School's done...now what?

The end of MAP (which meant the end of first year) was very "anti-climactic". We started off the year with balloons, get togethers, etc. We then go through the intensity of learning a new town, making friends, getting used to being a student again, recruiting, etc. After that slows down, we get this major MAP kickoff, complete with student speakers, the dean, balloons, etc. MAP was intense, then all of a sudden the presentations were done, the report was turned in -- and that was it. It just was done. I'm not sure what i would have liked to have (and I'm also not sure what our willingness to sit through a meeting would be), but it seemed like there wasn't any time for the first years to get together (either via sections or as a whole) to reflect on this experience, or just to have one last "horrah" before embarking for the summer. I don't count that last Scorekeepers happy hour - people were just generally tired from either staying up all night to finish the paper or being in a M-Trek/CPR training all day. To be fair, I think part of that was because MAP was due Thursday (the 26th) at 3, and MBA2 graduation was that Friday.

School's been done for about a week and a half...it's very strange. Kind of sad, actually. Internship doesn't start for another couple of weeks and I haven't moved to my new place yet. People in the "real world" have jobs so during the day I've been trying to keep myself occupied by doing stuff for my extracurriculars. While it's been great to get a good night's sleep and catch up on TV shows (not to mention the Dallas/Golden State basketball series - I BELIEVE!), I'm kind of looking forward to starting my internship. I'm not good at having nothing major to do for any long period of time. I'll get used to it. I'm just a bit bored. (And poor - I'm really looking forward to a paycheck!)

Although I'm really excited for my internship to start, I'm also a bit nervous. These are normal jitters with starting anything new, but i've got a new set of questions. What if I don't like marketing? What if I get lost (in my third state in less than a year)? What if I don't do well? What if I don't like that city? What if my old work clothes don't fit me? (Yeah, things may be a bit "snug" - beer and pizza have sorta caught up to me this winter.) I'll be fine once it starts but I'm in a mood -- the combination of being away from friends, being bored, and being nervous have made me a bit sad.

On a more pleasant note, things are working together for the summer. I've got transportation taken care of, housing, utilities, etc. I'm still waiting to hear about my specific project (as are a lot of other people), but I'm getting more excited

First Year of B-School is Done!

With all of the MAP craziness, I haven't had time to check my fromcali e-mail or ClearAdmit to see the results. I'm very happy that I was in the top 3! (I guess that makes me the "Wharton" of student bloggers.) Thanks for all of your support and votes, and I'm glad I was helpful. Also - I'm now trying to decide between the economist and business week. I'm leaning towards the economist but am still unsure. Congrats to the rest of the top ranked bloggers!

Here's a summary of events from my last post (and over the last week) which explains why I almost forgot about BoB until I had time to check my gmail.

* Spend a lot of time finalizing the faculty presentation.
* MAP Faculty Presentation.
* Spend time making edits based on faculty comments and "feedback" they gave us after our presentation. Wonder why I never heard these questions or concerns despite our having shown them earlier drafts of this and explaining what we've been doing before. Also, spend time incorporating their feedback and and trying to tailor it for the sponsor - read: spend less time describing the company and the project and get to the recommendations.
* Deliver MAP Sponsor Presentation.
* (While doing powerpoint edits) - try to come up with a 30 page paper and what seems to be endless appendices. Realize it's hard to make a group 30 page paper not look like several individual 5 of 6 page papers slapped together. It's REALLY REALLY hard to make it read as one cohesive unit.
* Get ready to print and turn in after realizing you can't just email it to the professor (ugh).
* Realize that the paper (which at this point with appendices and figures is WELL over 50 pages) isn't allowed to be printed on a regular printer. Dig up email with printing specifications (high quality paper, etc) and spend time going to get professional printing and binding done by our 3pm deadline today.
* Turn in project.

Now off to celebrate! Yay! I'm half of a MBA now! Time FLEW! I swear just yesterday i was getting here for RLP.

4 more days :(

Until first year is over...I just can't believe it's gone by SO QUICKLY! I'm almost halfway done. It's a very strange feeling.

I have very mixed feelings about being halfway done with my MBA. On one hand, I'm really excited for this year to be over b/c I'm sick of writing this stupid paper and constantly revising the powerpoint deck for our final presentation later in the week. On the other, I'm sad to be away from my friends for the summer. Between interviewing and MAP, i feel like I've barely seen my friends this term. :(

it's MAP crunch time!

MAP is almost done

I can't believe that the year is almost over. We have 11 days until the end of MAP which is ultimately the end of school. I can't believe it!

