Back from the wilderness
Aah, where do I begin.
Today marks exactly 1 month since I started attending Yale's SOM. What a ride it already has been!! I don't even know where to begin sharing my experience till date. I think one way to dissect the last month is to look at things in terms of expectations. I spent 10 minutes on the B-Week forums. It's amazing how the same conversations and topics from last year seem are being discussed with the same vigor. My guess is that all hell is going to break lose early next month when B-Week comes out with its rankings! There is already some degree of debate over the WSJ rankings.
It's crazy how much the B-school experience can offer you. I'm thinking back on the application process and realizing that when they ask you why you want to get into a particular school, beyond the fact that a concise answer is going to help you get into a school, it really can act as a good guide during the B-school experience. I know this holds true for me.
Over the last month I've been actively trying to structure my MBA experience to get what I really want to get out of it. A few main points come to mind:
-- I'm really surprised by how engaging the classroom experience really is compared to the undergrad BBA experience. People ask a lot more questions and challenge assumptions and statements made by professors quite freely. The best part is that most of my profs actually look forward to such dialogue. It creates a great classroom environment
-- There are probably at least 30 different student interest groups to get involved in here. I've become involved in a few along the lines of the career I want to pursuse.
Some key lessons have also emerged:
1. Time management pretty much determines your fun quotient
2. As a matter of principal, I have chosen to create some sort of balance in my life here. So e.g. I don't study on Fridays and Saturdays but then spend a lot of late nights during the weekdays studying and doing other stuff. The upside is that I've been traveling quite frequently over the weekends. In fact, out of the 7 weeks here, I've only spent 2 weekends in New Haven!
3. There will always be some a-holes in class
4. Even with a small population of a little over 200 students, that's still a lot of people to get to know and learn about.
The MBA experience so far has definitely been about caffeine highs and just producing one hw and project assignment after another...the flow has never really dried up.
I've had friends ask me about SOM being a non-quant experience -- that is so far from the truth!! SOM is actually trying to position itself as a Finance and Strategy school. The Fin profs here are phenomenal and out of my 6 classes this half-semester, only 2 are non-quants!
Oh well, I think it's fitting to get back into blogging at 4 in the morning -- I guess this is me welcoming myself to the MBA experience, though a tad bit late in terms of timing! :)
Today marks exactly 1 month since I started attending Yale's SOM. What a ride it already has been!! I don't even know where to begin sharing my experience till date. I think one way to dissect the last month is to look at things in terms of expectations. I spent 10 minutes on the B-Week forums. It's amazing how the same conversations and topics from last year seem are being discussed with the same vigor. My guess is that all hell is going to break lose early next month when B-Week comes out with its rankings! There is already some degree of debate over the WSJ rankings.
It's crazy how much the B-school experience can offer you. I'm thinking back on the application process and realizing that when they ask you why you want to get into a particular school, beyond the fact that a concise answer is going to help you get into a school, it really can act as a good guide during the B-school experience. I know this holds true for me.
Over the last month I've been actively trying to structure my MBA experience to get what I really want to get out of it. A few main points come to mind:
-- I'm really surprised by how engaging the classroom experience really is compared to the undergrad BBA experience. People ask a lot more questions and challenge assumptions and statements made by professors quite freely. The best part is that most of my profs actually look forward to such dialogue. It creates a great classroom environment
-- There are probably at least 30 different student interest groups to get involved in here. I've become involved in a few along the lines of the career I want to pursuse.
Some key lessons have also emerged:
1. Time management pretty much determines your fun quotient
2. As a matter of principal, I have chosen to create some sort of balance in my life here. So e.g. I don't study on Fridays and Saturdays but then spend a lot of late nights during the weekdays studying and doing other stuff. The upside is that I've been traveling quite frequently over the weekends. In fact, out of the 7 weeks here, I've only spent 2 weekends in New Haven!
3. There will always be some a-holes in class
4. Even with a small population of a little over 200 students, that's still a lot of people to get to know and learn about.
The MBA experience so far has definitely been about caffeine highs and just producing one hw and project assignment after another...the flow has never really dried up.
I've had friends ask me about SOM being a non-quant experience -- that is so far from the truth!! SOM is actually trying to position itself as a Finance and Strategy school. The Fin profs here are phenomenal and out of my 6 classes this half-semester, only 2 are non-quants!
Oh well, I think it's fitting to get back into blogging at 4 in the morning -- I guess this is me welcoming myself to the MBA experience, though a tad bit late in terms of timing! :)
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