Week seven: The Week of Non-Work Bain Events

In true answer-first style, the events planned for this week (and alluded to in the title) included:
– Lunch with the Bain Boston Office Head – A Red Sox game with all the other ACIs – A Red Sox-themed Happy Hour hosted by Blacks@Bain – A lunch and BBQ with Bain partner and the Head of AC NE Recruiting  – A case team event at our Operating Partner’s house

I’m not going to be writing about all these events – I couldn’t attend a couple because of travel, and I’m not sure that you’d want to spend hours reading about them, either! – but I wanted to go over some of the highlights of this week, both at work and outside.

Let’s do work first, because it’s simpler: this week was probably the lightest week on the case so far. Because our case was supposed to end last week and recently “rolled” (Bain slang for when a client chooses to continue the case beyond its original end date because of their satisfaction with Bain’s work) through the end of August, a lot of things are in flux right now.

Our current Case Team Leader is leaving, and we’re getting a new CTL, which also means that it’s taken a little longer to figure out exactly what people are going to be doing on their workstreams. It can get a little boring sometimes (and I can only read so much Google News!), because I’d definitely rather be extra busy than doing nothing, but it’s also nice to get a break from intense work. The lack of emphasis on face time at the office means that I also get to leave early if there’s no more work to be done – yesterday, I left at 3, which was awesome.

Outside of work, though, this week has actually been pretty busy, which means my days have been long nonetheless. After travel this week, all the ACIs went to a Red Sox game at Fenway on Wednesday. Our seats weren’t in the “usual” Bain spot, but they were very good – between the conversation, popcorn, cotton candy, and Sweet Caroline, I barely paid attention to the game, which was rather long, but the experience was still fun.

I think my favorite part of the week was lunch with Chris Bierly at Douzo, the sushi place that is in the same building as the Bain office. Not only was the food at Douzo very good (and this is coming from someone who usually doesn’t have an appetite for sushi, being vegetarian!) it was super interesting to hear about Chris’ career path. He has a passion for education and works with a ton of people (both Bain clients and not) who are also interested in the sector and have plans for reform. I’m also interested in some of the same issues, so I was really looking forward to hearing his thoughts on the subject – and, to top it all off, he was a fellow Hoo! Nice.

This weekend was pretty hectic for me because I flew back to DC on Friday evening to spend some time with my family and flew back on Sunday night rather late, but I have hopes for this next week – I can’t believe I only have three weeks left!