We started drinking at 4pm at one of my classmate’s house, because obviously by now we are alcoholics and need to have a pre-drink before every single conceivable event. The weather was beautiful and we took tons of prom-esque pictures on his patio. I tried to be in as many pictures as possible because I had spent hours curling my hair¹, and obviously everyone needed a reminder of my beautiful face in their photo albums.
It was so great to see my old classmates all together again², and everyone looked beautiful in their suits and dresses. Despite the fact that I would not consider most of these people my best friends, even feeling like an outsider at times, I know I won’t see some of these people ever again, and certainly not all together like this, so I tried to savour every moment. It was an afternoon spent in the sun, toasting to our youth, congratulating ourselves on surviving Business School, and anticipating what’s to come.

The banquet itself was quite standard, but I was lucky to be seated with people whose company I actually enjoy (and enjoy immensely when inebriated). We had a grand time sharing stories of our classmates (or in my case, myself), recalling our best and worst professors, and of course, stealing cake. The banquet was buffet-style, so while there was a huge line for the appetizers and entrees, there was no one around the dessert table (at first). So I came up with the genius idea of stealing an entire cake and bringing it back to our table. TM executed the plan flawlessly and brought an entire, untouched mango mousse cake to our table. The servers were not impressed with us, but luckily no one tried to remove it (otherwise they would have had to wrestle it from my claws). We did not stop there. We then proceeded to bring the rest of the dessert buffet to our table. There were over a dozen cakes, and trays upon trays of tarts and brownies and other delicacies. Our table became dessert porn central, and we feasted. Dessert gluttony is the best kind of gluttony.

After dinner, there were buses taking us to The Club, but our program director asked us to control ourselves. “Please don’t let me end up in the Globe and Mail on Monday, like the MBA students did.” We, of course, ignored him. In the words of our student president, “For the rest of our lives, we will uphold The Business School’s ethical code, and we will represent our school in the best light. But tonight, we party.”

BI wanted to go home and change before The Club, and since my feet were killing me, I decided to go with her. Apparently we weren’t the only ones with this idea, because we ended up piling eight people into our friend’s tiny Audi. There were cops on every street as we drove through downtown, so we had to duck our heads and lie on people’s laps to avoid being seen. It was reminiscent of a certain night in first-year when we had 10 people in a similar-sized car (two people in the trunk). We debated the trunk idea, I was nominated because I was smallest, and I would have done it if I weren’t afraid to mess up my hair (see previous note about how long I spent on my hair). Also, as BI pointed out, “If the cops did pull us over and found a car full of mostly brown guys, with an Asian girl in the trunk, that would not go over well.”

Once I got to BI‘s apartment, I took full advantage of her hospitality and changed out of everything: my shoes, my dress, my purse, even my earrings. She has great style, and I had no qualms about the fact that my entire outfit that evening was going to be sponsored by her. At The Club, we joked with the bouncer that everything I was wearing belonged to her (to distract him from noticing that we had cut the entire line), and he said, “100%? Or 90%?” “Oh, well, not 100%,” I said, remembering that I was obviously wearing my own underwear. “Everything visible to the eye is hers. Everything underneath is mine.” When I saw the amused expression on BI‘s face, which mirrored the bouncer’s, I realized what the line sounded like. I swear to God, I don’t do this intentionally, I just never think before I open my mouth!

The rest of the night was kind of a blur. We had VIP booths and tons of bottles floating around, although I tried to limit my alcohol consumption (very difficult when there’s free bottles all around).

All in all, last night was a great ending to my journey at The Business School. Since I will be missing convocation, I can consider myself an official graduate at any point. I choose today. Today is the beginning of a new chapter in my life. Brave new world, here I come.

1. The process of getting my hair to curl (and stay curled) was a Herculean task. I’ve only used a curling iron once before, when I was 18, so I burned myself several times in the process.
2. Last year, we all had the same classes together as a ‘section’, but the sections got split up this year.

I never had a good first impression of you, but I wanted to give you a chance by including you in our negotiations team. What do I get in return? You are a clueless, useless member of the team, and all you do is flirt with the guys on the other team. When you took the wrong hand-out at the end of last class and ended up being unprepared for our negotiation, do you remember the first thing you said? “SG, I think you gave me the wrong hand-out!” Um, no. You took the wrong hand-out, and then I chased you down as you were leaving to give you the right one, and you STILL ended up reading the wrong one!
You seemed like a smart girl at first, but now I am having serious doubts. I mean, if you realized you read the wrong hand-out, you probably aren’t in a position to negotiate concessions with the other team when you don’t even know what you’re talking about. When we were close to reaching a deal, you randomly started threatening them, breaking down all the rapport we had built with the other team. In those situations, shouldn’t you just keep your mouth shut? How clueless are you?

