the week ahead
A friend of mine said today, “man, this week looks crazy.”
I replied, “you know, I find myself saying that EVERY Sunday lately.”
My schedule tomorrow:
0630 - gym (if I motivate)
0745 - learning team
0840 - FRC
1020 - TOM
1200 - section meeting
1310 - MKT
1500 - company presentation
1600 - company presentation
1800 - company presentation
Somewhere in there I’m meant to prep a case for Tuesday. (Oh and also study for the MKT midterm, which is Tuesday.)
I sometimes wonder what the MBA program was like 40 years ago. If the pressures of recruiting and extracurriculars and trying to maintain good friendships were as intense. Or if people actually spent the vast majority of their time on the academic learning.
People keep saying this is good training for when you get further along in your career and you have to balance a lot of demands for your time coming from multiple directions. But man… the gray hairs just keep spreading…
In other news, sprained my ankle playing squash yesterday. Jumped in the air and delivered an epic hit. In my excitement over the play, completley forgot that gravity would bring my back down. Oops. Also had several great nights out with the section this weekend. Last night culminated in a 2am run on my house for pancakes and bacon. Can’t really beat that.
class visits and recruiting
The recruiting season officially kicked off this week. Today we began Company Information Days, where a ton of companies come through campus to give informational sessions and meet&greet students. Despite the bad market for jobs, the Career Services office tells us job postings for RCs (first years) are up 34% this year. Good news, I hope.
Every once and a while, the case method gets really interactive when the protagonist in the case comes to visit class and tell their side of the story after listening to us talk about what they did or should have done for 45 minutes. Today, in LEAD (Leadership and Organizational Behavior), the case was about Jack Welch and his 20 year reign as the CEO of GE. When I showed up in the classroom at 830 this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find Jack Welch himself in the room. He spoke for the last half of class, took questions, talked about the Obama win last night, and otherwise made for what was the most interesting class I’ve been in yet here. That, to me, is the power of the case method.
the feedback continues
We’ve been receiving feedback from our professors about our participation in class over the last few days. Most of mine has been as expected. It’s a bit of a ballet, trying to figure out how to best participate in the case method discussions. There are a whole bunch of things to factor:
- frequency
- quality of comment
- relevance of comment
- advancing the conversation
- contributing to the learning of sectionmates
And all of this while simultaneously actively listening to the conversation, and - oh yeah - learning something.
My feedback in FRC was not so stellar. The note said it had to do more with quantity than quality, but I’m not sure. I keep track of my participation, and I think I may be asking too many questions and not making enough insightful comments. Each professor evaluates participation differently, so I just consider this a good check on my understanding of what profs are looking at which criteria, and now that I know, I can adjust.
I’m a little less concerned with the participation points than I am with whether or not I’m actually learning the material, and I did really well on the midterm exam, so I’m not too worried about the accounting concepts, I just have to master this whole 90-person-conversation thing.
I had an absolutely hilarious lunch with about eight sectionmates today. Was good to get off campus and laugh hard - haven’t laughed that hard in a while.
One more day til the weekend. TOM midterm tomorrow. Flying to Chicago tomorrow night. The show never stops…
2 down, 1 to go
It is midterms week here in the RC class at HBS. We have three exams, one each on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Monday’s exam was in FRC (Financial Reporting and Control - aka Accounting). It was multiple choice, fairly straightforward, and only worth 10% of our grade. Nevertheless, there was still plenty of anxiety around the first real knowledge test of the HBS experience. The exam was proctored, in our section room, and was given a 2 hour time limit.
After that, we had 48 hours to work on 4 cases and prep for today’s midterm in LEAD (Leadership and Organizational Behavior). This exam was given in three hours, was a case writeup (1200 word essay), and was administered virtually, so we could take it from anywhere (as such, it was also open book). I should also mention that the exam was worth 0% of our grade. That’s right, zero. It was more an exercise in administered case write-ups (prep for finals and a good check of framework understanding). And nevertheless, there was still some anxiety surrounding the exam.
