This has been a loooooong weekend for me so far. A bunch of my classmates went on a trip to somewhere called Lake Shasta and are enjoying the time off swimming, boating, and generally hanging out. I, on the other hand, have been stuck here on campus behind my laptop plugging away at papers all weekend long. I had four of them to work on and I knocked out the third of those four last night. I planned to get the fourth one done today but I just needed a break to get my mind right. Hopefully, I'll be able to do it tomorrow on the day off, but, chances are, my body will need even more of a break and I'll end up having to rush to get it finished. to add to the presure of it all, this is my last week in my place here, so i'll have to get a good amount of packing done this week, as well. Thinking back to when I moved out here, I should have given a lot more stuff away because I am now stuck trying to figure out what to do with everything. It'll all get done because there is no choice for it to get done, but it'll be a long 7 days until I hit that place back to VA to visit my fam for a few days before heading to NYC...
You're probably wondering what Super Round is, so I'll give a short description. There are several classes and professors at the GSB that are extremely popular and get oversubscribed each year. Because our registration order is determined by a lottery process, there is a chance that people could leave here without getting one of these popular courses/professors unless the Academic operations office intervenes. So, they run a process called the Super Round, in which we are given access to a list of popular courses for the three quarters of our second year and get to rank the 10 class sections that we most want to be in. Once we've all selected our preferences, a lottery process is run to assign each of us a number and each student is allocated two of their ten preferenced sections. This way, Academic Operations ensures that most, if not all, MBA2's can take at least two of their top choice popular classes and don't have to worry about getting shut out.
Well, the results for the Super Round came out today and I've got mixed feelings about how mine turned out. I'd ranked a "Managing Growing Enterprises" course taught by Prof. Irv Grosbeck in the Spring as my #1 choice and a "Formation of New Ventures" course taught by Prof. Garth Saloner in the Fall as my #2 choice because these are two of the most relevant courses to people who want to learn about entrpereneurship and early-stage company leadership and I was told that the former serves as a perfect follow-up to the latter. Also, Profs Grosbeck and Saloner are the strongest entrepreneurship and strategy professors (respectively) in the GSB. I didn't know whether I'd get both classes, but I had my hopes set high. I only ended up getting the #2 choice class becuase Grosbeck's joint went really early in the process. I'm happy with the Saloner class though and I'm looking forward to it because my man Detavio told me that he did a great job of teaching his section in the core Strategy class. As my second Super Round class, I got a "Leadership Perspectives" class taught by Profs. O'Reilly and Peterson (Peterson was just awarded the 2004-2005 GSB Distinguished Teacher Award) that is a relatively new course developed by these professors and a team of 13 folks from the Class of 2005. The focus of this course is to teach students about leadership and the different sacrifices, insights, and motivations that go into being an effective leader. Overall, I am cool with the Super Round joints I got and I'll just have to cross my fingers in hopes of being able to get into one of the other professors' sections of "Managing growing enterprises" in the Spring quarter.
One other aspect of registration that was announced today was the allocations for September session, in which a set of classes are held concurrently with the MBA 1 preterm in the middle of September. There will be about 15 seminars held during this time along with a 2-week session of Interpersonal Dynamics, also known as "Touchy Feely", which usually takes an entire quarter to complete. I have been looking forward to signing up for the September session version of Touchy Feely since the start of the winter quarter because I knew that getting those 4-units out of the way early would make the upcoming fall quarter much easier on me. Plus, I didn't want to have to take the class during one of the regular quarters because it takes up a lot of time and requires a mandatory weekend retreat that will eat into my time to study for other classes. I thought that my chances of getting the Sept session class were so good that I made plans for my summer break around it (determining my internship end date, not trying to do a split summer with a second internship, and not signing up for a GMIX), but, when the results came out, I'd gotten a big "HELLZ NAW!!!" on that joint. Basically, there were so many people who wanted to do the class during that session that they couldn't accomodate everyone and I got the bad word. I think the official word is that all of us will be put on a waitlist for the class, but I'm pretty sure that no spots are going to open up. to make things worse, I didn't sign up for any of the 2-unit September session seminars because I was so sure I'd get the Touchy Feely class. I will probalby sign up for two of those seminars because I want to get the 4-units knocked out in September and I'll get a chance to get some extra learning in, but it's hard not to be disappointed at how it all turned out.
Whew! It's been a long week already, but I am steadily seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for this school year getting bigger and bigger...I can't wait until the summer break starts in a few weeks.
Since yesterday at around noon, I am officially finished with my second class of the quarter, our 3-unit Non-Markets strategy. We had a take home exam due at 5pm and, because I was so anxious to be finished with that joint, I stayed up late on Tuesday and then got up early yesterday to get it knocked out as early as possible. This class is supposed to teach us strategies to deal with non-market issues in business (boycotts, interest groups, regulations, legislators, etc.) and I know I've been super positive on all of my classes so far, but this is one that I really did not like from the start. The problem wasn't the professor (he actually did a great job of teaching it)...I saw the material as boring and I could never really make myself get engaged in the classroom discussions. With every case that we did, I thought the discussions would have been great if we would have been able to discuss ethics, but we were restircted to discussing theories and frameworks that were so abstract to me that I couldn't stop my mind from wandering in each class session. After that exam, I don't think I'll end up doing well in my final grade, but I'm just happy that I'm finished with it.