GBR was this past weekend, and despite a small weather scare the few days leading up to it (read: snow), the admits had decent weather. The sun even came out and the sky was actually blue one day! Wow. I had a lot of fun at GBR - and not just because I got free food most of the weekend. It was great to meet the incoming class, they seemed really cool, and I'm hoping they decide to come! It was very strange to be seen as "knowledgable"...I still sort of feel like I just got here.

I also enjoyed actually getting to see the rest of my classmates. Most of us have been all over the country and/or world, and have really spent most of our time with our MAP teams - so it was awesome! A lot of us are back, and we spent some of the GBR "down time" (read: when admits were in events) to hang out, recap about MAP, and just catch up. It was great!

GBR was also a bit of a MAP break. People pretty much didn't do any MAP work all weekend. Now I have to finish this presentation and paper. Wish me luck!

11 days - yikes! I still don't have a summer place to live.

MAP is Halfway Done

OK, it's been a couple of weeks...MAP has really taken over my life. I remember some second years saying that MAP is a really great experience, but they're glad to be done with it. I now realize what they meant.

We're a little more than halfway done, which is good on one hand but not-so-good on the other because we have a lot to do between now and 4/26 (which is when our report is due). If you were in one of the "lucky" teams to have a midpoint presentation to the sponsor, that means that either this week or last week were spent doing a lot of analysis, powerpoint, excel, etc. That also means those teams are going to have less to do in the next couple of weeks. My team is moving along but we've still got some MAJOR items that we need to tackle that we've kind of been putting off.

At this point, i'm seeing a shift in the dynamics of my team as well as the other teams. Basically, the natural leaders of each team (and the natural pain-in-the-neck people) are starting to emerge. This is partially since teams are done with "research" about the industry and getting ready to figure out what needs to be analyzed, and if you're lucky, what recommendations can come out of that analysis. In other words, the "meat" of the project is actually happening now. I'm still really glad I'm learning how to do this stuff. It's basically the same type of stuff most summer interns will do - except in a 7 week instead of 10 week timeframe.

In other news, I'm trying to find a place to live over the summer. That's a royal pain but I've got a few leads on places. Thank goodness a lot of people's internship packages had some sort of housing allowance. The vast majority of MBA's around here don't stay for the summer. People are going everywhere, but the big clusters seem to be in New York/New Jersey, Chicago, San Francisco, some L.A., some southeast, Minneapolis, Texas, and other smaller cities that CPG's love to call home.

Next weekend is GBR. It'll be awesome! If you're an admit and undecided, it'll be great to check out what you could potentially be turning down. If you're 100% coming here, it'll be great to meet your future classmates. Oh, and look for a place to live.

Belated Congrats to R2 Admits -- and a MAP Update

Belated Congratulations to R2 Admits! Some friends and I jokingly say that we're glad we applied when we did since applications skyrocketed this year and we aren't sure if we would have gotten in. I've gotten a few emails about things so I thought I'd comment here.

Football tickets are very easy to get. Newly matriculated students have a window in June (i think it was the middle two weeks) to order tickets online. So long as you order in that timeframe, you get season tickets. This year's home game schedule includes Notre Dame and Ohio State. Awesome!

You don't need a car per say but it's really nice to have. I have one but that's b/c Californians by nature are very car-dependent. Lots of people don't have one so that's fine too. If you don't have one, you probably want to live close to campus b/c the city buses here are iffy after about 7:30 pm.

Housing isn't that hard to find, but decide how nice of a place you want, how far away from campus you want to live, and if you want a roommate. Closer to campus means more expensive and not as nice. Farther away you get more for your money but then you have to get to school (often by driving) so you pay for parking anyway.

MAP update. If week 1 was "welcome to MAP" and week 2 was "wow, this can really be helpful to me professionally", then week 3 was "oh crap now I have to figure out what we're gonna say to our sponsor". We're knee-deep in research right now, trying to learn as much as possible about the industry and where our sponsor (client) fits into it. I have been impressed at how the frameworks actually do come in handy for real life situations - so we can understand what's going on. I'm getting the sense that our sponsor is really expecting A LOT from us - and now I'm wondering if I'm thinking broadly (or strategically) enough. It's also nerve-wracking to make sure we come up with recommendations they can actually implement. I was thrown a bit of a curveball with research. I saw something that seemed to be a great potential recommendation only to learn that it wasn't as great as I thought. So now I'm back to more analysis. Did I mention how glad I am that I'm going through these "learning pains" now instead of during the summer?

MAP Update Week 2

OK, this term seems strange because there are no classes or sections. We were weaned off of sections in Winter A, since we had section classes only on Mondays and Wednesdays, but it is still strange to spend the vast majority of your time with the same few people. I really like my team and think they're great, but it's an adjustment to not see your friends that often anymore because nobody's in the same state or country for a while.