So, please, do us all a favour – for this week’s negotiation, just be quiet. In fact, don’t even show up to class at all. I’m sure the rest of us will do just fine without you.

Your Frustrated Team-mate,
SassyGirl

—-

Dear CockyBlondeJock,

You are an arrogant prick, and I don’t like you. I don’t know why you insist on teasing/flirting with me every chance you get but it is getting really annoying, so please STOP. What else do I have to do for you to get the message that I don’t want to talk to you? I’ve already tried ignoring you, dissing you in front of your friends, and yelling at you to leave me alone. Seriously, how stubborn are you? There are plenty of other girls in our school who would gladly flirt with you, why don’t you bother one of them? If you have an Asian fetish, there are plenty of other Asian girls here. If you have a petite girl fetish, there are also plenty of petite girls. But if you have a SassyGirl fetish, I can’t help you.

Not Interested,
SassyGirl

—

Dear BoysFromClub(s),

I am really liking the new trend of asking to dance with me as opposed to just rubbing yourselves against my behind. Thank you for that. Unfortunately, the answer is still, “No.”

Nice Try,
SassyGirl

—

Dear Value Investing,

I hate you. Every day, I wonder why I took your course. I don’t care that it worked for Buffet, it is not something I plan to do. And yet you continue to punish me with these dense annual reports of companies I’ve never heard of. Why, why, why do you torture me like this?

Your Anti-Disciple,
SassyGirl

—

Dear Value Investing Group Members,

If you can’t speak English, don’t write the report. And if you ask me to edit it for you, then why did you still hand in the unedited version? Thanks for wasting my time.

Ungratefully,
SassyGirl

I am also a slacker.
Most people equate good grades with studious. But this is an illogical conclusion. Case in point. This morning, I had a four-hour exam. I spent the entire week watching Queen Seon Duk, a 62-episode Korean period drama, telling myself I would study when I got back to University Town. I got back on Monday, and spent the entire day yesterday watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy¹. I spent an hour in the morning blow-drying and straightening my hair². And I spent most of the four hours during the exam trying to scrape off the chipped nail polish on my fingernails.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if I got an A on the exam. It’s happened before.

If my friends knew how little I study (for exams or in general), I think they would all stop being my friends. So I always pretend to be studious when it’s close to exam time, and I always pull in my weight for team projects. After four years of university, my peers have yet to realize what a slacker I am.

1. I suppose that earns me extra nerd points, but to be honest, it was because I had no other DVDs in my apartment, and I wanted to watch something on our plasma TV as opposed to on my computer.
2. I always have to look good for exams. I don’t know when this ritual started, but I cannot allow myself to go to an exam with sweatpants and messy hair. I may look like that all week, but at the exam, I will look pristine.

I seem to amaze people, although I am at a loss for why. Maybe they just don’t see it coming – you know, innocent little me, planning to have boytoys in every major city in Asia? Or any other scheme I come up with, really.

Later that day…

“Let’s meet in the morning on Sunday and spend as long as we need to to get through these cases.”
“9am?” Someone suggested. “That’s when we normally have class anyway.”
“I don’t think I can make it for 9. How about 10?” I piped up.
“Why? Do you have plans in the morning?”
“Well… sort of,” I said sheepishly. My teammates looked at me, waiting for me to continue. Finally, I said, “I have to make breakfast. You know, weekend breakfasts are pretty elaborate, they take time.”
Everyone burst into laughter. Then, when they realized I was being serious, they stared at me incredulously. “Your plans… are to make breakfast?”
“Well, normally I can eat breakfast on the go. But on weekends, I usually make a big breakfast – you know, scrambled eggs, pancakes… it takes time.”
Now they were looking at me like I was an alien. What? Was I so crazy to want to make myself a good breakfast once a week?
GSB finally chuckled and shook his head. “You are…” he trailed off, at a loss for words.
As the rest of my group begrudgingly agreed to meet at 10, I smiled smugly. Maybe I was “something” but I was going to have a big yummy breakfast on Sunday morning, and that’s all that mattered.

