ms. j (part ii)
We decided on swinging by Hayes street and picking out a restaurant at random. On the way, we started comparing notes about our fellow classmates. Who's married. Who's got kids. Who's unemployed. Who's out of the closet. Who's snapped.
You couldn't quite call Babson a pressure cooker. The school certainly didn't put the screws to you like MIT or Harvard. Rather, we were perfectly happy putting the screws to ourselves after graduation. A lot of us opted for high burnout jobs in consulting, corporate IT or accounting.
Yes, accounting can be a burnout job, trust me.
our parents are having their midlife crises now.
but our generation has to do everything doubletime.
we're having our midlife crises in our mid-twenties.
- Meng Weng Wong
We opted for dinner at an Italian place across the street from a French bistro called Absinthe. The bistro looked intriguing, and the name suckered in my little goth aesthete, but the crowd seemed to pose a challenge for any sort of involved conversation. After ordering, we continued our conversation.
part of the reason why J. moved out to San Francisco was to get away from the insane life of New York real estate sales. She's now a buyer at Williams-Sonoma (aka owner of Pottery Barn, aka owner of Hold Everything, aka Lifestyle Merchant for Yuppies Everywhere) and having a lot of fun with it. I tell her about my screaming retreat from corporate IT and my quest to rediscover my inner wageslave at BU. We talk about what we're looking for in our lives, how we lost our way after college and sort of put our lives in cruise control. In college, we both managed student art galleries as our collective raised fingers against the cultural wasteland of Babson's all-business environment, and somewhere along the way we lost the fire that got us to cobble that together. We're regaining the creativity and energy in bits and increments, but we realize that there's a certain urgency in getting our fun before we turn 30, the socially acceptable age when you put aside your toys and become an Adult.
J.'s a little more conscious of social pressure than I, but I can't say that I'm completely immune either. I know that I have to grow up. I just don't know when. Neither, do I suspect, does she.
We wind up leaving the restaurant and going back at her place for coffee. Our conversation rambles on. J. tells me about the frightening amount of personal information most catalog companies have on us, most of which I probably can't post on here without violating her NDA. I tell her about business school and how being an impoverished student plays a great foil to the New Economy urges of consuming gear.
Before I know it, it's midnight and I'm supposed to be meeting John at Assimilate in about two hours ago. I don't mind too much. I know that John's having fun without me, and probably hasn't noticed that I'm running late. And the clubs around here stay open later anyway. Still, I need to make my commitments so I bid J. good night and head out into the rest of the night. As I head out we have one more exchange.
"Get together later?"
"Sure. Monday?"
"Wednesday's better."
"Dinner?"
"and coffee?"
"of course."
You couldn't quite call Babson a pressure cooker. The school certainly didn't put the screws to you like MIT or Harvard. Rather, we were perfectly happy putting the screws to ourselves after graduation. A lot of us opted for high burnout jobs in consulting, corporate IT or accounting.
Yes, accounting can be a burnout job, trust me.
our parents are having their midlife crises now.
but our generation has to do everything doubletime.
we're having our midlife crises in our mid-twenties.
- Meng Weng Wong
We opted for dinner at an Italian place across the street from a French bistro called Absinthe. The bistro looked intriguing, and the name suckered in my little goth aesthete, but the crowd seemed to pose a challenge for any sort of involved conversation. After ordering, we continued our conversation.
part of the reason why J. moved out to San Francisco was to get away from the insane life of New York real estate sales. She's now a buyer at Williams-Sonoma (aka owner of Pottery Barn, aka owner of Hold Everything, aka Lifestyle Merchant for Yuppies Everywhere) and having a lot of fun with it. I tell her about my screaming retreat from corporate IT and my quest to rediscover my inner wageslave at BU. We talk about what we're looking for in our lives, how we lost our way after college and sort of put our lives in cruise control. In college, we both managed student art galleries as our collective raised fingers against the cultural wasteland of Babson's all-business environment, and somewhere along the way we lost the fire that got us to cobble that together. We're regaining the creativity and energy in bits and increments, but we realize that there's a certain urgency in getting our fun before we turn 30, the socially acceptable age when you put aside your toys and become an Adult.
J.'s a little more conscious of social pressure than I, but I can't say that I'm completely immune either. I know that I have to grow up. I just don't know when. Neither, do I suspect, does she.
We wind up leaving the restaurant and going back at her place for coffee. Our conversation rambles on. J. tells me about the frightening amount of personal information most catalog companies have on us, most of which I probably can't post on here without violating her NDA. I tell her about business school and how being an impoverished student plays a great foil to the New Economy urges of consuming gear.
Before I know it, it's midnight and I'm supposed to be meeting John at Assimilate in about two hours ago. I don't mind too much. I know that John's having fun without me, and probably hasn't noticed that I'm running late. And the clubs around here stay open later anyway. Still, I need to make my commitments so I bid J. good night and head out into the rest of the night. As I head out we have one more exchange.
"Get together later?"
"Sure. Monday?"
"Wednesday's better."
"Dinner?"
"and coffee?"
"of course."