Wharton Pledge: Part of Your Complete Breakfast
Christian Saarbach (WG'08) Staff Writer
Issue date: 4/14/08 Section: News
Ok, it's story time, Wharton. Picture it: I'm in MBA Café, trying to desperately avoid going home and working on anything school-related. I'm listening to all kinds of earth-shattering stuff: choosing Marissa Ballan's birthday party venue (I assume she's turning 21), eavesdropping on an impromptu WWIB meeting where they were attempting to decide which company's bribe to accept this week (consulting, banking, or strategy, oh my!), and of course, the Armageddon meeting between WAAAM and the Arab club as they fought to the death over who had rights to Vango last Thursday. And by death, I mean ABP Soup of the Day. Zing!
Anyway, I'm sitting there and an Asian female acquaintance comes up to me and says, "Christian, I need your help! It's urgent!" I have two choices. I can either run away and escape down the hall, but the rest of my BPUB elective group would almost certainly find me and make me do PowerPoint slides, or, I can grow up and help her out. "What's the problem? Need to reach something on the top shelf? You need help finding Maryland on a map? You need to find someone who hasn't brushed his hair this decade for a scavenger hunt? Whatever you need, I'm your guy!" Drum roll please..."I need 20 bucks. Hurry, the cab is waiting downstairs!" I swear I'm not making this up.
Now, I could spend my days wondering why it is she never came back to pay me back. Also, I could wonder why she didn't use a credit card. Or hit the ATM across the street. Or, why, in a crowded cafeteria, an Asian female acquaintance felt that I would be the most likely person to give her money (insert obvious joke here).
The POINT is I gave her the money. Why? Because we're a family here, people. And I don't know how it works in your family, but the Saarbachs tend to ask each other for a fair bit of dough. Like every time I go out to lunch with my mom, she offers to pay, I say no problem, I've got it, then she brings up how she carried me for 9 months and man, was I a fat baby and she deserves a free lunch. It's the least I can do.
Why am I still paying for something that happened almost 28 years ago? Because you look out for your family, that's why. And that's what the Wharton pledge is all about. We went through the ups (ahem, Wharton 54) and downs (cough…OPIM…cough), but we are coming out of here branded material. I entered this venerable institution as Christian Saarbach, goofball. I now leave it as Christian Saarbach, still a goofball, but now he has mastered the holy trinity of addition, subtraction, and Microsoft Excel Solver.
And a large part of that is because of past pledges that keep the school kicking ass relative to its peers. The thing is, though, you all already know this. When I was a mini-cohort leader for all of those Welcome Weekends, the feedback that we consistently got from the prospectives was that Wharton kids were the down-to-earth ones. We get it. Opportunities to go to a place like this and meet the people whom we've met and are still meeting are fleeting. And, professionally speaking, having that stamp on our resume that will forever say to everyone, "This kid gets it and also knows something," is invaluable. So it's up to us to do our part.
One of my favorite cereals when I was a kid was Cookie Crisps (it was a photo finish over Captain Crunch). It was basically chocolate chip cookies in cereal. It was the best thing you could ever imagine, and on the commercials, they would always say, "part of this complete breakfast," and there would be a millisecond flash of something involving a grapefruit and maybe a glass of orange juice, like any sane person is going to drink orange juice while eating cereal... The point is, we've been eating the Cookie Crisps, and now it's time to pony up and eat a slice of grapefruit. Remember, it's about participation. So you marketing people don't have to feel bad for a few hundred bucks, and you hedge fund people, time to start building positive karma because you're contributing nothing to society (if you were about to say, "I make markets more efficient," you probably better give double). You even get your name on a list! And those who don't give don't get their name on a list. And we get to talk about how cheap they are! Which is worth a ton of money in my book any day. So GET INVOLVED and pledge already at www.whartonmakeyourmark2008.com. Then, and only then, will Dana Wade stop sending us all e-mails.
Anyway, I'm sitting there and an Asian female acquaintance comes up to me and says, "Christian, I need your help! It's urgent!" I have two choices. I can either run away and escape down the hall, but the rest of my BPUB elective group would almost certainly find me and make me do PowerPoint slides, or, I can grow up and help her out. "What's the problem? Need to reach something on the top shelf? You need help finding Maryland on a map? You need to find someone who hasn't brushed his hair this decade for a scavenger hunt? Whatever you need, I'm your guy!" Drum roll please..."I need 20 bucks. Hurry, the cab is waiting downstairs!" I swear I'm not making this up.
Now, I could spend my days wondering why it is she never came back to pay me back. Also, I could wonder why she didn't use a credit card. Or hit the ATM across the street. Or, why, in a crowded cafeteria, an Asian female acquaintance felt that I would be the most likely person to give her money (insert obvious joke here).
The POINT is I gave her the money. Why? Because we're a family here, people. And I don't know how it works in your family, but the Saarbachs tend to ask each other for a fair bit of dough. Like every time I go out to lunch with my mom, she offers to pay, I say no problem, I've got it, then she brings up how she carried me for 9 months and man, was I a fat baby and she deserves a free lunch. It's the least I can do.
Why am I still paying for something that happened almost 28 years ago? Because you look out for your family, that's why. And that's what the Wharton pledge is all about. We went through the ups (ahem, Wharton 54) and downs (cough…OPIM…cough), but we are coming out of here branded material. I entered this venerable institution as Christian Saarbach, goofball. I now leave it as Christian Saarbach, still a goofball, but now he has mastered the holy trinity of addition, subtraction, and Microsoft Excel Solver.
And a large part of that is because of past pledges that keep the school kicking ass relative to its peers. The thing is, though, you all already know this. When I was a mini-cohort leader for all of those Welcome Weekends, the feedback that we consistently got from the prospectives was that Wharton kids were the down-to-earth ones. We get it. Opportunities to go to a place like this and meet the people whom we've met and are still meeting are fleeting. And, professionally speaking, having that stamp on our resume that will forever say to everyone, "This kid gets it and also knows something," is invaluable. So it's up to us to do our part.
One of my favorite cereals when I was a kid was Cookie Crisps (it was a photo finish over Captain Crunch). It was basically chocolate chip cookies in cereal. It was the best thing you could ever imagine, and on the commercials, they would always say, "part of this complete breakfast," and there would be a millisecond flash of something involving a grapefruit and maybe a glass of orange juice, like any sane person is going to drink orange juice while eating cereal... The point is, we've been eating the Cookie Crisps, and now it's time to pony up and eat a slice of grapefruit. Remember, it's about participation. So you marketing people don't have to feel bad for a few hundred bucks, and you hedge fund people, time to start building positive karma because you're contributing nothing to society (if you were about to say, "I make markets more efficient," you probably better give double). You even get your name on a list! And those who don't give don't get their name on a list. And we get to talk about how cheap they are! Which is worth a ton of money in my book any day. So GET INVOLVED and pledge already at www.whartonmakeyourmark2008.com. Then, and only then, will Dana Wade stop sending us all e-mails.
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