll have our hands rather full). And he can only rank his classes and then hope he gets his all of his first choice classes (it's a complex system that sounds almost like a football draft). So I took a look at the list, wondering at the world of excitement that HBS has to offer. Do you know how many classes I thought looked interesting to take? Exactly one. That’s it. And can you guess what that class was? “Power and Influence.” A class, I might add, that seems to hold little interest to Adam. He’s much more interested in “Negotiating Complex Deals.” Which pretty much sums us both up right there. Although, I will confess, that neither one of us had any interest in “The Moral Leader,” which is probably why we get along so well.