The MBA Student Voice

Anderson Pre-Orientation Trip to Yosemite: A Great Start to B-school? Yes!

I just returned from my UCLA Anderson Outdoor Adventures Pre-Orientation trip, five days with twelve of my new classmates and two student leaders in beautiful Yosemite National Park. I had been told when I spoke to Anderson students and alums prior to even being admitted that these so-called Pre-O trips were not to be missed, and in fact had signed up for mine before I even put down my deposit accepting my offer of admission to Anderson! It sounded so amazing that I was worried it would sell out before I got in, and amazing it was. (You can also read about my fellow blogger Anna Dickstein’s adventure here.)

The famed Yosemite Valley including El Cap (left) and Half Dome (background).

It was something of a trial by fire—having only met each other for a brief hour at our pre-trip meeting the previous day, we convened on campus and piled into two vans for the 8-hour trek to the famed Hetch-Hetchy reservoir in northern Yosemite. But from the first moment it became clear—there would be no shortage of things to talk about on his trip. I was immediately overwhelmed and deeply impressed by my fellow classmates’ accomplishments both personally and professionally, the places they had lived in and traveled, and the jobs and experience they had wracked up in roughly 25-31 years of life. Swapping stories and experiences would easily take up the entire 5 days!

The “before” picture when everyone still looked fresh and didn’t have dreads for hair and a Backpacker’s Tan (aka layer of dirt). Take a look—If any one of the above is in your sections, consider yourself lucky: (Back, L to R) Bill Wells, Donald Nadalin, Jack Cooney, Leo Reilly, Micha Lamed, Jon Bower (fearless trip leader & UCLA undergrad), Ahmad Nawaz, and Scott Crabtree; (Front, L to R) Remy Monteko-Sherman, Kelsey Hammond (trip leader/Mermicorn), Charlotte Baxter (me), Jennis Chou, Sarah Fixler, and Michael Malenitza.

Free At Last !!! Photos and commentary taken from, inspired by, and dedicated to, the newly-independent nation of South Sudan.

I hope everyone has been having an amazing summer, and, more importantly perhaps, is now fully geared up for the start of the school year.  Seriously, I can’t wait to meet all of my fellow classmates soon.

Anyway, I’ve been pursuing my global travels with a fervent passion over the last four weeks -- which explains why I’ve been absent from updating my blog, and I do sincerely apologise to all of you for that -- but, I’m now back in New York and, best of all, I can proudly say that I’ve finished my “From Extreme to Extreme” 2011 challenge.

I will now update my blog with far more frequency, and will aim to perhaps cover one country, possibly even two, within each blog update.  My first update will be on the world’s youngest sovereign nation of South Sudan, and it is attached below.  My next post will be on Burundi.

So, without further ado, I present to you: The Republic of South Sudan.

Enjoy !!! 

Graham

  

Free At Last !!!

Photos, and commentary, taken from, inspired by, and dedicated to, the gossamer administration known as GOSS, the newly‐sovereign -- and world’s youngest --nation of South Sudan, and the newly‐free South Sudanese people.

A full length of version of my photo-essay about South Sudan is available to download here: Download South Sudan July 2011

This poster pretty much sums it up.

 

Networking on the blacktop

A big part of the MBA experience involves networking, going to mixers, events, etc, etc, etc. And while all those are a necessary part of the entire experience, too many canned networking events is sort of like too much canned Spam - you can only down so much of it.

But prior to orientation starting there's only so many opportunities for you to meet your classmates and the people around you. Thankfully, one of the more niftier ways has been on the b-ball court. For the past week, we've played ball basically every afternoon over at Westwood Park. Each game is competitive, but at the same time pretty casual. Light on the hard fouls, heavy on the bricklaying. For someone who hasn't played in years, it's quite a workout. But it's also a fun and great way to meet new people and get to know them without the pomp and circumstance of fumbling business cards and brushing up on your elevator speech. If you're interested in playing, check out the Anderson B-ball Facebook Group.

