A Day in the Life: Henry Melzer ’26

8:10 a.m.

On Tuesdays I wake up early, make coffee, and eat breakfast on my way to my first class. This is a Yale Law School course called Federal Funds Flow, taught by a visiting professor and law firm partner. It’s an intimate class—there are six students total, three from SOM—so we have a lot of opportunities to discuss and engage. I’m a former teacher, and after business school I’m interested in working for a school district or a state-level education agency. In those jobs, you have to know how to navigate the federal funds process.

10:15 a.m.

I had a little break before my lunchtime class, and I needed another cup of coffee. I stopped at McNay Café in Evans Hall for an oat milk latte with a little honey.

10:30 a.m.

Before my next class, I went to the Entrepreneurship Suite “bunker” to work on my startup. When I worked as a teacher, I was really frustrated by high attrition rates in the field. I’m creating a tool to use poll surveys and asynchronous resources to make teachers feel heard and help improve attrition rates. This school year, we’re working with a pilot partner to test the idea.

The bunker functions as a workspace for anyone who’s working on a venture. It’s quiet, there are lots of monitors and books, and you’re surrounded by professors from the Program on Entrepreneurship and students with an entrepreneurship mindset. That day, I ran into one of my roommate Bryan Marquet, who is starting his own venture. We met on a spreadsheet for incoming students looking for housing, and it worked out so well.

11:30 a.m.

Bryan and I headed to our lunchtime class, Founders Practicum. It meets every Tuesday during lunch; that day, we had Peruvian food. The class is split between student presentations, where people talk through what they’re working on and get feedback from the class, and visits from guest speakers. We’ve talked to venture capitalists, founders, and SOM alums who are working on startups like Hugo and Hoby. There’s not a lot of false validation of student ideas; the speakers are thinking critically about this field and very straightforward about what’s realistic and what’s not.

After I got lunch, I sat next to Jaya Dadwal, who’s working on a wellness startup. Then we listened to a presentation from Tiffany Chiang, who started a virtual book club focused on Asian writers during the pandemic. She’s using the class to expand and operationalize the idea.

1:00 p.m.

I had a few minutes free after class, so I went to the Evans Hall courtyard to chat—and procrastinate!—with my friends Kaan Ardic and Isabelle Levenson. Kaan was on my learning team in my first year; learning teams are assigned randomly, but we all really got along and still see each other often.

2:30 p.m.

Every Tuesday afternoon, I book an interview room and practice consulting casing with my friend Maria Fernanda Heredia. One of us will assign the other a case from the Consulting Club resources, and then we’ll present our responses and give each other feedback.

4:10 p.m.

In the evening, I have Sports Analytics. This class is a lot like Modeling Managerial Decisions from the core, but it focuses on the business applications of modeling sports outcomes. Tobias Moskowitz and Nils Rudi co-teach the class, balancing the quantitative and qualitative elements. There’s a capstone project where you work in a group to figure out a sports problem you want to model and present it to the class. Everyone there is really into sports—I’m a big fan of the Denver Broncos and Washington Wizards—but that doesn’t mean the class is easy. On the first day, Nils said, “If you want to just talk about sports, this is definitely not the class for you. We’re mostly going to talk about math.”

7:10 p.m.

After class, we had an Education Club kickoff meeting with takeout at a leader’s house. We got to meet all the first-years and gauge what people’s interests are for the coming year. After dinner, I went back to my apartment in East Rock to do some homework before bed.