Classes started just over a week ago, and if I thought things were going to slow down after Orientation, I was W-R-O-N-G! I have classes beginning at 8 am every day and I rarely leave the Anderson campus until around 8 at night! Good thing it is such a nice facility, but perhaps it could use a few futons… One of my top priorities right now is figuring out how to make everything fit! For the first couple of weeks of class, a typical day looks like this:
6 am – Wake up, chug coffee, catch up on e-mails that have already come in from the East Coast.
8 am – First class begins. My classes this quarter are Managerial Economics, Financial Accounting, Marketing Management, Data and Decisions (don’t be fooled by the name, this is STATS!), and Management Communications. For a liberal arts major many years out of school like me, there is a steep learning curve!
2:15 pm – Classes end, time to meet with my 5-person Learning Team to work on group assignments for a couple of hours. We use one of the awesome group study pods in the beautiful Rosenfeld Library. You can even write on the glass walls!
No, not these glass walls.
4:30 pm – Meet with a career advisor at the Parker CMC (Career Management Center). I’m working hard to get my resume in recruiting-ready shape!
5:00 pm – Squeeze in a quick run. An easy, hilly 4-mile route is simply to run around the UCLA campus. The beautiful Drake Track is very close by and a good place to get in some speedwork. Or get hit on, if you are Bill Wells.
6:30 pm - Change into business casual or a suit for evening recruiting events or professional association meetings. Last week alone, I attended events put on by Amazon, Microsoft, and SanDisk, as well as meetings for the Marketing Association, High Tech Business Association, Women’s Business Connection, and Net Impact.
9:00 pm – Arrive home. Check to see if my fiancé still recognizes me. Begin homework.
You get the idea! But before it sounds like I am complaining, things are certainly busy but it is very empowering to feel like I am in charge of my own destiny and making choices every day that affect the quality and success of my business school experience.
And there are still the weekends! Although I spend the majority of them catching up on all the work the above schedule didn’t permit me to get to during the week, there’s still time to enjoy fabulous Los Angeles.
Making a friend at Malibu beach.
Even if I anticipated this big life change, that doesn’t make it easy. In an effort to maintain some vestige of my former life as a regular competitor in triathlons and marathons, I took my first dip in the Pacific Ocean in the form of the LA Triathlon last weekend. Much to my surprise, I actually got my best time ever at the Olympic distance (.93-mile ocean swim, 25-mile bike, and 10K with two surprise enormous hills). As has become my habit, I am attributing it to the cooler, less humid, amazing weather I am so enjoying here. Stanton came Downtown to LA Live to watch the run, and probably because it was a rare chance for him to actually see me!
Catching some air!
We also bumped into Greg Booth, Anderson ’12, whose fiancé Hadley Hughes (below right) was doing her first ever tri. We all agreed it's much easier to smile when the race is over!
So life continues to evolve here at UCLA Anderson. On balance, I am loving it so far. But speaking of balance, I will certainly be happier when (if??) I ever get any!
-Charlotte Baxter