Now that Non-Markets is done, my next big challenge is my Human Resources class, for which I still have a final project presentation and paper to do. We have to present the final project next Tuesday and then the paper is due the following week. A lot of groups have been cranking on their projects all quarter long, but my group has been all over the place and we are just now getting things rolling. I think we'll be fine in getting everything done, but it's going to be a long weekend trying to get the presentation pulled together in time to do our thing in class next week. In addition to that presentation, I've got to pull together my 5-page portion of a 15-page paper for my Politics of Education class, as well. That's going to be a tough one because I'm writing the final recommendations, which is basically the heart of what we'll be graded on.
I'm really starting to realize how much I've grown over the course of this year...In the Fall quarter, I would have been all stressed out about it, but now I'm surprisingly excited because of how much I'm learning over the course of my time here. I can't believe that I'm at the end of my first year already.
On Friday afternoon, I hit the friendly skies to go on a career trek to Las Vegas with the GSB Travel and Hospitality Club..and secretly wondered whether I would be able to behave myself down there. Just to provide a little background, Vegas is a place where I tend to act a fool because of the prevalence of two of my vices: liquor and gambling. Although some of the other GSBers on the trip were planning careers in the gaming industry, i went along because I have had an interest in how things work behind the scenes ever since my first trip there several years ago. Going into the trip, I must admit that I wondered how it would turn out because I had only hung out with one of the 17 other people on the trek before and didn't know if I'd feel out of place among the rest of the group. Fortunately, it was all good and I had a BLAST on this trip. By the time we flew out on Sunday night, I felt like I'd bonded with every other person on that trip and had initiated some friendships that should extend far beyond the end of this school year.
OK, now that the intro is done, I can get into more of the details of the trip. During the trek, we got access to things behind the scenes at the casinos, restaurants, and shows in Vegas that I never thought we'd be able to get as students. Some of the highlights were:
- a tour of the kitchen of the Bouchon restaurant and bakery in the Venetian
- a 2-hour backstage tour of the new Cirque de Soleil show "Ka"
- a meeting with the VP of Finance of MGM Mirage Resorts who described the upcoming City Center project that will be one of the largest attractions in Vegas when it is completed in 2009
- a tour of the security/surveillance room and money counting areas of the Venetian
- meetings with the VPs of Sales and Relationship Marketing for the Venetian
We did several other things during the trek, but I'm drawing a blank right now on them. The biggest part of the trip was the keynote speech given by Sheldon Adelson, Chairman of the Board and founder of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. He shared advice on entrepreneurship and told us stories of his own business ventures, including his thought process going into planning and breaking ground on the Venetian hotel and casino. He was a funny guy and had us all rollin' while dropping gems of business wisdom on us. Hearing his speech made the entire trip worth it. I also got a chance to spend some quality time bonding and kickin' it with the classmates I didn't know very well going into the trip, which was a huge bonus that I wasn't expecting.
I guess it has become a trend in my past few entries to have a shout out section, so I'll continue on with that:
- A congratulatory shout out goes to a Round 3 admit to the GSB who I'll call "Yoda" in honor of the upcoming release of the new Star Wars movie (she didn't want me to use her real name). I met her a few weeks ago through one of my classmates and she is really excited about her impending cross-country move to come out here. She told me that I wasn't allowed to give her a shout out here or else she'd send the mafia to come after me, so, if I stop writing entries all of the sudden, y'all will know what happened.
- A big thank you shout out goes to my classmates Geoff, Kim, and Yasmin for putting together a great career trek to las Vegas over the weekend. As I said above, it was off the hook!
- Another congratulatory shout out goes to all of the first year MBA students who are closing out their first year of Bschool. My girl Maya and her classmates at Columbia just finished up a week or so ago and I think a lot of other schools are finishing up over the next week. (we don't finish up for another 2-3 weeks...daggone quarter system of classes!!!) Good luck on your summer internships.
- Finally, one last congratulatory shout out goes to my man Keith M. who just gradauted over the weekend from the University of Georgia's accelereated MBA program. It seems like it was yesterday and now he's about to go out and throw down on the business world. Keith, I don't know if you're reading this, but, if you are, congrats and good luck, blackman!!!
Whew, we just had a final exam for our Human Resources class this morning and I'm surprisingly refreshed as I look back on it. I found myself taking a different approach to this exam than I did for my other ones. For all of my other midterm/final exams, I would be all stressed out and would stay up until the early hours of the morning cramming the night before. This time around, i wasn't stressed at all and only studied my notes for about an hour and a half. I don't know if I thought the exam would be easy or if I'm just burnt out, I just didn't push myself too hard on this joint. Plus, I knew that we still had a few more class sessions and a final project left to do, so the gravity that usually comes with final exams didn't seem to be there for this one.