Friday we’ll have our exam in TOM (Technology and Operations Management). This is the exam which is causing the most indigestion in my section, but after a productive review session with our Prof today, I think that I’m less worried about it than I was.
All of these exams happen whilst we still have 2 cases a day to prepare, so nerves are a little frayed this week (also the tremors for the imminently approaching job hunt season started this week, so there was that too). Logically, the school has given us the weekend free from ANY official events so that the sections can go on retreat for the weekend. My section is going to Killington Vermont. I am passing in order to be in a friend’s wedding in Chicago (which will also be a nice break from the insanity of this week). Next week is the last “normal” week before recruiting kicks into full swing, will be nice to only have cases to focus on for a few days (as weird as that sounds).
autumn, trash, and turkeys in cambridge
This post will wander around a bit…
Funny thing about the City of Cambridge. They have a very fickle trash collection policy. It is not very clearly articulated on their website, and every week, after trash collection, it is always fun to come home and play roulette: “which container will still be sitting there full on the curb today?”
Tonight it was the cardboard. No explanation why. Perhaps pizza boxes don’t recycle? One of my housemates suggested that it might be nice if they left handwritten notes explaining why they didn’t take it. I chuckle imagining that note.
It is turning to autumn here. Autumn is always a sentimental season for me. Usually I am in New York now, where I want to equate the smells of fall with the starting of something new, like school. This year, I actually am doing something new, like school. And as a bonus, the leaves here actually change colors. They haven’t peaked yet, but there are a few trees here and there on the walk to campus that have turned brilliantly.
This morning, going into our class building, I was attacked by the campus turkey. It’s been written about by the Boston Globe, and it has an attitude now. It chased me across the lawn as half the MBA class was crossing the lawn from Spangler to Aldrich and then tried to follow me into Aldrich. That was great. At least my blood was pumping for the first case this morning.
Walking over the river to make dinner tonight I started complaining to myself (as usual) about how tired I am and how the schedule here is kicking my ass, etc etc. Somewhere on the bridge I had one of those minor epiphanies that happens every now and again. If this were meant to be easy, it probably wouldn’t be that hard to get in here. This is supposed to be hard - that’s why I came here. So my adrenaline started pumping again and I feel like I did when I first got here. (Plus, finally the RC Plague is entirely out of my body).
So here’s to turning a new leaf on the year… a bright red leaf…
taking a break
While the Harvard Business School celebrates itself this weekend (100 year birthday party), the MBA RC class is enjoying its first real break from the insanity that is our schedule. Personally, I am sitting in my empty house (housemates all out of town) enjoying a lazy Monday afternoon, looking at another day off tomorrow, and enjoying the first feeling of boredom in about 2 months.
This morning I was fortunate enough to have a friend wake me up to go catch Bill Gates speaking at the HBS Centennial. (We were in the peanut gallery, watching via video, but it was interesting all the same). The man is something else. He seems to know something about everything - and not in the way that annoys me. He spoke at length about the work his foundation is doing around the world, and I have to say, you can’t sit through a talk like that and not wonder if you shouldn’t be pursuing something a little more “good” than you are. (And by you I mean me, so now you know what it sounds like inside my head).
I’m currently working on transposing my resume from the aesthetic format I prefer, to the one that HBS forces us to use in order to be included in the book-o-resumes. A completely understandable standardization, but a tedious exercise. While moving my bullet points about making television into the proper spacing and alignment I started to get the real feeling that this job search is going to be hard. Like really hard. Previously, I was casually approaching the resume situation from the standpoint that if it was good enought to get me into Harvard, well… Not so much. Perusing some of the EC (2nd year) resumes, I realized that there are some RIDICULOUSLY well-qualified people in this candidate pool, and we are all applying for work in what may be the most competitive job market. Ever.
So, not wanting to get bogged down with too much stress, I turned to eating.
Which then reminded me I need to go to the grocery store.
And the to-do list returns. Break’s over.