MAP really is all encompassing. MAP has obviously been the main topic of discussion for MBA1's. It's amazing just how much time MAP takes (and I almost forgot to bid on fall semester classes)...no wonder this is our only "class" this term. I can already tell it's going to be a great experience. I'm really liking my project - it's very strategic, plus in an industry I didn't recruit with or work with before, so I get to learn something different. Our company seems pretty cool and very eager to have us on board. We also seem to control the way the work gets done - faculty have basically said that "we're basically a support/sounding board, but it's up to you to work out a plan of attack." That's the best part - our project really does feel like a second internship (I've heard of people getting employment offers after MAP) - and will definitely prepare me for my real internship. For one thing, i have to get used to working during business hours again.

So far, we've have had conversations with our sponsor company to work out the scope (which is a fancy way of saying "we tried to figure out exactly what we're doing"). We get a project description but the details have to be worked out and documented, so that the faculty, MAP team, and the company sponsor are in complete agreement about what can be completed in 7 weeks. We've come up with our timeline to get the research, analysis, and presentation done.

Now we need to just analyze all of this stuff we have and will continue to get. Oh dear.

Oh, I've been getting emails/comments about how I made my decision to attend Ross. I'll answer that in a different post, but it ultimately came down to a combination of gut feel and fit. I just 'felt' better here than I did at other schools. I looked at other things (recruiting, community, clubs, classes, etc), but a lot of them seemed comparable between schools. One thing I didn't consider was the weather. I HATE cold weather, and this town doesn't believing in plowing snow from the streets on a timely manner, but I can't imagine myself at a different school, and I've never looked back. (OK, I will admit to looking at weather reports for warmer places when I was walking to class in 8 below weather a month ago.) If weather were going to be a huge deal-breaker, I wouldn't have applied to Ross in the first place.

MAP Meetings Galore

Yesterday was the first day of MAP (sort of). This is a strange position to be in - no classes, friends coming/going in different locations soon, and your primary interaction is with your MAP team. So many anxieties: how are we gonna get used to working with a company? What exactly are we supposed to do? Will I like whatever city I'm in?

The first days of MAP meant a "kickoff" meeting, a faculty advisor meeting, a team coach meeting, and a communication coach meeting. In theory, this seems to be a little bit useful, but it seemed a lot like it's a slightly longer version of the kickoff we had back in November. The strange thing about these meetings is that they assume you've never worked in teams before. I've worked on teams, led teams, had horror stories about teams, and have been in other trainings about teamwork, leading teams (set roles early, etc), so a lot of this seems almost unnecessary.

OK, rant over. I was just "meeting'd out". These aren't all bad. Actually the meetings are somewhat useful - if for no other reason than you get to know your team better. It's also good to figure out division of labor. Unlike cross-functional teams at my previous job, when it was assumed I was the project manager or team lead (by virtue of my title), and we already knew who does what (by virtue of their departments) here we had to agree to how we'd decide who does what. And of course it may get modified based on the needs of our sponsoring company.

In general though, people are just excited to get on with the projects, meet our sponsors, etc. Some are leaving this week and some are leaving in another week or so. It's definitely interesting not having any class...

I'm not going to talk about company specifics (since I had to sign a confidentiality agreement), or where my company is, but i'm sure there will be lots to blog about when it comes to the project/process, etc.

Here's to MAP! Let's hope this goes well!

It's COLD

We've had a pretty mild winter thus far. The massive snow storms that terrified me before I moved out here haven't happened yet. Fortunately for us, they've been a bit west (Chicago had a bad one before Winter Break, Denver's airport kept closing). I've been pretty proud of myself for adapting to the cold thus far. I didn't even think it was that cold when it was in the mid 20's.

But lately - I don't know what it is...maybe it's the single digit wind chill (what the hell does 0 feel like anyway?), or the almost constant cloudiness (so you can't even pretend it's warm), but I've hardly wanted to go outside lately unless I absolutely have to. I park as close to store entrances as possible, just so I don't have to be outside for any longer than necessary. Yes, I know I voluntarily moved to Michigan, but I can still whine about cold weather. It's my god-given right as a Californian!

We got our MAP assignments yesterday. I didn't get one of my top ones, but it's a cool project so I can get excited about that. I'm also officially done with recruiting. I am super excited about where I'll be working this summer. I'm still not going to say where I'm going, but life is good.

Anticipation…

We’re now in week 3 of classes. And unlike Fall A and Fall B, people seem to care less and less about class during this term. I think that’s why they made the core front-loaded, so we only have two required classes during Winter A. We’re taking managerial accounting and operations – both very useful classes, the professors are pretty good and really animated. One even loves to cold call. The problem is that the subject matter itself isn’t all that interesting. That makes it hard to get motivated to study, especially if you’ve got other things on your mind. I’m not going to post specifics about my internship situation except to say that you never can tell how well you actually do in an interview.

