When I was 13 my dad and I went to Princeton for a chamber music concert. While the music wasn't my style, I loved being on campus and imagining myself riding a bike through the quad with a scarf and beret. Because to 13 year old me, college was about perpetual autumn and adopting the style of the existentialists. After the concert we went to a small Chinese restaurant on campus. Tables were so close together that it was impossible not to eavesdrop and we were lucky to be seated at table where the banter rivaled a Gilmore Girls episode. The part that stuck out was one of the undergrads discussing his "Napoleonic hubris". Unfortunately he got muffled out so we never learned where he was going with the analogy. That said, we were intrigued by the term and wanted to learn more.

Flash forward 15 years later and I was introduced to an equally intriguing term - Contingent Cubism. I'm heading home to Philadelphia for the holidays next week and am super excited. In addition to enjoying my usual Philly spots we'll also be going to NYC for the day to see the Picasso exhibit at the Frick....and maybe swing by Bendel's too.... Unfortunately, we missed Wednesday's event which introduced the exhibit and Picasso's "Contingent Cubism". It still baffles me and a Google search yielded nothing but the event.

While I mean no disrespect to Jeffrey Weiss, the event made me rethink the differences between academia and business. In college, I was convinced that I would be in a PhD program in Anthropology or Latin American studies. I remember writing term papers whose titles followed the formula of "Situation X: Or Why X is Never Really XY". While this training has made me a fabulous conversationalist and a whiz at trivia games, it has provided little practical use in my now preferred field of finance. Sometimes I can't help but to wonder what if I stuck with the academic track? Would I find myself lecturing on magical realism in post-dictatorship Argentina*?

*Yes, this was the topic of my senior thesis. Perhaps I will post it later.