Done Done Done

The past few days have been brutal, but we finished our last Team Fource presentation this afternoon, and my first semester of business school is over!

Almost There

Final exams are over, and just one final presentation lies between me and freedom. I’m going to be one happy girl come Friday the 18th, 3 PM.

3, 2, 1…

If you can believe it, I only have two more classes before the end of my fall semester. Accounting today and Finance tomorrow. How unreal!

Of course, the giddiness of no more accounting is tempered just a bit when I remember that I have finals coming up on Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, and I am woefully underprepared. Once finals are done, it’s a race to the finish line to get everything wrapped up for the Integrated Project, and final presentations are on the 17th.

I’ve been waiting to get to December for so long. I hate to say it, but I’m almost sad that things are going to be ending so quickly. It really feels like  I blinked and three months flew by.

Crazy/Normal

When I first started applying to business school last year, everyone told me that the hardest thing I would face would be time management. “Yeah, right,” I thought. I’ve been in stressful situations before. I’ve worked two jobs at the same time. I’ve juggled multiple responsibilities and concerns in the air. “How hard can it really be?”

It’s hard. Yeah.

Two months since my last post kind of hard! I have been drinking from a fire hose kind of hard. There are more things to get done and more information to absorb than there are hours in the day. But I have to say, it’s all a little… exhilarating.

Last week I attended the Net Impact conference in Ithaca NY. It was a great two days spent in beautiful upstate NY, meeting lots of people and listening to some amazing speakers on topics such as social marketing, sustainability, green branding, and more. We drove back to Boston, tired and full (from an AWESOME meal at a little BBQ place in the middle of nowhere named Rubbin’ Butts), I felt a little sad that the brief respite from all the schoolwork was over. But then I realized that it’s already November, and my first semester at school is almost over, and how is that even possible when August was just yesterday?

Yeah, the work is insanely hard, and there is never an end to the things I have to get done, but I will look back on this first semester and think how amazing a time in my life this was. I have to remember this feeling as finals and integrated project loom just around the corner. Please remind me.

Bad Poetry Alert

The Life of a Grad Student

Eyes- burning
Apartment- messy
Fridge- empty
Stomach- growling
Homework- mounting
Stress- yes

Presentation Finito!

First presentation was successfully presented today. I know that’s a horrible sentence, but I was up until 2:30 AM this morning fixing notes slides and citing pictures, so I’m not all there right now.

Well, the presentation went very well. We had some minor last minute issues with printing out color slides and 11th hour decisions to add in vital pieces of information, but it all came together in the end. We had stayed until 10 PM last night in SMG, going over every slide one by one and critiquing the presentation. I could tell that we were at a critical point in our team relationship– there were a few snappy comments made, a few unhappy people, and it could have very easily spiraled out of control. Instead, we somehow managed to spiral ourselves into some bonding time, and ended up running around the building pretending that we were trying to peek at the other teams still there working. Not everyone had as good a sense of humor about it as we did. So we stopped. And went back to work. Their loss!

I’m actually glad we are finished though– first, because it’s over. Second, and more important, this was a really valuable experience for us as a team. There were many moments where we could have given in to snipping and fighting and non-productive behavior. But somehow we managed to keep ourselves on track and put out a pretty impressive product, if I say so myself.

I’ll be glad not to have to pull up eBay’s homepage every time I log on the internet, though. A week of dreaming about eBay is too much for me.

What Weekend?

After a long and intense day of team-building across cohorts at the Warren Conference Center, I think BU wanted to give us all a little break. So our orientation actually ended on Thursday, giving us a nice ‘three day weekend’. However, I spent most of Friday AND most of Saturday at the SMG building doing homework, so I don’t really feel like I’ve had much of a weekend at all. Class hasn’t officially started yet! And I’m already buried with work. Welcome to business school!

Not that I mind being at SMG very much. (At least, not yet). For one thing, it’s gorgeous! See:

How pretty!

It’s also fun to see fellow classmates outside of class and continue to get to know them better. But the miserable fall-like weather today made studying a slightly damp activity.

Well, I’ve read two cases, many papers, and uploaded my resume today. Off to read another case and start my case paper outline.

Team Learning

One of the big ideas that is emphasized in b-school is team learning. From the very beginning we are sectioned off into our cohorts of 50-60 people, with whom we will do everything for the next year. Then we are separated into teams of 6-7 people. At some schools teams are selected very carefully (or at least that’s what they tell you). I believe that BU uses a computer program to randomly generate teams, with a certain required male-female ratio, as well as a domestic-international ratio.