One of my classes is called “Global Strategy,” taught by a Taiwanese professor with a very thick Chinese accent. Half the time, I can’t understand what he’s saying, and I’m Chinese! It doesn’t help that listening to him speak makes me want to laugh. I can’t even hold it in, it’s that bad. His accent is so classically Asian, he can’t pronounce ses for the life of him, and he kind of makes up his own sounds when he doesn’t know exactly how something is pronounced. Like “strategy” comes out sounding like “training” – I mean, how do you even do that?
But even without the accent, he is a very amusing professor. In our first class, he was trying to convince us of the necessity of this class by showing us the extent of globalization (foreigners invading our home environment even if we don’t have any intention to go abroad).
“You wake up in the morning, you put on your underwear, made in China. You put on your jeans, made in Bangladesh. You put on your t-shirt, made in Pakistan. You drive to school in your car made in Japan. You buy a coffee, imported from Columbia. And then you get to class and you realize, your professor is imported from Taiwan!” (Imagine this whole monologue with a thick Chinese accent, the kind that Russel Peters imitates.)

Anyway, other than school, I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get things back on track with PLB. I knew a month-long break at the start of a (potential) relationship would be hazardous, and I was completely right.
Actually, it’s more my fault that his. Ever since we came back from the holidays, I have been really awkward around him. It’s not like I want to be, but I just get really nervous around him, because now we are both fairly aware that we like each other¹. He was in my first class when I came back, and I didn’t prepare myself at all for that, so I barely acknowledged him there and left right after class. The second morning (we had the same class again), he did come over to talk to me, but I wasn’t really helping the conversation and avoided his eyes the whole time. The same sort of thing happened over and over again as we ran into each other over the next few days; I would be too nervous to flirt or say something remotely interesting, even if I told myself not to freeze up.
I was hopeless, and my awkwardness was going to ruin this!

Last night, I decided to try to redeem myself. I was going to Zee’s going-away party², and afterward, DG and I were going to The Club (the club that The Business School students go to every Thursday night). He was going to be there, that much I knew. So I drank, a little bit more and a little bit faster than normal, at the going-away party, so I was sufficiently drunk (but not sloppy) by the time we got to The Club. He was one of the first people we ran into, but it was in passing so I didn’t get to talk to him. The rest of the night I spent switching between the dance floor and the table where he was sitting. But every time I went to their table, some guy I knew would spot me and come over to talk to me. Many of them were my classmates from last year, so we’d always be very excited to see each other (one guy even picked me up and twirled me around – he’s really strong). I don’t know how it looked to PLB, that every time I sat down, a new guy would come to the table. Somehow, I wasn’t sure the jealousy card was a viable strategy for me at that point. In between guys, I tried to have a conversation with him, but it was hard with the loud music. I did find it more easy to talk to him, and flirt, now that I had lost my nervousness. But still, he did not make a move.

DG got frustrated and decided that I needed to redeem my self-respect, so she dragged me away from him for nearly an hour. When we went to the washroom, we ran into him at coat-check. He was leaving?!
I waited outside the washroom for DG so that he would have an opportunity to talk to me. He did come over, explaining how he had an interview the next day so he didn’t want to party too hard tonight. Understandable, but I was still disappointed. We hugged a couple times, but he seemed no more interested in me than any other guy I’d seen that night.

DG was more upset that PLB left than I was. “What the hell is wrong with him?” She shouted, a little too loudly. A guy nearby overheard us and said, “Forget him. I would never ditch a girl like you.” I rolled my eyes as a signal for him to move on³. Why was it that, today of all days, when the last thing I felt like was hooking up with a random guy, guys would hit on me so aggressively? Even the cab driver had offered to go out with me to “make that guy jealous.” (Yeah, I was pretty creeped out. I mean, obviously cab drivers eavesdrop, but isn’t it a cardinal rule to pretend not to be able to hear the passengers? Much less getting yourself involved and hitting on a girl at least ten years your junior?)
“Come on, let’s go get you a guy,” DG said as she dragged me to the dance floor.
“But I don’t want a guy,” I whined, although I didn’t think she heard me.

In the end, DG found a guy, and I went home alone. Am I really that pathetic? I guess I am.

1. God, I hope so. Because if I’m just making things up in my head again, I am going to feel like a huge fool.
2. She’s going to Australia for medical school at the end of the week.
3. Later, that guy found me on the dance floor and I literally had to push him away and tell him, “I don’t want to dance with you!” before he got the message.

