Breaking from the Bubble
Last weekend I had the opportunity to step out of the HBS bubble, substantively, for the first time since I arrived in Cambridge on August 8. While it was certainly disappointing to have missed what I understand was an epic weekend with Section C on the retreat in Vermont, I had a really awesome time back in Chicago attending the wedding of two of my great friends from high school.
One of the first pieces of advice I got upon arriving at HBS was not to forget those people who had helped you get here in the first place, because they would surely be the ones to catch you on the other side of this merry-go-round. I think that’s a pretty important point. Especially when you realize how easy it is for you to let days become weeks before you’ve spoken to the people who are supposed to be your closest friends.
So this was a bit of an opportunity to reconnect with friends, get home, relax (albeit briefly), and plug in to what is going on in the world. (My mainstream media consumption waxes and wanes with the frequency of my Finance cases.)
As glad as I was to get back to the bubble and my new friends here, I am all the more looking forward to getting home for Thanksgiving again and spending some time with the family, actually relaxing, and otherwise taking long, deep breath.
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).
taking a break
Yesterday I completed the HBS finance tutorial. And I passed. Glad to have that out of the way. There were a few concepts on it, like levered and unlevered betas, which I found complicated. I thought maybe I was not made for finance, and then my friend from New York arrived last night and told me he had to do levered and unlevered betas on the CFA level 3 in June. I thought my module was supposed to be introductory. The CFA3 is pretty complicated. Oh well.
I’m spending the next two nights in downtown Chicago with the buddy from NYC. Looking forward to a break from suburbanity. Next week a friend from DC visits on Monday, and then I head out of town on Tuesday. Will be racing the clock to finish the QA tutorial for school, but I’m less worried about that than the finance one.
Summer vacation is great.
Sidebar – why is it that people always “can’t wait til summer,” “can’t believe summer’s halfway over,” “can’t believe summer’s going so fast,” etc.? I guess it’s the weather, but I know a lot of people who love cold/winter, and I never hear them say these things about winter. Just a thought.
move. check.
So, I’m done moving to Cambridge. Everything went smoothly (although I do believe I have more stuff than I should… definitely still a packrat, despite having thrown away about 12 bags of stuff). The Penske truck was completely pain-free and actually had a iPod jack… who knew?
I got all my stuff into the house up there, unpacked a few essentials and booked it back to nyc yesterday for one last night in the Big Apple. Now I’m sitting at LaGuardia waiting to fly to Chicago for a few weeks. (And hopefully acquiring an iPhone later today).
Two lessons I learned while moving:
1. Girls have lots of stuff too. But their boxes are labeled with things like “Shoes 1″ and “Shoes 2″ and “Shoes 3″ and “Purses.” Weird.
2. Mt Kisco, New York is not a good place to stop for food while driving between New York and Boston. While attempting to make a rare appearance at Burger King (because who eats Burger King in nyc? do they even have Burger King’s in nyc?), we followed a road sign that said there was a Burger King at the Mt Kisco exit. Well…. literally 3 country roads, 18 minutes, several miles, and a pass thru DOWNTOWN MT KISCO (which is, in fact, nowhere near the interstate), we found the Burger King. It was so far away from the highway that we took a different route back to the highway than we took getting off the highway.
Anyway. Lessons learned.
Looking forward to spending the next few weeks at home. Looking less forward to finishing the Finance and Quantitative Analysis modules for HBS in the next few days, but that’s not so negotiable.
