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…
gmat prep
Going into my final 3 days of analytics and the last week before officially matriculating into the mba program here… I’ve leared a ton. And I feel extremely well prepared to begin tackling the real challenge that lies ahead.
Several times in the last week, people have emailed to ask what I did to prepare for the gmat. Granted, I think that prep for the exam is going to be an individual thing and no one method will guarantee any one result, I thought I’d quickly post what I did, so that it’s here and on the record. I started out with the big purple kaplan book and then went to the big orange gmat book. Then I started taking practice exams on the computer. I then went back and focused on specific problem areas with the help of selected mahattan gmat prep books. No right or wrong thing about this method, it just worked for me. One thing I will say, is that I felt the kaplan questions were harder (or worded more poorly) than the actual exam questions. So, starting with that book freaked me out into working extra hard, only to find the exam a little easier than I was expecting.
Not telling anyone what they should or shouldn’t do, just sharing what I did.
first impressions
So far I have been through eight cases and I am currently working on preparing two for tomorrow. And so far I can confidently say that I wish that my education up until this point had been entirely case method. (Except for film school, I’m not sure how that would have worked…)
Being in a classroom for 80 minutes where there is a perpetual ping-pong of conversation going on between prof and student, and also between student and student, has kept me so much more focused and alert than I ever have been during a class before.
So you can tell I’m liking it so far?
The class experience has been different from anything I’ve ever done. From what I can tell one of the other big differences from my past educational experiences is in the preparation for class. I spend lots of time preparing, with the same anxiousness I would have had in high school about making sure my homework was “right.” Except that now that doesn’t matter any more. I can bring in a balance sheet, and if it doesn’t balance, it doesn’t matter (insofar as I’m not going to lose points for it)… as long as I understand the concepts and can reason my way through an argument in class, I’m fine. This is a weird paradigm to get used to.
I finally made time to go to the gym today, and I felt really good afterwards. Think I need to get into the habit of doing that more often.
The people here are beyond amazing. Everyone in Analytics has a wild story about something (whether it’s work, their education, their personal interests…). I’ve had more fun just meeting people in the last few days than I’ve had in a while.
Someone said to me the other night that they’ve heard b-school described this way (and I’m starting to agree):
Where undergrad was a lot of people who looked similar on paper (impressive GPA or extracurriculars, etc.) but were vastly different in terms of personality and aspirations, the b-school crowd seems to be much more similar in terms of personality (no, everyone’s not the same, more on this later) and aspirations and wildly different on paper (in terms of work experience, home country, etc.).
I hope to be able to go into more detail about some of these things soon, but at the moment I wanted to squeeze in an update between case prep and my learning team meeting tonight.
the calm before the storm
After a few days of break from the internet, I’m returning. On Friday, I made the 16 hour drive from Chicago to Cambridge. It was a relatively smooth drive and I was exhausted when I got to the house. The last three days have been spent cleaning, floor to ceiling the new place, unpacking all the stuff I dumped here in July, and getting ready for class to start on Wednesday.
Analytics (aka “Math Camp”) begins at 8am Wednesday morning. There’s a full schedule of events that day which will take us right up until 11pm Wednesday night. I’m excited for things to get started, I’m just hoping I can last the whole day. I’m not used to intensity starting so early and ending so late. Hopefully the last few weeks of rest will pay off.
Tonight is the first big social event. A lot of the people going to this program on Wednesday are meeting up for drinks and I’m looking forward to finally meeting some of the other people here. Tomorrow will be a day of rest, relaxation, final errands/chores, and hopefully some Olympic-viewing…
the finish line and the vacation
More than four months after being admitted to school, I have FINALLY completed all of my prematriculation requirements. I will be happy if I never have to write the word “prematriculation” again. Today I learned about heteroskedasticity. It’s a much more enjoyable word to write.
To recap, this marks the end of two full courses in Finance and Accounting, and three online modules in Finance, Accounting, and Quantitative Analysis.
Next week, I’ll be driving out of IL, bound for Cambridge for good. As one other prematric requirement, I have to attend “analytics” (read: math camp) for two weeks before classes start. Everyone who I’ve talked to says that it’s actually a really great experience, and that a lot of interesting people go to it, so I’m looking forward to it, but it’s hard to believe I’ll be in classes in 2 weeks.
Right now I’m just looking forward to vegetating for the next few days. And ticking off the list of miscellaneous to-do’s.