Dear Mother,

I do not need you to tell me what I look like, that’s what mirrors are for. I do not need you to tell me how much I weigh, that’s what scales are for. I have an eating disorder as it is, so it’s probably not a good idea to tell me I am fat every time you see me. I am in shape. Round is a shape.

Regards,
Your Not Chubby Daughter

—

Dear Professor,

I am not really sure what you want me to write about in this exam since the answers are all pretty much given in the various articles you had us read. I guess I can spend 2000 word giving you a “best of” but shouldn’t you have read these articles before assigning them to us?

Cheers,
A Confused Student

—

Dear PreordainedLoverBoy,

Why have you not texted me in three days? I know you know I’m in The City now, don’t you miss me? Aren’t you going to miss me over the next few weeks? If you don’t contact me, aren’t you afraid that I might give up on you and hook up with someone else over the holidays?

xoxo
Your Preordained Lover Girl

P.S. Feel free to show up at my door with hand-written signs expressing your ardent love for me. My address is…

—

Dear Chocolate,

I love, love, love you. Thank you for being in my life.

Love,
Your Number One Fan

That last one doesn’t count, it’s not a grievance. But seriously, PLB, that’s it? No more texts? We’re just going to go cold turkey for the holidays? That is so anticlimactic.

• Do not sleep over at a guy’s place if he has a girlfriend. If anything happens, you’ll be “the other girl.” Even if you think that it’s okay, it’s never okay to be “the other girl.”
• Sometimes, douchebag bosses do need to be put in their place. Even if telling them off won’t accomplish anything, at least you’ll have the satisfaction of seeing the look on their faces when you let them have a piece of your mind. Otherwise, you will dream about having shouting matches with your boss, which is nowhere near as satisfying as the real thing.
• Following from the above, it’s okay to burn bridges. This summer, I burned two bridges (HB and MFL) and it was the best thing I could have done for me. If only I had burned the bridge with LawyerMan too…
• No one will love you like your parents love you. Although I’m proud that I have never been spoiled by my parents, after twenty years, I do want to be spoiled, just a little bit.
• At a recruiting event, don’t say things like “Even if Firm X gave me an offer, I wouldn’t take it” or “I’m only here for the food and open bar.” Especially when there’s a recruiter standing behind you.
• During a case interview, don’t say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” When they ask you why you want to work at their firm during a behavioural interview, don’t answer with any of the following: “Because that guy I met at the recruiting event was super cute!” “Because you guys fly to Germany to party over the weekend.” “Because I heard you can charge trips to Ibiza on your expense account.” All true by the way. But don’t say it.
• Your friends aren’t perfect either. Being the first to forgive and forget can go a long way.
• Holding a grudge just isn’t worth it.
• Don’t take everything too seriously, you’re too young for that.

The last few weeks have been insanely busy. As you have probably guessed by now, it’s recruiting season at The Business School, which means wearing a full suit to school, getting drunk at recruiting events (open bar) while ignoring recruiters, and no classes. Sounds like one big party, eh? Not quite.
The good news is that this time around, I have gotten a lot of interviews. I have six first-round interviews this week, with some of the top five consulting firms in the world. I only applied to global consulting firms because… well, I figured I’d apply to the best of the best, and if I didn’t walk away with any job offers, I would focus on law school.
I have had two interviews so far, which has resulted in one call-back for a final-round interview next week.

The thought of working for one of these swanky consulting firms still makes me feel a little bit like a fraud. After all, I’m a 21-year-old with no industry experience, and I’ll be working on projects for C-level executives of multimillion dollar companies. Go ahead, send me to client sites in Los Angeles, Dubai, Switzerland, Singapore. Go ahead, pay me $70 grand a year for coming up with a few Powerpoint slides.
I don’t know. But I’m sure all that money will appease my conscience. And help me pay for law school.

So I have pulled out my dependable Super Bottle. The Super Bottle contains a mosaic of pills I have collected over the years from illnesses of varying degrees. I don’t remember what half the pills are for anymore. Some are antibiotics, some are sketchy pills from China, some are extra-strength prescription painkillers. Any time I get sick during the course of the school year, I just make myself a little cocktail of drugs from the Super Bottle and I can usually make it through the day. By then, I’m so drugged I wouldn’t feel pain if you stabbed a knife into my gut.

