by Jonathan Weinblatt

I hereby dub this month of January “obsequiousness month” at Penn. I just can’t escape it. Everywhere I go, it seems someone is sucking up to someone else. Every evening, my roommates get dressed up looking very professional to make a good first impression with On Campus Recruiting. Since I plan to go straight to law school, I don’t subject myself to such torture, but from what I hear the process is one bullshit session after another. I’m lucky I just have to suck up law school. Hordes of eager College and Wharton students line up for hours just to sign up on some consulting company’s sheet and then listen to some speaker talk about how great this job is. Students would jump at the opportunity to talk to some authority about their noble plans to save the company with their well-refined consulting skills gained from a few hours of community service and fraternity pledging. Now, I consider myself a damn good bullshitter, but even I wouldn’t be able to stomach some of this sycophantic nonsense. I sometimes think about going to one of these events just to see how far I can get without a resume and cover letter in hand, looking very underdressed and mumbling obscenities. Why don’t I? Because (1) I’m lazy and (2) I’m afraid that might be just what they are looking for.

Maybe I don’t want to do OCR because I’m worried that the female OCRers have a tremendous advantage in practice. You see, as I walk home from a meeting of Punchbowl (The greatest humor magazine in the history of the universe with new columns daily on http://www.thepunchbowl.net. Shit, if you’re reading this now, then you already know about the website) I notice long lines of freshman girls standing outside in the bitter cold for sorority rush. Personally, I enjoy this aspect of Obsequiousness Month more than OCR, but maybe OCR isn’t quite ready to be a spectator sport. Just like for OCR, the girls have to dress in fancy clothes, but here, fashion is even more important. I’ve heard it’s difficult to stand out in a diverse group of OCRers, but I would think it would be practically impossible to do so in an incredibly homogeneous group of girls all dressed alike. With sorority rush, first impressions are particularly important since you are judged by those who went through the very same process only a year or two earlier. Sorority rushers don’t have to have resume and cover letter prepared, but at least OCR lets you wait on line indoors when it’s below freezing outside. How is any otherwise qualified male OCR candidate supposed to compete with that? Nonetheless, is there really any difference between UBS, Citibank, Merrill Lynch and AXO, XO, DDD? Either way, don’t forget to put on that lipstick, because you’ve got a lot of ass kissing ahead of you. I do hear, however, that UBS doesn’t go too hard on its pledges.