Full-time vs. Part-time MBA

Here's an easy MBA post in response to a question I got from a reader last week, written mainly from the Booth perspective.

If I had lived in or near to a city with a top program I probably would have done a part-time program. I also considered executive programs. But it definitely is a very different experience from a full-time program and I have to say I am glad that I went full-time.

At Booth, there is no academic difference between the part-time and full-time programs. It's the exact same faculty and you can take class at either campus (with some restrictions). Both programs also have a considerable amount of flexibility in how quickly or slowly they complete their studies. Both programs participate in the same graduation ceremony and get to participate in on campus recruiting. (Ask career services for the fine print on part-time participation though.) (I think they have a different admissions team?? Anyone know this for sure?)

The big difference comes in the way of the student experience. There is definitely a different feel in the Gleacher classes. Virtually all part-time students are working jobs which gives them much less time to devote to study groups and social events. (The guy who hired me for my internship came out of the part-time program and called us full-timers a bunch of slackers ... and he's right :) They are real adults with, you know, jobs and families. The part-time program has a separate set of student groups. (Some cross-registration is allowed but mostly the two programs stick to themselves on this one.) And to the extent that networking and social stuff is a huge piece of the MBA value - then it seems like they miss out. One only has so many hours in the day.

In sum, if you want the full student experience and aren't up for the work/school/life grind, I would do the full-time program. If your employer will foot the bill for a part-time program only/you can't bear to part with your paycheck/you are worried you might graduate unemployed in the worst recession in recent history/you just want the degree and some classes, then I would do the part-time program. But, at least at Booth, the line between the programs is a bit blurry, so keep that in mind.

That's my two cents.

Hot damn, it's hot around these parts. Chicago was not meant to be lived in sans A/C. By the way, just discovered the best bagels ever ... in Hyde Park! Wish I could take them with.

Yeah. It was worth it.

More on that later.

(And no, I don't have a job yet.)

Congratulations Class of 2009

Graduation was on Sunday. I'm very glad my mom asked me to walk - I had a great time and it was a nice way to end things. I will really really miss a number of amazing people I had the good fortune to spend the last 2 years with. :(

Two Year Academic Wrap Up

For better or worse, here is how I used the flexible curriculum for two years. (FYI - I remember all of my courses by the course number not the name so am not using the official name for all of them.)

1st Year - Fall
30116 Footnote Accounting w/Skinner*
35200 Corporate Finance w/Seru*
33501 International Commercial Policy w/Levchenko**

1st Year - Winter
37000 Marketing Strategy w/Dhar
30118 M&A Accounting w/Bens
33032 Managing the Workplace w/Kole

1st Year - Spring
34106 Commercializing Innovation w/Meadow
35120 Portfolio Management w/Pastor*** (requires Matlab)
42001 Competitive Strategy w/Knez
41202 Time Series w/Tsay (requires R)
(not a schedule I would recommend to anyone let alone with someone with a 9 month old who just finished a grueling 6 month recruiting season)

2nd Year - Fall
35100 Financial Instruments w/Nosal*
30117 Taxes w/Weiss
30130 FSA w/Smith*

2nd Year - Winter
38114 Business Ethics w/Fogel
35210 International Corporate Finance w/Rajan***
38002 Managerial Decision Making w/Wu
42115 Building Innovation Strategy and Capability w/Tennant
40000 Operations w/Debo

2nd Year - Spring
40110 Managing Service Operations w/Eisenstein
34102 New Venture Strategy w/the one and only Schrager

*much will be review for someone with the CFA designation or prior accounting/finance experience but can be worth taking especially if you get a good professor but if you want skip to concentrate on other areas, you'll be fine.
**review for anyone with solid undergraduate Econ background that includes international trade coursework
***Pastor and Rajan are brilliant - course worth it just for the value that they add but much of the technical stuff is not new news if you have a finance background. I don't regret taking these courses though and it still was plenty of work.

Regrets, Reflections and Responsible Blogging

I started this blog in 2006 essentially as a letter to myself. It was to be the blog I wished existed then. But as my fortunes became tied to the Booth brand, this became more complicated. What I have tried to resolve for myself over the past month or so is to what extent I want to speak freely about this experience and to what extent I should. What do I owe myself? What do I owe the school? And what do I owe to the younger me's out there? And what is worth saying?

I realize now that it is difficult for prospective students to get a frank view of the MBA experience because it is so difficult for insiders to speak frankly. When I was speaking officially for admissions I was completely sincere but very guarded in my comments. I never mentioned the hard parts and over the two years I began to feel guilty for portraying this experience in such a one-sided manner. Students who are not sufficiently warned about the hard parts are likely to be far more disappointed. So, for better or worse, this blog was a space for me to come clean. (And while it is true that my less flattering comments are my opinion, not fact, this is just as true of my or anyone's flattering opinions as well.)