Anyway, as I was saying, this is just the perfect time to fall ill. My classes start at 8am and recruiting events end at 9:30pm, so by the time I get home, I’ve been up and about for 14 hours and I’m just ready to crash. But I still have cases to prepare for class. (I don’t do them of course, instead I make myself a large bowl of noodles and watch Scrubs.)

After a few days with a schedule like that, I’m just about ready to go ape shit on the recruiters. Love me, love me, say that you love me¹!

1. Lovefool by The Cardigans.

Being back in The Business School was weird. I had been excited to see my classmates again, to hear about everyone’s summer internship experiences and to share my own crazy stories, but once I was actually there, I realized that The Business School was the cause of so much of my problems. The high expectations, the competitive spirit, the over-inflated egos, the “playing-adult,” the constant trying to one-up each other.

Sure, I can handle stress. In fact, I love stress. I thrive under stressful conditions. I create these conditions because they make me who I am: an overachiever. But it didn’t preclude the possibility of side-effects.

I had been looking forward to sharing some of my crazy work stories, but now I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to make myself a target for backstabbing now that recruiting season was commencing. I’d learned my lesson the first time.

All I can say is, I can’t wait to graduate.

We all have secrets, from little lies that we tell, or what we don’t tell. We already know there are plenty of things I don’t tell. Here are some more.

Secrets from my boss:

• I told the CEO at Not-A-Real-Job that I wasn’t doing anything this summer other than this internship. Complete lie. As you all know, I am desperately secretly searching for another job.
• He is obviously going to find out when he receives a call from places I have applied to because I put him down as one of my references. I probably should have told him that he is one of my references. I also said I’d been an intern with him for two months. Slight lie, considering I started last month. Hmm…

Secrets from my parents:

• My parents think I have never bombed a single course in university¹ and that I am awesome at science. Neither of these beliefs are correct. I did bomb a course (Cell Biology), which just goes to show I am not awesome at science. I just left the field before it became obvious. My parents desperately want to believe I am awesome at science because 90% of the people in my family are serious scientists, and they want me to join their ranks. Imagine their disappointment when I went to business school instead.
• My mom thinks I am trying to lose weight. Not because I said I was on a diet or anything, just because she thinks I should. So it’s really her fault for making assumptions. When she is not home, I eat ice cream. Lots and lots of it. She also thinks I go swimming every other day. I do not.
• That stain on the bathroom rug that my mother loves? The dog peed there. But it was because I locked the dog in the bathroom when she was getting really annoying. My parents think the dog just went crazy on her own (which does happen sometimes) and I’ve never corrected their notion. It’s not like the dog is going to tell on me.
• One time, my phone dialed my home number on its own while I was out clubbing at 2am (it must have been pressed against something in my purse and hit speed dial). All my parents heard on the resulting answering machine message was “loud noise” (their words, not mine – my guess is it was very loud music). They called me back and when I saw that “Home” was calling, I didn’t answer because I was drunk and I didn’t want them to know I was still out clubbing. They thought I’d been kidnapped or something terrible had happened to me and the recording was all I could get out, so they called the police. I never told them the truth. I switched phones after that incident.

Secrets from my friends:

• I have not told WAF what I really think about the guy she’s seeing. He sounds sketchy as hell, and he is probably bad poisonous for her. But she has fallen pretty hard for him, and anything I say will fall on deaf ears or incur a slew of defenses. I secretly think she wants to be with these bad boys, some form of thrill-seeking or self-destructive behaviour. I mean, her last boyfriend seemed like an angel until he beat her up on my birthday. So who does she rebound to? A guy who is a player, a cheater (he has a girlfriend), and a drug dealer? This can only end badly.
• I secretly think WAF is exactly what I would have turned into had I had more neglectful parents or weaker moral boundaries (maybe the two have something to do with each other). That is why we are friends, and why I do not judge her for her bad habits or moments of weakness – because in another life, I would be her. I actually kind of admire her for being able to vent all of that out. I, on the other hand, might explode one day with all my repressed sinful thoughts and run away to be a prostitute addicted to hard drugs who eventually falls off a hotel balcony.
• OBF knows that I want her relationship with USG to end in their marriage work out, hence I am the first person she runs crying to every time they have a fight. What she doesn’t know is that I think she’s the cause of these fights, because she is needy and demanding and emotionally unstable. I mean, I love her and all, but seriously, this girl can blow up like Mt. Vesuvius.

Any secrets you’d like to share?

1. The Asian definition of bombing: getting below an 80 – or a 3.7 out of 4.0.