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?