“You see this?…This is a you-can-do-anything card. You can use it to do anything you want, but only once, and you have to burn it afterwards.”

After a frantic dash through security, you miraculously arrive half an hour before your plane is scheduled to depart. Winded, luggage in hand, you are breathing a sigh of relief.

Christopher Rene felt his eyelids growing heavy as he wiped invisible dust from tiny vials of English rose oil. It was ten minutes to closing time, but the world outside seemed to be moving in slow motion.

As a former product manager, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed out of college, I remember clearly coming into the role with a set of rosy expectations that did not align at all with reality.

Shortly after graduation, I joined Twitter as an associate product manager in their third cohort. I was part of a program that trains newly recruited talent in the rarefied art of product management.

If there’s one word that could characterize my life right now, it’s the last one I could have predicted: stability.

It’s 4:19 AM on Thursday, May 24th, 2018, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, I’ve finished everything on my immediate to-do list. Every application, every checklist. Everything I consider important.

I knew that I wanted to work in product management, but I had no idea how I was going to get there, or what the recruiting process was like. Now, having gone through recruiting several times over, I wanted to share my tips from the other side.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” So said Ernest Hemingway, who knew a thing or two about pouring one’s élément vital onto a blank page.

Junior fall has allowed me to dream again, perhaps at the expense of more concrete accomplishments. I’ve come to realize that you can either transmit or you can receive, but you can’t do both at the same time.

As a rising junior, I’m already nostalgic that I’m halfway done with college—so this was a nice opportunity to reflect on what I’ve been doing at Harvard.

Reflections from one 20-something finding herself to another.

It astonishes me sometimes, that strangers can be so sweet.

I worked as a server at Waffle House the summer after high school graduation, about six months after I had gotten accepted early action to Harvard.

Every morning your waking begins in stages. Your iPhone alarm clock is set to ring every 10 minutes, starting at 7:50 AM and chirping incessantly until you finally wake up.

Upon hearing the word “startup,” you might imagine a cluster of Zuckerbergs donned in hoodies and ratty jeans, wired on enough coffee and adrenaline to code for days in front of a lighted screen, and cooped up in a dark basement working on the next Facebook, confident about one day changing the world.

I walk into the Cambridge office of General Catalyst, located in a 4th floor office building adjacent to the Charles hotel. The space is warm and well-lit, with modern furnishings and polished hardwood floors.

It’s Saturday evening. The science center is lit with fluorescent lights and humming with quiet energy. To my left stands table after table of tech booths, manned by caffeinated recruiters and filled to the brim with branded memorabilia.

There's a stereotype that people here are either single or married (i.e., in very serious long-term relationships), but nobody really dates. One-fifth of graduating Harvard seniors have never been in a relationship during college.

Call them tastemakers or trendsetters, fashion arbiters or brand evangelists. As more and more companies look to break into the coveted market of 18-to-22-year-olds, businesses are using college sudents to directly preach their gospels.

Students take time off of Harvard for any number of reasons. They volunteer at non-profits, study abroad in the Middle East, find high-power internships, or work on political campaigns. Others want to dance.

Pokémon Go has already reached 21 million daily active users, clinching a spot as the most popular game in history. The upside for restaurants? It’s a major driver of business. Here are five brilliant ways restaurants can use Pokémon to level up their sales.

Since its release three weeks ago, Pokémon GO has become the most popular mobile game of all time, with one in 10 Americans playing the app daily. In the process, Pokémania is building up a treasure trove for marketers as enticing as an 825 CP Dratini: geolocation data on what we’re buying, where we’re going, and how we’re getting there.

When you reach into the freezer case for ice cream this summer, there’s a good chance that you’ll be handing your money over to Unilever. From the velvety luxury of Magnum to the chocolatey crunch of Cornetto to the fun-filled decadence of Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever dominates our list, with eight of the 15 top-selling ice cream brands in the world and a 22% share of the global market.

When it comes to ice cream, gelato is red hot in the United States. A curiosity just a decade ago, it currently accounts for about 5% of the $14.3 billion U.S. ice cream market, with sales growth projected to hit 32.3% this year, based on data from industry sources, Euromonitor and Mintel.

