I have never been this busy. Crazy enough, business school is busy. Who knew and why didn't they tell me? Why have I been so busy? Well, first off, contrary to the fun and games and camp-like atmosphere of Orientation, school itself is time consuming. But let me back up a bit. I am striving to make my posts especially helpful to two kinds of prospective students: creative types and New Yorkers. This post relates more to the former. You know, a person who probably studied History or English in college and can actually express him or herself using the written word, but doesn't know a thing about Excel (ie. you think it simply puts words and numbers in tidy rows and columns) or equity research ("You research how to make things equal? That's really great! We should allocate more resources to that wonderful goal!").
Needless to say, I'm that guy. And if you're that guy or gal too, you're probably a bit apprehensive about using a part of your brain that's remained dormant for years. Well, turns out, you should be. But not too much. You see, Anderson starts you off with four core classes, three of which are Accounting, Managerial Economics, and Data and Decisions (statistics). You know how you'd have maybe one really hard class each semester in college? Try taking four of them at once. These courses are challenging even if you've been exposed to the material before, and especially if you nearly wrote an undergraduate thesis on the naval campaign in the Pacific during WWII and subsequently interviewed bands and actors for a living before attending business school. And they are also time consuming. Beyond my own personal study time, there's plenty of learning team meetings where group projects are completed (I spent about 10 hours with my group this weekend, at least). However, despite this perhaps dour sounding scene, I believe my head is above water. So, if there's some hope for me, there is probably some for you as well. Of course, this could all change at the drop of a hat.
Back to the busy-ness. In addition to classes, there are clubs. I've joined my fair share and they are consistently having meetings about something and I want to be there. That means that after class, I'm sticking around school for several hours for any number of reasons, be it a section meeting, a speaker series, a presentation, or a discussion panel.
Making matters worse, but really better actually, people around here like to have fun. And they go out. There are opportunities to go out almost everyday, and it's tough to say no. For instance, this past Saturday, I went to UCLA/Oregon game at the Rose Bowl. As a graduate of Columbia, I have no concept of attending a school that actually cares about its sports program. Even though there was a Marketing project due tomorrow morning, I had to go. It was a moral imperative. And it was awesome, except for the part where we gave up two touchdowns in 26 seconds at the start of the second half. We were up 3-0 at the half, I went to the restroom, ate some macho nachos, and was a bit late getting back to my seat, but I thought the guy who said we were down 11 as I was walking back was making a horrible joke. That kinda killed the buzz, but odds are I'll be there next week for the Cal game.
The main point is, it's intense here. I'm trying to walk the fine line between boning up on the subjects I never learned in college (but not so much that I'm in the library constantly), participating in clubs to help with the networking process (ie. getting a job), and having fun. It's a tough equilibrium to establish. Not sure I've succeeded yet. And let's not forget about my comprehensive television watching schedule. Sundays and Thursdays are killer. Those nights alone add 10 hours to my DVR. That's like 3 classes! Something might have to give. Or the day must be lengthened to 36 hours (I'm gonna work on that one for now).
