One of my goals coming into this school year was to be less involved in things and allow myself to fall-back and be more relaxed...unfortunately, I'm doing a terrible job at it. This is basically how I was for the first two quarters of last year too and it had me ready to fall out at any given moment, but I'm surprisingly enjoying it this year for some unknown reason.
School is going surprisingly well even though all my classes have a ton of readings. I still haven't mastered the arts of skimming and speed-reading, so I spend a lot of time taking in the info, but, since I actually wanted these classes, it's much more enjoyable learning this material than it is in the Core. As we go through our class discussions, I'm seeing how far people in my class have come in their business acumen and confidence in the classroom in such a short time. Folks who had no business background (including myself) are seriously bringing the thunder in class discussions. People who used to never speak are ready to ump in when they get that cold call and others who used to talk all the time are picking and choosing their times to speak more carefully. A lot of people say that B-school doesn't teach you anything but how to network, but they couldn't be more wrong.
The recruiting stuff is coming up hard and fast and it has a lot of us overwhelmed. This past week was only our third week of class and also was the second week of company presentations, dinners, and activities. It's good to know that these companies are interested in us, but it all seems to be going on too early. As y'all probably know, our school year starts about a month after most schools, so we're at the back-end of most companies' recruiting schedules, but it is still hella early for us when one considers that we are still getting readjusted to being back in the classroom. Don't think I'm complaining though...if companies want to come here and take me out to nice dinners, cool happy hours, and give me a chance to make a ton of money with their firms, I'm all for it, but it would've been nice to have a couple of weeks to chill before all of this activity.
Because the on-campus interviews for the consulting companies will be starting next week, my classmates have been running around like crazy to do case interview practices. As I look toward these interviews, I've been amazed at how quickly my case game has deteriorated since March. When i went into my internship interview process, my case game was weak as watered-down Kool-Aid and I attribute that to the reason why i struggled so badly with the on-campus recruiting (OCR) cycle. By the time, I worked my way in front of Accenture, my case game was on point like an arrow...which makes sense because I'd done around 100 cases by that time. I assumed that my skills would stay sharp through the rest of the school year and the summer, but my man Raj dashed those thought away when he lit me up on a case practice this past Friday. I recovered the following day after attending a "Cracking the Case" workshop and cracking the heck out of a case with my man Takashi. Right now, I don't know where I stand in terms of my readiness, but I've got a whole lot of prepping to do because BCG is next monday and Bain is the next day.
In addition to school and job search stuff, i've slipped up and let myself get caught up in extracurriclar stuff too. Since this is my last quarter as a SA Senator, I'm trying to do as much as I can now so people won't look back on me and think I was lazy and bootleg during my term. This has involved me helping some MBA1's with their Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, helping another senator organize some MBA1-MBA2 integration activities, and doing an audit of all of the GSB club websites to find format consolidation opportunities. If this was all I had, i'd be good, but I wouldn't be writing about it if that were the case. As a part of my BBSA leadership stuff, I spent the better part of the last 2-3 months planning our retreat (thank goodness that's over) and, in an attempt to work off the momentum of the retreat, I've been taking groups of BBSA MBA1's out to lunch and dinner so I can get to know them better. I thought those joints would be easy to do, but each one usually takes a couple of hours and is getting into my study time. Goodness...what else am I into?...oh yeah, I'm also doing some pro-bono consulting work for a GSB alum and her husband, who are trying to start up a new web-based initiative focused on college students. A lot of these things will be finished by the end of the quarter, but it's going to be so crucial trying to make it through to Winter break.
The biggest difference that I've seen this year is that I'm actually having more time to socialize with classmates and more random gatherings are happening outside of the "GSB-centric" events. It seems like I'm getting an email every other day about a dinner, BBQ, or hang-out session at someone's house, so there are tons of opportunities to kick it with classmates. Part of this may be that everyone is just getting back to school and wants to see everyone, but it is great to see people from all over the place at these things. At this time last year, people had starting breaking out into cliques and i never saw much intermingling outside of the school, so this is a welcome change. Too bad we only have one year left here...This year is starting out WAY better than last year even though I feel like I'm ten times busier now than I was back then.
Posted by marquis930 at October 17, 2005 08:49 PM