Bowing to pressure from safety advocates and Washington, the Swedish furniture powerhouse IKEA issued a recall Tuesday of 29 million dressers and chests following the deaths of at least six children who were crushed by the furniture when it tipped over.
 

On Wednesday the Swedish fast-fashion conglomerate Hennes & Mauritz posted lower than expected second-quarter sales in the midst of an aggressive expansion in its store count. Sales rose 2% to 54.34 billion kronor ($6.65 billion) in the three months through April, its slowest growth in three years, while profit fell 17% to 5.3 billion kronor ($0.65 billion).

While the United Kingdom and European Union grapple with the head-spinning uncertainties of Brexit, there may be a simple takeaway for people with means worldwide: It’s time to go shopping.

General Mills beat earnings expectations in the fourth quarter as it continues to pivot its product lineup to remain relevant, with its increased focus on organic food and its all-natural changes to its cereals.

—  Profiles  —

G-Eazy’s meteoric rise to fame has taken the hip-hop world by storm. His song “Me, Myself & I” recently topped the Billboard Top 100 in Pop at #1, while his newest album, When It’s Dark Out, debuted at #3. 

Hendrik Hertzberg ’65 has always been known for writing with style. “He always had very beautiful handwriting, like calligraphy,” said friend Donald E. Graham ’66, former Crimson president, as he described Hertzberg’s distinctive copperplate script.

Joshua Greene ’97 greets me in his office on the 14th floor of William James Hall, home to a standing desk, a stack of books, and a spectacular bird’s-eye view of Cambridge. He is warm and inviting, with sharp bluish-green eyes, a calico beard, a mop of curly brown hair, and a penchant for good conversation.

Evan M. O’Dorney ‘15 won first place in the National Spelling Bee and the Intel Science Talent Search, placed four times at the International Math Olympiad, and has been one of the top five scorers in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition for the past three years. But O’Dorney is much more than his rave-worthy accomplishments.

Combining technical skill with business savvy comes naturally to Schluntz, a born innovator who has already made a name for himself in the world of startups.

As the former co-president of Women in Business, the largest undergraduate collegiate business club on campus, Nathans had an almost prescient vision of her goals as a freshman. “I actually knew I was going to join WIB at Visitas, because the girls I met were just so put together and professional and mature,” she explains.

In Taylor Carol’s hometown of Dana Point, California, the waves break leisurely along a buff marking the spot where his father proposed to his mother, 90-foot-long blue whales can be seen migrating every summer, and surfers emerge on beaches dripping and sun-tanned after bodysurfing on the waves.

At 6’4” with a sculpted physique, boyish smile, and refreshing lack of pretense, Gregory Foster is bucking the stereotypes associated with CS. A stylish guy, he wears his amber locks perfectly coiffed, his clothes color-coordinated, and his confidence with a touch of self-awareness.

Stephen Turban sweeps into Quincy dining hall, a bundle of quirky energy raring to out-dazzle the sun. Sharply dressed in a skinny black tie and starched white button-up, he sports a lucid twinkle in his electric blue eyes, a rainbow of rope bracelets around his left wrist, and a charming Duchenne smile that extends easily into laughter.

—  Travel Writing  —

Ah, Lisbon. With 4.5 million visitors per year, it’s one of the world’s leading tourist destinations—and a city that, for the past winter, I’ve been lucky to call home.

When I ask myself what I learned last year, I never have any answers. What I do have, in abundance, are stories. Anecdotes of the people I’ve met, memories of the things I’ve done. Inklings of how my experiences have changed me.

You never forget your first love, and Beijing is no different. Although it’s been over a decade since I last visited the city, its charms were recently renewed for me when I met up with a few friends to go sight-seeing in the capital of China.

There’s this sentimental idea of traveling during your youth, when you’re still young enough for the world to make a lasting impression on you. As a result, a sense of collective wanderlust often descends upon college students.

While I was interning in Beijing this past January, I loved the all little experiences that made the city come to life. Traveling always makes me appreciate the nuances of the world, and every time I’m delighted to discover something new.