-Brian Sim

 

UCLA Anderson Pre-Orientation Trip: Big Sur

Exactly four months ago, the UCLA Anderson Class of 2013 received an email inviting us to sign up for a Pre-Orientation trip. With options ranging from rock climbing, to hiking Yosemite, canoeing in Arizona, I knew it when I saw it: “Trip #4: Backpacking Big Sur, Ventana Wilderness.”

Activity level was marked as “physically demanding” and the UCLA Recreation department was not kidding. Each equipped with a backpack that would last us 4 days in the great outdoors, we were on our way. The breathtaking beauty of Highway 1 took us to our first stop, Limekiln State Park.

We gradually began our transition to the tranquil outdoors at Limekiln. We listened to the sound of crashing waves, got our feet wet in the Pacific Ocean, and stacked stones in cairn zen-like piles. 

That first evening we got the "101" on the great outdoors: we learned to recognize poison ivy and hiked a bit to a beautiful waterfall in the state park. We then worked together to chop ingredients and cook the best Thai Fried Rice I’ve ever had. No cell phones, no currency, just a group of 12 incoming MBA students with our 2 amazing guides – about to begin our adventure.   

Laid out like sardines on a few ground tarps, every single one of us slept under the stars. There is something so zen, so amazing about waking up to droplets of early morning dew falling on your face. And once you open your eyes, you see the vast height of redwoods stretching out into the dawn-colored sky.

Filled up on hearty oatmeal and fresh fruit we packed our bags, dividing all group gear we’d carry on our backs over the next 3 days. And thus we ventured off into the Ventana Wilderness, backpacking 10 miles each way across the rolling Pine Ridge Trail. 

Our guides jokingly described the trail as “uphill both ways” and that’s exactly what it was. The hilly terrain ensured that we were always walking at an angle. I had a few moments of revelation during the trip. The most memorable was the importance of taking life one step at a time. We hiked across some very sleep hills with 30 lb bags on our shoulders. I made a point to look around, left and right, but almost never directly ahead. Uphill or downhill I walked one step at a time. Hour after hour, taking pictures, stopping for breaks, chiming in on conversations – all of this was the focus, not the hills. I wasn’t tired; I was challenged. I was happy. I never dreaded an uphill, I simply conquered it one step at a time. This was my biggest lesson and realization, something that I will definitely apply during my MBA.

That second evening, we filtered our own water, boiled sausage and cooked sweet-potato fries. We saw a baby scorpion, and deepened our respect for “leave no trace.” We were fascinated by the story of Jack English who homesteaded land in the Big Sur wilderness.

The next morning, we made our way to Sykes Hot Springs. The springs sprout earth-heated mineral water into 3 separate hot-tub-like natural pools. Despite smelling a bit like sulfur, the water was unbelievably warm with temperatures ranging between 80 and 100*F. To cool off, some of us bathed in the river underneath. 

We started making our way back on the third day. We slept that last night under the stars near a flowing river, returning to civilization the next afternoon.

Thank you to everyone for a great time and I can’t wait to see you on campus in exactly 10 days!

~Anna

Parker Career Management Center at UCLA

Orientation officially kicks off in about two weeks, but the communication from faculty and staff keeps rolling out at full speed.  In a series of 12 total logistical emails to be sent out before orientation, we are now finally at number 12.  The clock's ticking fast and the anticipation is thick in the air.  So what better way to calm our nerves than to have us get a head start by visiting the Parker Career Management Center (Parker CMC)?  

From now up through the end of orientation, the Parker CMC career advisors will strive to meet with each of us on an one-on-one basis to better gauge where we are with our career selection process.  This is strictly a preliminary meet-and-greet, but it's heartening to know that Anderson is taking its new career-focused curriculum very seriously.

Inside one of Anderson's buildings.  

