A day in the life...

This post is intended to share what a normal schedule is for a lot of people at HBS. I would be blogging more often, but my calendar is too full, so hopefully this will help explain a little of why that is.

In general I try to get my utility rate as close as possible to 100%, although that includes social events. My walk to class from home is 12 minutes, of which I always try to use as an opportunity to listen to the news or to call a friend to catch up on things. I try to make as much time of the day count towards something "productive." It's not uncommon to find myself having to schedule a 20 minute phone conversation a week out due to time constraints. Similarly, if I'm eating lunch or dinner, I try to combine it with a meeting or an opportunity to learn something new. If not, I'll probably eat en route to somewhere. This may not sound healthy, but time here moves quickly, and I really value the opportunities this place affords. I can't believe the first semester is almost over... a fourth of my HBS experience! I certainly haven't regretted making the most of every minute so far. The only thing I wish I could change is to have more minutes in the day. I doubt I will ever look back and say "gee, I wished I had just slowed down and watched more TV."

I chose two fairly random days and put the schedule into the following image. We have 3 classes on Monday/Wednesday/Friday and 2 classes on Tuesday/Thursday. I therefore picked a Wednesday/Thursday combination. My use of transition time (calling while walking, reading while doing cardio, etc.) is not made explicit, but you can get the idea:


Looking at my schedule and thinking of my trends, I would summarize my days as follows:

			Hours
Classes			3-4
Case prep			3-4
Face to face meetings			2
Phone meetings / interviews			1
Seminars and extra lectures			1.5
Formal recruiting events (every other day)			2-3
Social events (every other day)			2-3
Sports and working out			1
Misc one time events			1
Emailing/Networking/Catching up			2
Sleep			6

So hopefully that gives a little more insight into my student life. I will note though that some students have a very different schedule. For example, if a student is not recruiting for a summer position because of a corporate sponsorship, that frees up a large amount of time to pursue other things. Some students are involved in student government, which can take up a lot of time. Some students spend a lot more or a lot less time at social events each night. Some students try to go to all the extra lectures/seminars and take a lot of notes, some students go to none of them. So the variability is quite large. I'm just a data point.