And here it is, the end of the dreaded first semester at CBS. It was as tough as, no - tougher than, everyone said it would be. Finals were brutal, and we all pretty much felt slaughtered at the end of most of them. I'm really proud of how much I've learned in only this first semester. Some of that learning happened in classrooms, but a lot of it happened in chats with 2nd years, alums, and definitely classmates.
I have to say the toughest course for me was Corporate Finance. I just didn't get how the mechanics of say... the optimal capital structure related to the big picture. How did the specific steps we took relate to a firm's value? In the end, it all came together a few hours before the exam with lots of help from fellow BBSA classmates who had lots of prior exposure to how these concepts worked in the real world. I also had a great professor.
Econ wasn't a tough course, but the concepts we would touch on in class had nothing to do with the assignments, which in turn had nothing to do with the final. To make matters worse, I had a Jekyll/Hyde character as my prof. At the beginning of the semester he would laugh at us and tell us we were taking it all way too seriously, but this same guy turned out to be the most inflexible and rigid prof many of us had ever had. I'm so glad to say "Thank goodness it's over." He won't be seeing me in any of his other classes.
Creating Effective Organizations, or CEO as we fondly called it, was hated by many, especially the quant jocks. But I was glad of the opportunity to engage in debate about issues that weren't easy to identify. Besides, the prof was a long-haired sociologist which made him that much more interesting.
So what are we all doing now that it's over and we can get our full 7 to 10 hours of sleep every night? (hey, that 10 is because we have a lot of catching up to do!) We're travelling, skiing, eating, drinking, and taking deep breaths. Oh yeah, and we're waiting to see if we made it onto closed lists for the companies we applied to. In order to interview with a firm so as to have a shot at a summer internship, we first have to make it onto the firm's "closed list" which is a list of students the firm would like to interview. I'll keep you guys updated. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
Happy Holidays!
Posted by deeuniverse at December 24, 2004 06:34 AM