With the advent of the new curriculum, we will be meeting much more frequently with our advisors and with our ACT groups.  We will actually choose from several career-based "tracks" and this will give recruiters a clearer understanding of what our academic skillsets will be.  We will also be allowed to get specific "certifications" in many pertinent areas, such as consulting, banking, marketing, entrepreneurship, real estate, and media.  

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My Cross Country Trip from South Florida to Los Angeles: A Retrospective

On Monday morning August 15th, I said goodbye to Palm Beach County, FL and headed west. Although I was not looking forward to days on end of driving, I was the lucky one driving a car. Stanton had to navigate the huge 22’ Penske truck complete with full car trailer attached! I am still not sure how he did it, particularly in and around cities [cough, LA traffic is insane, cough], but two people, two cars, and the truck with all our belongings arrived in one piece.

Since we weren’t together, I had only some books on CD and the endless countryside to keep me awake. Having never spent any time in the country’s interior, it was pretty cool to get to check it out on a very first person basis. Unfortunately, a lot of what I was “checking out” was hours and hours of the same flat, hot scenery, but there were some beautiful sights to see, and a bit of adventure to spice up the long days.

Luckily, I followed a different route than my fellow blogger Brian Sim who hailed from Philly, so here’s a look at America the Beautiful, the Southern Tour. A retrospective, in pictures:

22' truck and car on trailer departing beautiful South Florida

Day one from Jupiter, FL to Atlanta, GA was the easiest day for many reasons: we only had to drive 10 hours, I had my mom as co-pilot as she had generously flown down to help us pack and was getting a lift home to Atlanta with me, and chronic numb butt syndrome (not to be confused with CMBS) hadn't set in yet.

The next driving day was the longest haul of the trip, a 16-hour slog on I-20 from Atlanta through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to Dallas, TX. With a truck as loaded down as ours, max speeds top out at 60-65 mph which really adds time to the trip.

I snapped a photo of every state border as I crossed into it.....

...except in Texas, which I was in for so long I had to resort to shooting the only major cities on the 12-hour leg from Dallas to the western border!

Arrival in LA in Five Days or Less

My route went:

• Sunday: Delaware (my parents' place) to Pittsburgh, PA
• Monday: Pittsburgh to Columbia, MO
• Tuesday: Columbia, MO to Denver, CO
• Wednesday: Denver, CO to St. George, UT
• Thursday: St. George, UT (by way of Zion Canyon) to Los Angeles, CA

My relationship with driving is sort of like Calvin's relationship with bicycles. Basically, I hate driving with every fiber of my body. And for the longest time I avoided it as much I could, which is actually very easy in Philly, because it's such a condensed, walkable city. Before driving to LA, the longest drive I'd done was for about 5 hours. To Pittsburgh actually. So driving cross-country, for me, was sort of akin to a sprinter just deciding to run a marathon on a whim. Well with that said, I'm happy to say I arrived in one piece, in a relatively drama-free, albeit grueling drive. Thoughts and picture spam follow...

Random thoughts:

