An overheard conversation that confirmed my suspicions that the business school library isn’t a place where a lot of people go for serious studying but rather a meat market for MBAs and all other types of roaming academic bipeds.

Date: January 29, 2010

Location: Columbia Business School Library

I’m trying to piece together a frustratingly byzantine balance sheet for my Corporate Finance class. A nearby conversation catches my attention, and I start listening. There’s a man in his late 30s/early 40s talking to a woman late 20s/early 30s next to the printer. They start off the conversation by talking about food or leather. Not sure which or why.

Woman: “I had children.”

Man: “Oh…How many?”

“I was a stay-at-home mom.”

“You don’t look like you’ve had a mosquito bite.”

“That’s a new one. I’m going to remember that one.”

(laughs)

“You look like you’re 22.”

They start talking about where they’re from. Apparently they share some familiar geographic background. Jessica (by this point I’ve overheard her name) begins asking the man if he has family from such and such a place. A few minutes later I learn that Jessica went from Columbia’s School of General Studies to Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. The man said he was taking some electrical engineering classes as a post-graduate.

Reasons why I remember this conversation:

• elderly man was majorly hitting on the woman. “You don’t look like you’ve had a mosquito bite.” Really?
• confirmed my suspicions that the business school library isn’t a place where a lot of people go for serious studying but rather a meat market for MBAs and all other types of roaming academic bipeds