A Day in the Life: Hana Ezaldein ’24

6:53 a.m.

India and I met the summer before business school. We were both living in New York City and Yale SOM hosted a little mixer type of thing at a local bar for admitted students. We ended up staying really good friends. She and I both did cross country when we were in high school and we love running together. We have a little run club where we’ll meet up in the morning before class—we have a group chat and we’ll text to see what time works for most people. This day, it happened to be a nice morning run, which was a super nice start to the day. We meet up and run from East Rock to downtown and we’ll do a couple laps. On weekends, we’ll do a hike up East Rock, which is really challenging.

India is a really interesting person. I’ve never danced my whole life, but I’ve been going to her bachata lessons every Tuesday night at five, which has been really fun. And then she also is really involved in the undergraduate community, because she is a member of an acapella group. It’s been great getting to know her.

8:10 a.m.

MiChaela Barker and Zach Sims and I are leaders for two different student groups. We’re leading the chapter of The Consortium at Yale for next year, and we’re going to be leading the Black Business Alliance as well. So with the year winding down, we had a lot of meetings going on to transition from the previous leaders, plan admissions outreach, plan events, think about how we’re going to make both organizations better next year. We gathered a lot of insights and feedback from our community and we were just working through that feedback. 

We love meeting at McNay Café. It has really nice lighting. You get to see a lot of familiar faces. The coffee’s very affordable. We also love our barista. Isaiah is one of our favorite people on campus, so we always love to just chat with him and see how he’s doing. And he loves to get updates on what events we’re throwing.

8:33 a.m.

This is my friend Niall Dammando. I’ve learned so much from him just through our friendship and our conversations. A couple of weeks prior, we volunteered with Junior Achievement at this local elementary school, Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy. So we were talking about that and how we can continue our effort and partnership with that school beyond that one day of service. We’re really excited to continue to work together on some community outreach for the local New Haven community.

9:08 a.m.

Our first class was the Global Macroeconomy, which is one of our core curriculum classes for spring two. It’s taught by two professors. Lorenzo is really fond of cold calling. It really keeps you on your toes because it’s 8:30 a.m. and you’re definitely going to get called on in that class, so you’ve got to be ready to go. Having a coffee for helps with that class coming up.

We were going over supply shocks and demand shocks on that day, and he grilled me about providing an example of a supply shock. But I love this professor. We had a good time. Sometimes he’ll say, turn to the people next to you and talk about some examples. We were talking about the natural unemployment rate.

10:30 a.m.

This class is The Innovator. It’s one of my favorite classes. For our pitch, which is our capstone project for the class, I’m working with some wonderful folks who I’ve never gotten to work closely with before. We’re working on a startup called Kitcher. It’s aimed at the young rental crowd who’s frequently moving. Maybe you want to host an Easter dinner or you want to use a KitchenAid or you want to experience using a Le Creuset to make sourdough. It allows you to rent all these different pieces for two weeks to a month. 

Kitcher is my classmate Erin Manning’s idea. Everyone who knows her knows she absolutely loves baking and cooking. She’s always the first to bake for somebody’s birthday, for example. And she’s always bringing in goodies for our class.

We broke out into our pitch teams to discuss our minimum viable product. We talked about how we wanted to divide and conquer the work; we talked about what the website design would look.

12:55 p.m.

I’m done with all my core classes and I’m walking for a little coffee at my favorite coffee shop, Claire’s Cornucopia. This was such a beautiful day and it’s a nice little walk, all the way from the SOM building through the Green and get to downtown. 

My brother attended Yale for undergrad and for medical school, so I’ve been coming to Claire’s for years. So when I got into business school, I popped in there and said, “Claire, I’m a student now!” We love talking about local food. 

I’m a huge coffee fan and she has a million flavors. There’s a really delicious dark chocolate cherry flavor that I really like, but she won’t have it in every day, so you’ve got to pop in and see what she has. This was exactly a week before my birthday. So while I was there, I went ahead and I put an order in my carrot cake. My favorite cake ever is carrot cake, and I swear the one that Claire’s has is the best I’ve ever had. 

1:50 p.m.

I’m enrolled in a Yale Law School class called Advanced Issues in Capital Markets: the IPO. I thought it would be really helpful going into the summer, when I’ll be interning at Morgan Stanley in investment banking.

The law classes have a lot of dense readings, so I like to go somewhere quiet. So I go to the Lillian Goldman Law Library in the law school building, and I’ll do some readings, take care of some notes, and just catch up. That way I’m fresh for class. I try to make sure I take that class equally as serious as I would with any business class. 

The library is quiet, and it’s just gorgeous. I love studying there. 

6:18 p.m.

Almost every Thursday our student life committee organizes a Closing Bell event, and it’s usually at Gryphon’s Pub, our graduate student pub, which is really close to the law school. By the time I get there, everybody I want to see is already there. It’s been awesome popping over and seeing everybody that you don’t really get to see during the week because we’re all so busy.

In this photo, I’m talking with A.J. Roy, who’s a really wonderful friend of mine. He’s a joint degree with the Yale School of Drama. He knows I love going to theater so he will always loop me in with what’s going on at the drama school and what plays are going on.

8:39 p.m.

That night the Student Life Committee organized a big social event at Roller Magic, with buses to take us to and from. Growing up I was a big roller skater just around my neighborhood in Florida. I don’t remember the last time I’ve been roller skating. So this was just a fun way to let loose and just hang out. It was super fun just skating around with everyone. I felt like I was in a ’90s movie or something.

My roommate Kendall Laws grew up in Atlanta and going to the roller rink was really big in her community. So she was an expert just zooming around the rink. But there were all different levels of expertise. It was super fun watching everybody just let loose and be silly and not be scared to fall.

Ashley Felix is one of my really close friends. She’s also a BBA member. She’s a joint degree at the School of the Environment, so she’s really teaches me a lot about sustainability. And she also always tells me about these interesting classes she’s in. This semester she’s in a maple class—you learn about maple syrup and maple farming. And every Wednesday she’s like, “Oh, I’ve got my maple class I’ve got to.” She has a really close network of joint degree students who are at the School of the Environment and SOM, and she’ll let me know what’s going on in that community. 

And this is my friend Frank. He is a really good dancer and he’ll help me at our bachata class. On this night, I was happy to return the favor and help him out with skating, a little mini skating lesson because it was actually his first time ever skating. So he was definitely a little shaky, but he got the hang of it after a couple laps.