• Driving from the green hills east of the Mississippi to the dry, flatland plains in Kansas, through the majestic Rockies of Colorado and the stunning canyons and Mars-like topography of Utah and Arizona, to the soul-sucking deserts of Nevada and California, an obvious thought dawned on me - the US is effing humongous, and there may not be the same diversity of sights available in any other country in the world
• Driving in the midwest is a joy. Those guys know how to drive. They give signals when they're switching lanes. They don't cut you off. It's nice. Plus, the roads are straight as an arrow. And there's not many cars to begin with. Definitely the most stress-free part of the trip
• Randomly you'll be driving and you'll see blown out tires on the road. And you'll think, "God please don't let my tire blow out and turn me into a vehicular pinball"
• Kansas is hot. Really hot and humid. I thought it was a pretty temperate place, but I made a stop in Hays, KS and got out and as the sun blasted me, I instantly remembered Ichiro Suzuki’s first joke... yeah, Kansas is hot.
• The Rocky mountains are awesome, but coming down the Rockies, you'll see these long patches of dirt with signs calling them out as runaway truck ramp. I thought it was both ingenious and frightening to think they'd planned for a truck in a Speed scenario
• The canyons in Utah are amazing, but driving through the rocks in Arizona is as close as you can get to driving through Mars, totally otherworldly
• Driving through Nevada is the worst, most soul-sucking experience possible. When you're driving and the sun's pummeling you at 110 degrees, all the A/C in the car doesn't do a thing in the world. It felt like I was in an oven that whole time. I couldn't wait to get out of that hellhole, but...
• Driving past Nevada doesn't provide much respite, because the deserts of Cali are not much better... and the traffic picks up and the drivers get worse
• The weather gets much more tolerable once you get to LA, but the traffic gets even worse and the drivers that much more crappier ;-)
• Being in a car for 12+ hours a day is a surreal experience. The world passes by your eyes, minute by minute, hour by hour, but inside that car, it's like time doesn't exist. It's sort of like an out of body experience. I left on a Sunday, arrived on a Thursday, and every day feels like a day that doesn't actually exist... let's call it Caturday
• I think truck drivers have the toughest jobs in the world. That is one job I couldn't do. I would gladly do things like become a peasant farmer, go on a deep sea fishing expedition for months at a time, but I could not become a truck driver even if you offered me a million bucks

I took a time lapse video of my whole drive from Delaware to apartment, but getting those 80,000 images into a manageable video is providing more technical challenges than expected, so I’ll share that another day. For now, you get picture spam.

Picture spam

I drove by the world's largest basket in Newark, Ohio. Umm, it was a pretty big basket.

I randomly drove by this humongous cross somewhere in Indiana, but eh... I've seen bigger.

Like this one. The world's largest cross in Effingham, IL. It's 196 feet tall, they built it just shy of 200 feet, because FAA regulations would require them to stick a beacon on top of it. Incidentally, yes, I am about 175-feet tall...

Which would make this Kansas version of Paul Bunyan about 2,000 feet tall. But sadly, an unfortunate accident shrunk me back down to normal height and I was no match for this 30 foot tall Johnny Kaw statue.

Yeah, they like it big in Kansas. World's largest Easel in Goodland, KS.

If I get on my tippie-toes, I can just about touch it though.

Some spot in Colorado, just past the Rockies. Great views all around.

Some random spot in Utah.

The next bunch of pics are all from Zion Canyon. I started going up the canyon road, but then I realized it would lead me to the Grand Canyon... which initially was on my list of things to see, but didn't make the cut. Once I realized this, I did a U-ey and turned back down and got on the shuttle bus like all the other good, little tourists.

Finally, Thursday, 8pm, I arrive in Brentwood.

-Brian Sim

Westbound and Down (except I'm not down)

By the time this post is up, I will be three days away from making my move to California. I have packed up and left Vancouver, having enjoyed my final weeks with not only the many close friends I have made there, but my girlfriend who will be staying in Vancouver for now while I begin the MBA journey. (I get to have a home in LA and Vancouver - awesome!) It has been an emotional few weeks, and tomorrow I will be celebrating my sisters wedding as one final party with familiar faces before setting off to LA to make new friends.

As I wrote previously, moving to the US has been one to do list after another. With each task completed comes a new one uncovered, and it seems endless until you get on that plane, sit back and reflect on not only what you've accomplished, but what lies ahead (I write this post from my Vancouver to Toronto flight). While I relax with family and friends this week in Toronto, my roommate will be taking the keys for our Brentwood apartment. From the sounds of our class Facebook page, people are piling in daily, and happy hours are starting to take shape - it's all pretty awesome if you ask me. Of course there still sits an accounting case I should look at, some Parker CMC work to do, and other Anderson related tasks, but just like I told myself during undergrad, 'everything will get done, and everything will work out'.

