Am three weeks into the MBA program and a friend put this simple question that I always dread-"so how is life?" I mean how am I supposed to answer the question-at any point of time there are a hundred things not going so well and a few going fairly ok and maybe if I got lucky one or two going pretty darn well...so I stopped at "Life is..." and thought long and hard about it (well not too hard-I never can:)) and decided "..intereting".
IMhO, atleast on a personal level, this program brings out all your weaknesses and worst fears out in the open and you have to start dealing with them! I haven't fully dealt with them yet, but atleast I have started seeing them. There are no longer things I could easily get away with in my work life (getting up 10am EVERY day for eg.). Its tough to put it mildly, but it is also interesting, I can see bluntly where my priorities are, time comes at a premium and my tendencies from the past guide my decisions about what to do with it. And whatever I do with it, there is always an oppotunity cost, pretty heavy one most of the time-and I just have to trust my instincts to get it right (or atleast to avoid getting it wrong:)). I feel like a little child thrown into a maze where there are plenty of attractive dolls at every turn, but waiting to pick'em up closes more doors down the road. Whatever it is life is definitely LOT more interesting than it used to be
.
Btw, just when I thought I will sit down and write something here finally...I am reminded, my midterm starts next Monday...so off I go for another week of roller-coasters 
...
There is something about PhDs and every prof in a b-school is expected to be one...first day in class I was expecting a dull monotone and boy was I surprised!! I will talk a bit about some amazing profs who handle classes for us (I will do this before my exams start, so that I can conveniently go back and bitch them after the grades are out:)).
We have this prof who has like a zillion years of experience, he has worked with SEC, consults for top-notch companies and is the head of Finance department (or something similar I dont remember which one), and he teaches accounting. Now accounting is probably THE most boring subject to teach for all you do is take a problem crunch the numbers and you have the answer, there are very few ways of going out of the box or engage the class creatively and what does our guy do to compensate for that? He uses humor-and trust me, its not just run off the mill stuff, he can get really really funny. I will leave it with one colorful example. The whole class was drowning in a lengthy monologue of the basic rules of accounting and he was about to start a problem (again lengthy-but very important to catch on to the basics). He takes one small pause and goes-"You know accounting is a bit like sex (heads are bouncing off the tables at this point), when you are doing it the first time, you really dont know what the heck is happening (people are shaking their heads in wierd ways to make sure their hearing is still right), you just fool around you are not sure which is the right way of doin' it, you are very uncomfortable and you dont have that much fun, but as you start practicing it you start getting better at it (some folks are nodding their heads off at this point, some international students can't control loud giggles), then the fun part starts (the whole class is in fits now and he picks on one student we will call Sam) and he goes "Sam, where is your mind man, I was talking about accounting!!" It took almost five minutes for the class to get back in order, but I can tell you every one of us were wide awake for the rest of the class!
Then we have two profs handling Organizational behavior, both have scores of years of experience in the Vice President level of management in large corporations, and it really shows! OB is a fairly dry subject with so much of theory, models etc etc. So the style that one of them adopts is to trust the class to read the material on their own and engage the whole class in pretty involved conversations and whats more-in these you really get an opportunity to see what amazing kinds of people you are sitting next to!! In one class we were discussing a case on the culture in IRS and most of us were making some generous assumptions on what they would want and how they would be structued, and one guy raised his hand and said, well I have worked for IRS and here is what it actually is!! It is a paradigm shifting experience. Many times to make his point he would bring in some movie clip or some other video related to the case and we would end up having a lot of fun. Finally the personality of this prof is mind-blowing, he would just walk in and take the class by storm, I would be sitting there wiith 3 hours sleep previous night heads down, trying to keep my eyelids from sticking to one another...he walks in and boom..two hours are gone! Its simply exciting!
I have to talk about at least three other amazing profs, but I will save that for later...