The week ahead looks busy. It’s the start of Entrepreneurship Week, which means there’s a ton of panels I want to attend. All three days (W, T, F) are three-case days, and the cases are thick - so there’s a lot to read. There’s an analytics reunion party Wednesday night. Resumes are due Thursday. There’s a Latin party on Thursday night. And by Friday I may just decide to barricade myself in my room. Because midterms start the following Monday. Zzzzzzz.
Wednesday is the start of the uphill battle that ends at Thanksgiving. I’m going to try to enjoy being bored for a little while longer…
tradeoffs
They say one of the biggest things you learn in b-school is time management. I’m not talking about learning how to keep a calendar and stay organized, I’m talking about making very difficult decisions about which of the 5 events that you really want to attend that are happening at the exact same time you’re actually going to attend.
I wasn’t expecting it to be quite like this.
There are other tradeoffs one makes, too. I have found much less time for the dorky things I used to do when bored, like reading copious amounts of random news and information on the internet. One of my first habits to take a hit since arriving here has been my consumption of blogs/news via google reader. I just can’t keep up - something had to give. Then I stopped posting to Twitter. I nearly stopped posting here altogether, but then realized that chronicling this experience was something I’d appreciate later on when I wanted to remember what this two year blur actually was…
I’m staying in tonight. It doesn’t happen often any more. I’m still coughing and I’m trying to get myself repaired in advance of tomorrow night’s pending disaster.
the calm after the storm
The week that started out as one from hell, has taken a remarkable turn for the better. It’s an odd thing, the scheduling here. This week was frontloaded with SO much stuff: back-to-back three case days, shad practices, meetings, 101’s, etc. Then yesterday I finished Shad and had nothing to do all day. It made for a great opportunity to catch up on sleep (the section was out pretty late the night before).
Today only had one case to prepare, and it was relatively light. The other class we had today involved this simulation online where we were basically in a chat-room type meeting but some of us were presumed to be non-native English speakers, and therefore everything we said came out jumbled or unintelligible to the other people in the conversation. We then had to evaluate how well we adapted and produced in that environment. Was interesting.
The rest of the day will be spent preparing 2 cases for tomorrow and making sure that I’m rested for tomorrow night and what will undoubtedly be one of the most ridiculous events I ever attend.
Shad, the day, and the debate
Today started with learning team, per usual except that we had our regular meeting room stolen from us. That was a drag. I found myself far more prepared for the cases in LT than I felt when I went to bed 5 hours earlier.
Classes went well. I finally got in another comment in finance. It started out okay but then I wobbled on the professor’s follow up. Can’t sweat the small stuff. I’m learning to be less self critical in the moment of particiaption, because I find obsessing over comments distracts from the next 20 minutes of learning. Better to evaluate after class.
This afternoon we had the first part of the infamous “shad” exercise, where we simulate a manufacturing plant on the floor of the gym. Our team did well. Fortunately I love my learning team and the team we were paired with has been fun to work with. This is all part of the Technology and Operations Management (TOM) course, which I’ll get into in detail later.
We went to debrief the exercise in the grille over beers (yay for having a chill team) and I’m now taking a 20 minute time out in the Spangler living room.
Tonight I’m going to see one of my LT teammates play guitar at a fundraiser for Argentina. This week we learned he is a famous recording artist in South America. Cool! After that sec-c is watching the debate in the grille and then going to chill at a bar called Bus Stop. Should be good times and fortunately there is only the second half of Shad to do tomorrow, so done with work for tonight. Good feeling!
the view from hell
12:20am. I still have a whole case to read and prepare. And it’s finance. The class where I’ve spoken once in 6 sessions. Great.
We’re in the midst of what can only be described as HBS’ version of freshman hazing - the Shad exercise. Teams of 12 people forced to get together and simulate manufacturing plants in the gym (”Shad”) all the while learning whether a job shop or product cell approach to manufacturing is better. Frankly, I’m starting not to care. For some reason they thought it would be funny to schedule this across two back-to-back three-case days. Now this exercise is actually cutting in to my ability to learn in the other classes.
Vent.
That feels better.
It’s starting to get cold here. The walk across the river tonight wasn’t pleasant. Time to dig through the basement for the winter clothes perhaps.