If you broke down the most commonly asked questions during Winter A, here’s how they went:

Week 1 – January 7 - 13:
How was your break? Did you get someplace warm? That sucks about the Rosebowl/Can you believe Florida won? How many resumes/cover letters did you drop? What else besides core are you taking? How did you rank your MAP projects? You know nobody ever gets their first choice – you should rank your real first choice second.

Week 2 – January 14 – 20:
How’s interview prep? Where did you get close listed? Can you believe interviews start already? Why are managerial accounting and ops so boring? How did that interview go? Why is MBA formal (aka prom) so expensive? Why do our only core classes have group case analyses due at the same time? I need a leadership/teamwork/good commercial example.

Week 3 – January 21 - Today:
How is the job search going? (which really means “do you have an offer yet?”) Cool, you got an offer? Where? Was that your first choice? Are you still interviewing? I’m tired of being asked to “tell me about a time when…” How many of these “pre-interview” dinners can I handle? Can you believe this is our last term as a section?

I mean, of course there’s other things people talk about, but this is the bulk of conversations I feel like I’m having – particularly with friends who I haven’t really seen in a while. As you can imagine, there is quite a bit of nervousness – some have offers, some got rejections, some have additional rounds.

So there’s lots of anticipation going on, mostly b/c MBAs don’t like this feeling of being “up in the air”. Everyone would like to know where they will spend the summer – what job, what industry, what function, what location.

Another source of anticipation – MAP. We’re supposed to find out tomorrow. I hope I get my top choice and work with cool people. I’m one of the idiots who ranked my #1 choice #1. I also chose to choose projects based on my desire to actually do the project instead of location. I imagine after tomorrow, more conversations will shift to “what MAP did you get? Are you excited? Have you been there before? Who else are you working with?

Winter A Has Started!

Happy 2007! I hope all is going well! I can’t believe that in 2006, I submitted applications to business school, got in, visited all the schools, made a $120K decision, quit my crappy job, packed up, moved across the country, and started a whole new life. And I also can’t believe just how much Ann Arbor feels like “home” – even more than my hometown. (Though that may be just because my stuff is in Ann Arbor.) Though I did enjoy the sun, and spending time with friends/family, I did miss my hanging out with my b-school friends.

OK, obligatory post BCS bowl game comment. Umm, I don’t know what the hell happened with the Big-10. USC outplayed us, out-coached us, and just flat out looked better. Kinda made me feel bad for all of that crap I talked about USC. And Florida? I was more shocked by that one than anything else. Oh well. Now football season is over. What does this town do after football season?

After hiding all of my Michigan gear, I got back on the plane and flew back out to AA to start Winter A. To my surprise, when I flew back it was POURING rain. Huh? It’s January! It’s since gotten much colder and snowed, but apparently it’s still much milder than “normal”.

Winter A started on Monday, and brought a surprise snowfall (it rained the night before) and only two core classes: Managerial Accounting and Operations. This is done on purpose so that people can manage their time with interviews as they see fit. Most people seem to have the core classes only on Monday/Wednesday. But others (myself included) are taking at least a 3rd and in some cases a 4th class – either an elective that may help them for the internship, or one of either World Economy, law requirement, writing, or Excel. I’m not sure how I feel about either of those two classes yet. Operations makes the most sense to me because of my previous jobs, but I’m not entirely excited about it.

It’s also interview season here. Many resume drops had deadlines over the break, and the first closed lists came out. It’s strange since nobody wants to ask who got close-listed where, but at the same time, people are very curious. There’s one very popular CPG in particular that people are wondering about. It’s not nearly as tense as I expected it to be around here. There are interview prep groups, and people are very helpful.

MAP project signups also start today. SO many choices: domestic or international, nonprofit or for-profit, and I’m not 100% sure how MAP projects get assigned. There are a few that people are most excited about. We’ll see.

Greetings from Cali!

I'm back in Cali now for the break. I'm really excited to be here and am going to take advantage of all things California while I'm here (in-n-out, good mexican food, warmer weather, the sun, etc.)

I have to say that this round of finals was much different than last round. Mostly because Fall A finals were all in class exams, and Fall B had only one in-class exam (finance). Take home exams are a bit of a monster - mostly because I don't have that much of an attention span so it's hard to focus. It took me FOREVER to read that BORING marketing case. I can tell they gave us something boring to test our ability to make marketing decisions using that framework instead of just BS'ing on the ipod or something that we're familiar with.

MAP projects came out - so I'm going to look through them this break and figure out how i'm going to rank them. The projects look pretty cool, so we'll see...

Other than that, I'm now looking forward to a couple of weeks with nothing major to do. Life is good.