"Wanna be a -- baller, shot caller
Twenty inch blades -- on the Impala
A caller gettin laid tonight
Swisher rolled tight, gotta sprayed by Ike
I hit the HIIIGHWAY, making money the FLYYYY WAY
But there's got to be a BETT-ER WAYY!
A better way, better way, YEAH-AHHHH"
I figured I'd start this entry with the hook from "Wanna be a baller" because that topic has been on my mind a lot this week. Making the business school move can be a tough one because you seem to go in the hole for it, but the long-term benefits are usually huge. I knew this all along, but a few conversations I've had recently have made me think a lot about how brght the future can be if you play your cards right. Actually, even if you play your cards wrong, you won't end up doing badly with a good MBA education because your network alone should be able to carry you further than you would go without going back to school (that is, unless you go out like Bernie Ebbers and swindle a bunch of people only to end up getting a 25 year prison sentence). Also, the closing on my condo sale went down on Wednesday, so I've had visions of dollars and future investments dancing around in my head. In my mind, the days of being a broke-ass dude are long gone and I'm trying to use the words of Mannie Fresh as one of my main mottos: "Whoa...whoa...whoa Kemosabe, Big...big...big ballin is my hobby!!!"
By the end of the day (Friday), I will have reached the midpoint of my internship and it's been a hell of a ride so far. I came into this summer wondering if I would be able to provide value as an intern, but the past 5 weeks have shown me that I'd internalized a lot more of the first year's learnings than I thought. It's easy to doubt whether you've been able to learn everything well because the first year of school throws so much information at you that there seems to be no way to get it all. Everyone and their mother threw around the old cliche' of it being like drinking from a firehose and, as tired as I got of hearing it, it is the real-deal truth. I've been surprised at how well I've been able to recall things from as far back as the first month of school when necessary and the way that my mind is starting to shift from a techie's mindset to a businessman's. Although I've enjoyed the internship so far, I'm starting to look forward to getting back to school in September and several of my other MBA friends have told me that they feel the same way. I won't speculate about why they want to go back, but, for me, realizing how much I've learned makes me want to get back to school and keep on learning more to keep developing my business game.
One thing that has surprised me so far is how important the Organizational Behavior concepts learned in the first year Core have been. While I was in the middle of those classes, they seemed pretty basic and matter-of-fact to me...basically, I interpreted the OB stuff to be telling me to treat people right at work and they'll do the same...pretty simple, right? I knew there were other lessons, but that seemed to be the big takeaway for me. Now, that I'm on a team with a bunch of people who have different working styles, the importance of the OB concepts are becoming clear. For example, there is a more senior guy on my team that I've been working pretty closely with for the past two weeks and during most of that time, I couldn't help but think that this dude wasn't checkin' for The Kid. He and I were assigned to work together on a single workstream and, no matter how much work i was putting in, I couldn't shake the feeling that this guy didn't believe me to be on point. It took me several days to sort it all out enough to talk to the two managers running the project about it and they explained that it was all likely a matter of different working styles. In addition to reminding me of several basic OB ideas, they told me to focus on "managing upward" to let the guy know that I had the ability to throw down on our work and was ready to prove it. With that advice in mind, I switched up the way that I was interacting with the dude and the past couple of days have been MUCH smoother. I'm leaving a whole lot of details out because I don't know who is reading this joint nowadays, but I'll just leave you with the advice to pay attention in your OB classes because that stuff will come in handy.
Before I close this out, I've got send a "Thank goodness you're in Ohio" shout out to my girl Tamara...she's one of my classmates who i just found out is working in Canton, Ohio (2 hours from Columbus) this summer. you're probably thinking "why is he excited about that?", but I thought I was the only GSB student working in that whole state this summer. I had a long talk with her today and she's in a similar situation...learning a lot and enjoying her internship, but not too crazy about the location. Sometimes you've just got to suck it up to get an experience that will be valuable to your career. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to meet up over the next week or so to have a "GSB in Ohio" bonding session...