I guess my focus on studying wasn't helped by the fact that I didn't really feel a need to cram for this class. I'm not sure why, but this class hasn't been especially interesting to me and I can't really say that I learned any more than I already knew about HR. I was expecting to get a bunch of "A-HA!" moments as I went through it, but everything we've covered just seems like common sense stuff to me. Maybe I didn't apply myself enough in the class to get the most out of it, but I can't see what more I could have done. When i come out of school, I will probably find the lessons I got out of the class to be very useful, but, for right now, I'm just glad to be close to finishing it up.
As you probably already know, this past Sunday was Mother's Day and it was a tough one because it is the first one in all of my 27 years that I didn't spend with my mother. She and I are really close and it seemed so strange to have to talk to her over the phone instead of being able to take her out to dinner. This school year has had a couple of "first times" like this, including my first Thanksgiving away from my family. Being a grad student living on loans is no joke when your family is 3000 miles away. I'm looking forward to getting back to the east coast and spending some quality time with my fam.
Time to get back to the grind and get ready for my afternoon Ed School class...Wednesdays are supposed to be our days off, but I went off and messed myself up on that one with this daggone joint degree and the Wednesday classes that come along with it.
Dang, it's getting harder and harder to find time to write entries in the past couple of weeks. The group meetings and assignments are taking up a bunch of time and I've also been having meetings with some of the GSB clubs and committees to go over their proposed budgets for next year. Being a Senator in our Student Association is cool and I'm glad that my classmates believed in me enough to elect me, but it takes up a ton of time. I guess this comes along with the territory of trying to be in a position where I can affect some positive change. I hope I can look back and say that I did some good when my term ends in December because I'd feel like I loaded myself up with extra responsibilities without getting what I really wanted out of the experience.
Here's a much overdo assessment of the Round 2 Admit Weekend...it went perfectly and was a great success. Last time around, i thought it was decent, but, to be honest, I thought it there was a whole lot of kickin' it going on and not enough emphasis on the books, which is far from the case of how it really is. This time around, we put a lot of effort into emphasizing that the GSB was a fun place to be but an even better place to learn about business for two years and I think it was a complete success. I talked to so many admits who fell in love with this place over the course of the weekend that I couldn't help but smile as a result. I was getting pretty worn down by all of the rigors of this quarter and seeing the excitement on the faces of the admitted applicants re-energized me. Between all the folks that I met from the two Admit Weekends, I'm really looking for ward for the Class of 2007 to arrive in the Fall. Something tells me that those kids are going to be great folks to get to know during my last year here.
Last night, I went to a diversity reception and dinner sponsored by Bain & Company in SF with three of my classmates and had a blast. As you guys know, I went to a diversity event that bain had in NYC last summer and, although it didn't work out during summer internship recruiting, I've still got them on my radar for fulltime possibilities. The event started out with one of their partners giving a presentation about the company that I'd seen a couple of times before. Following the reception, we were taken to a restaurant down the street from their office where current Bain employees answered our questions. Things started off slowly, but, once the wine started flowing, the real Marquis started pushing the professional Marquis aside and things got really fun. I was sitting at a table with a Manager and a Recruiter and both of them were real-deal cool cats. I started asking them real questions about the company that went deeper than the usual "so, how do you like working here?" ones and they were forthcoming with all information. even better, they were wildin' out a little like me and had me feeling like Bain's people were a mixture of being truly on point and truly fun. I have a feeling that I'll interview with them in the Fall just to see what happens.
Earlier today, I attended a brown bag lunch (BBL) where a bunch of professors made presentations about the classes that they were teaching that we could allocated in the Super Round. It would be difficult for me to give a full description of what the Super Round is, so I"ll try to give a quick one. The root of it lies in the fact that there are several courses here that are of high interest for a lot of people and often fill up very quickly. With the way that we are ranked for course preference, there is a chance that one could miss out on a class that they feel is really important for their future career. So, in response to this issue, the GSB offers a Super Round where we can pick several courses for next year that we are REALLY interested in taking and those classes are allocated to people based on their preferences and the availability of the classes on each person's list. with the way that it is set up, everyone gets a chance to take 2 of their classes that traditionally have high-demand. For this year, Academic Operations is introducing a Zero Round where students can trade in their two Super Round picks for a single Zero Round class that they have a greater chance of getting for sure. This whole process is pretty complicated and I hope I can keep it all straight when it comes time to pick my Super Round joints at the end of next week. I left the BBL today with the realization that my MBA journey is almost halfway over and knowing that there are still a whole lot of classes that I want to take before I leave. Sometimes, I wish that Bschool was three years long so I'd have a chance to get in all of the courses in as possible. Two years is such a short time to take classes and, with the Ed School classes that I've got to fit in over the next three quarters, I'm wondering if I'll end up missing out on some really great courses before I graduate.
Before I go, I've got to send a shout out of my girl Maya who got me the major hookup on a place to stay in NYC this summer. She's a first year MBA at Columbia and she set me up to rent a room in her uncle's apartment at a good monthly rent, so I'm out of the game on looking for a pad. Plus, I met her uncle over the summer and he was a really cool cat, so this'll work out well. Thank goodness that I've got that one less thing to worry about.