Yesterday was my last day in Vancouver, and as I posted so on Facebook, what I found amazing was that alot of the people wishing me safe travels and wishes weren't only friends from the last few years, but classmates at Anderson whom I had yet to meet. If that doesn't speak to the culture that Anderson attracts and breeds, I'm not sure what does. Either way, I am getting more excited by the day to meet the hundreds of people I will be spending all of my time with over the coming years.

For now, I will focus on two more food and adventure to-dos!

Week 5 - Food: I've got a bit of a weak spot for ice cream, never mind ice cream sandwiches. Coolhaus (http://www.eatcoolhaus.com) has an awesome line up of ice creams and fresh cookies for great ice cream sandwich concoctions such as this one:

They've got a storefrount in Culver City and a truck...that's dangerous...

Week 5 - Adventure: My Pre-Orientation trip is to Mono Lake next weekend. Located to the east of Yosemite, Mono Lake looks like a great place for some kayaking and hiking, and I'm looking forward to doing all of that while building some memories with some of my new classmates. This view isn't too bad:

Here we go...

Evan (@abraisnic on Twitter)

Exploring Ackerman Student Union and LuValle Commons

One thing I've thoroughly missed over the last six years was the UCLA campus. I can wax poetic about the merits of UCLA and its surrounding neighborhood, but it's something that one needs to experience first-hand to fully appreciate. I miss just about every nook & cranny of the campus, from the beautiful Royce Hall and Powell Library to dorms Dykstra and De Neve.  Heck, I think I even miss the slightly-spooky YRL Library (complete with the trademark "library smell" and scurrying spiders, though to be fair, it's being renovated) and the unforgiving climb back to the dorms on Bruin Walk and the treacherous, never-ending flight of Janss Steps. 

As it were, I found myself back on campus last week to pick up my Anderson Bruin Card (see end of post here).  It being summer, the campus was fairly devoid of optimistic (read: rowdy & naive) undergrads so I decided to kill some time.  First stop was Ackerman Student Union, the mecca of all undergrad student activity.  

Yes, there's a Panda Express there, and the line is usually much, much longer.

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72 hours to go!

After having waitied 8 long months since January '11, when I received my acceptance phone call from UCLA Anderson, I have another 72 hours to go before I'm on a plane to Los Angeles! I am literally JOTBWE (Jumping On The Bed With Excitement)!

With just 3 days to go, I've pretty much got my bases covered:

• Visa: My US F1 visa was a tough one to get! Every year, a random group of student applicants get selected for Additional Administrative Processing, which essentially means that the Visa process will take 2-3 months instead of 2-3 days. Well, lucky me, I was randomly selected for the honour of being a part of this procedure! So, despite applying early for the visa (late May), I received my visa this past Monday! Was it worth the wait, tension, anxiety and hair loss? Absolutely.

• Los Angeles: After careful consideration, I've decided on 4 different books on LA and Southern California, one of them called "Los Angeles and Disneyland for Dummies". After reading the material, identifying relevant content and analysing the data, I realize that LA is spectacular!

• Pre-Orientation Tutorials & Reading: I have never done accounting before. The only times I hear the words "Credit" and "Debit" are where they precede the word "Card". Therefore, to get in the groove I decided to start really early with the tutorial. With a the help of fellow UCLA Anderson '13 classmate, Anant Rishi, I think the I've made a lot of progress, even though I'm sure there's a long way to go. As for the reading material, I'm happy to announce that I printed all the pdf files this morning.

• Packing: Ah! This is a tough one. Life would be so much easier if we could hire an agency to pack our bags for us! (Wait, did I just think of an entrepreneurial venture?) Stuffing my entire life into 2 suitcases is very hard. As of today, my bags weigh 79kg. The allowed airline limit is 46kg.

To sum up, barring a few minor things that need some attention, I'm good to to make my way to LA! Looking forward to meeting everone in LA! :)

 - Karan Kumar, MBA '13