This has resulted in a wide variety of team dynamics and working styles, at least from what I can tell thus far. My team appears to be a group of leaders. What this will actually mean for us is yet to be determined, but we have been working very hard on hashing out the details of how we will work together in the coming months. Some teams have taken a more, shall we say, laid-back approach to structuring their teams and team interactions. And then there are the teams that aren’t doing anything at all, but get panicky every time they overhear what other teams are doing, and rush to do the same.

The nice thing about BU is that this is not a competition. Everyone learns in a different fashion, and what might be good in terms of structure for one group of people may not be the best solution for another group of people. It’s up to you as an individual to determine what works for you, and then coordinate how your personal workstyle and skill set will fit in with the other 5 or 6 people in your team.

I came away from my team meeting this afternoon with a real sense of accomplishment. I have not worked in teams that much over the last 5 years, and I am looking forward to stepping out of my comfort zone and expanding my knowledge base. I hope that we can sustain this productive goodwill through the semester ahead of us. We haven’t even started classes yet, and already my free time is practically nil. I can only imagine how crazy and stressful it will be when classes begin, companies start recruiting, networking efforts get into full swing, and clubs and activities get going. There are so many things that I am interested in doing and accomplishing, and only so many hours in the day. After hearing about the Cohort Cup yesterday, a few of us first-years were left wondering when school had turned into Hogwarts (Quidditch, anyone?). Well, as long as we’re in the Harry Potter world, I’d like to find Hermione’s Time Turner and start making good use of it!

First Week Down

Well….. I have survived my first week of business school! Yay!!!

Today we had a really interesting group activity with our new teams. We were given a Subartic Survival situation in which we (the team) were stranded in the middle of the Arctic tundra after a plane crash. We had a list of items that made it through the crash with us, and we had to rank them in order of their importance to us for survival. We ranked the items twice, once individually and once as a group.

My new team is comprised of 7 members. We are all very strong personalities, and I am still not sure what this will mean for us long-term. However, we rocked this activity. We probably discussed every possible scenario there is out there, and how our store of items would help us. I was pretty impressed by the range and depth of knowledge we all brought to the table. We were using flashlight batteries to start fires, starting fires with rum, and making water containers out of inner tubes.

The third part of the activity involved finding out what the experts thought of the scenario, and finding out how they ranked the items. We were fairly close on most of our items, and out of the 9 teams in our cohort we had the best score hands down, for the team most likely to survive. What was interesting was looking at our average individual score, which was much higher (higher scores were further away from the ‘expert opinion’, and indicated a decreased likelihood of survival) than the team score. The point being of course that as individuals we were so-so, but as a team we came together and utilized each other to improve and be successful.

Some teams did not survive.

The day ended with a wine and cheese social, and I went out for beers afterwards with a group of new friends. It’s been a long week, and next week will be equally intense. Can’t wait.

First Day Down

Things have been in such a whirlwind, I can’t even imagine what my schedule and workload will be like once school *really* starts. Today marked the first official day of Pre-Term, and we had a morning full of speeches and warm welcomes from the Deans, Admissions, Alumni, and the Graduate Programs Office.

One of the speakers said something that really stuck with me. He asked us to sit and think for a moment about one specific thing that would have changed or that we would want to change by the time we graduate, 2 years from now. He said, “you will walk out of these doors in 2 years a different person.” I definitely think that is true. I don’t exactly know what will have changed, but I am sure I will change and grow tremendously over the next few years. For one, I hope to become more self-assured about my ability to make sound business recommendations. It’s a start!

The Alumni speaker told us to think about our pursuit of an MBA as classified as either Passion, Money, or Power. I think I fall into the Passion category. I am a career switcher, and I do want to do something with my degree that I consider meaningful… something that has a social impact. I’m not in the Public and Nonprofit program just cause it sounds good, after all! There weren’t that many hands raised for the Money and Power options, and I wonder if it has anything to do with the current economic situation.

While it has been a bit odd to be ‘back at school’, the good thing so far has been all the people I’ve been meeting. We got to meet our Cohorts today, and it was great to interact with the people that I will be spending the majority of the next year with. I have met so many friendly, outgoing, and warm classmates, and I think it really says something about the type of class that BU has tried to build.

Although I know that the workload is about to increase exponentially, I still sort of enjoyed my homework reading tonight. First case study ever! I’m sure I’ll be singing a different tune in a matter of weeks. Off to bed, long day tomorrow.