We participated in two simlations in the last month, one was with the orientation program, where we were split into teams and each team gets a company in a market and we are asked to make decisions-production, sales and marketing, finance, sourcing, then negotiate deals with other teams, cooperate compete, think strategically and implement a winning strategy-sounds like a lot, and it really was. We were simply overwhelmed, two days we were having animated discussions on how the production couldn't scale up, the market share seem to be going down, how to improve quality, how the hell do we get the striking workers back to work, what patents do we bet on, how much money do we borrow, do we get out of/get into a market and how to kill the competitors! And all this without having the faintest idea of what a balance sheet looks like what profit indicators we needed to look for, which part impacts which function-zilch-absolutely nothing. It was exhausting, and we didn't do too well on it, but we learnt so much within those two days!
Then just two days back we had an OPEQ simulation, each team was an oil company producing a particular quantity of oil (that was the only number we had to decide) and if all teams cooperated there would be huge profits, if one team cheats they make a lot of money, or as more commonly happens if everyone cheats everyone loses money. The communication between teams was limited and spaced appropriately so that there were many blind spots where you just had to trust somone's word. Things got really ugly, my teammate was going, "I want to know who are all in that Team-I am never going to deal with them for the rest of the two years! How could they cheat like this!!!" It really got very personal. And finally there was an analysis in class of the results-all messages and decisions were put out in the open and we had a riot of laughter (someone says-"Guys lets be true to each other, we will stick to 35" and their output that year is 75 and then some people putting out friendly rejoinders like "You sons of bitches, go burn in hell" and so on...it was a fun way of learning oligopolistic competition and the prisoner's dilemma
Some thoughts on first quarter
Its official! I have successfully completed the drill of the first quarter, supposedly the hardest quarter of an MBA program. It has been a fulfilling experience. It has been a real roller coaster, but never ever short of fun. Every single day I have been doing new things, learning new ways of doing old things, admiring some amazing individuals and thoroughly enjoying every minute.
The most interesting experience has definitely been working with my team. You are part a team of five and each of them is chosen to have a very different background from the rest. For example in my team, I am the only engineer and international student, we have a girl who has worked in the media industry, an accountant, a former Englih teacher and a pharmacist who is also pursuing law. Things get really interesting with such a motley mix of people, working closely on very tight schedules and under enormous work pressures. I have seen us take on different roles at different times from the creative genius, to the timekeeper, to the conflict resolver, to the project manager, the silent listener, you name it! I personally find it very rewarding to understand each of these different individuals, learn from their strengths and play to achieve the team's best output. I have learnt to put the team before myself and everything else, I have learnt to trust people and make and keep commmitments.
Then there are the courses themselves, each one so unique and differnt from anything I have learnt before. The class runs completely on participation. The instructors encourage discussion and get the concepts out of the students themselves instead of rote lectures. Two profs in particular deserve special mention-Prof Wruck who handled economics completely using case studies, with a flair and confidence that lit up the class, enabled lively discussions and created a beautiful learning environment. Second is Prof. Rucci, my personal favorite in Fisher so far, he has had experience at very senior levels of some huge organizations for a number of years. He has an interesting story for every concept, every situation and he just loves the students, always with a genuine smile ready to help. I should say I have never seen someone own the stage as much as he does, every single time!
First quarter involves some serious hard work to meet deadlines, midterms, student organization etc. If I were to make a suggestion for a newbie, it would be to join as few student organizations as possible and do some significant work in them because time ALWAYS comes with a premium in an MBA.
Finally, the out of class fun activities, it is very important to de-stress yourself in the first quarter as things can get really overwhelming many times. I have a great set of friends who are always ready for a movie, a late night walk to mirror lake, hanging out on High street and so on...its been great help in wading through the quarter.
[Many of my classmates have a different opinion from what I have expressed here...so this is no way the "normal" experience, but that's what is special about an MBA, there IS no definition of how you are supposed to take it-each person experiences something totally different in the same program.]
No comments:
Post a Comment