But if competing schools don't have frank bloggers airing complaints, it's not particularly balanced. And it can be hard to discern as a blogger when to convey a strong opinion and when to let the moment pass - what is worth sharing and what should be ignored.

One reason I chose Booth was that I found the students to be very genuine. At some schools I felt like they were reading off a script. I think the views about business school in general and Booth in particular, within the Booth community are more nuanced, unexpected and diverse than an outsider might expect.

I somewhat regret starting this blog in the first place and I regret blogging specifically about Booth. Far more interesting is the discussion of the value and place of a business education, gender and babies in an MBA world, the moral complexities of the pursuit of money, etc. If you think this is interesting too, stay tuned ...

Farewell.

When I was an MBA applicant, blogs had a huge impact on my decision to pursue the degree. In particular, those of female applicants. I consider myself an atypical MBA in several respects and thought it might be worth telling my story. And as my family life evolved, I thought it would be beneficial for folks to get the student parent perspective which is largely absent from MBA blog-land. And frankly, I think that attracting more skeptics and student parents would be a good thing for business schools ... and the world.

But it has come to my attention that my posts are distressing to some and upon further reflection I have decided to stop blogging about my experience. I don't know how to blog any differently than I have been and I don't have the time and energy to worry about the appropriateness of each post. My goal was not to persuade or un-persuade anyone from an MBA or from attending Booth, but simply to give a frank portrayal of an experience that is too often painted as an easy golden ticket. And I think the sort of folk that choose Booth are likely to appreciate that most of all. I have considered quitting blogging many times over the past 3 years anyway. Now is a good a time as any.

But before I go I want to set a some things straight.

1. I have a deep affection for Booth and think it's absolutely one of the best MBA programs around. It was the only program I applied to and the only program I wanted to attend. I have blogged about the silliness of the GSB stereotypes, that my biggest regret was waiting so long to apply, my love for my fellow students, a Booth MBA is worthwhile no matter what the economy is doing, career services is stellar (and here), GND is the best policy, despite the challenges there is payoff in the end, my appreciation for the school's attempts at addressing student parent concerns, why my reasons to MBA > reasons not after the first year, and why I like living in Hyde Park.
   
2. My complaints center around the academic experience and the student parent experience. I may be the only Booth student blogging about this, but I am not alone in this opinion. And I imagine any reasonable candidate would realize that these two issues alone do not rule out all of the positive things found in point #1.
   
3. The remainder of my posts have centered around the ups and downs of my MBA experience that have little to do with the institution. That is, crappy economy, tough IM recruiting, self-doubts about career path, frustration with corporatese, are not an indictment of Booth but simply musings on the world around me. Dear readers, I hope you all get that.
4. Although I blog anonymously I don't say anything on this blog that I haven't or wouldn't say to the administration, fellow students, friends, family, etc. Trust me, there is a lot I do not put in here. But I did not fully appreciate how negatively my posts would come off. And that is unfortunate.
   

The Academic Experience - class supply, professor quality, and bidding can be quite frustrating. I understand that these are big issues and that the school is probably doing the best that it can and I have said explicitly that these facts would not have changed my decision about Booth. But I think it's something incoming students should be aware of and to plan around.

The Student Parent Experience - I am not complaining that being a student parent is hard but that the school has the capacity to make it easier and seems unwilling to do so with any sense of expediency. And that only so much of the fixing should be up to students. I have worked tirelessly since the summer of 2007 to create support and resources for student moms and moms-to-be and my post last Friday comes after email after email after meeting after meeting with CWiB co-chairs from 2008 and from 2009, with student advisors, with admissions, with career services, with various deans, with UCWBG and CWiBAN, and the Partners group and the law and medical schools and NAWMBA and Forte. After organizing events and attending UoC feedback sessions and conducting a survey of nearly 300 female MBAs and combing the GMAC data and writing a 21 page paper and collecting stories from alumnae and trying to market a Google group and begging CWiB for 50 bucks for a thank you gift for a speaker and moderating a panel on work-life balance comprised of 2 ibankers with no apparent lives to speak of and making myself available to prospectives and incoming students and putting my family story in the viewbook and putting together a website and waiting 5 weeks for Interactive Media to respond to a request to update our internal website.

I get it that Booth has a lot of things to deal with and that this might not be top of the list but my frustrations arise out of the challenges of trying to enact change, not simply a lack of perfection on the institution's part. And last Friday, after reading Bertrand's study and reading a Chibus article in which a former lead facil complains about students who have the audacity to bring their kids to LPF and struggling to find any co-chairs for MaB which meant all this effort was at risk of being for naught, I just broke down. I couldn't pretend any more that all was well and progress was being made. I was out of energy and out of fresh ideas. And angry.

• On Becker: my beef comes after a conversation with him after a presentation last spring on the returns to women's education.
  
• On CWiB: absolutely no beef with the co-chairs. The 2009ers have done a fantastic job of reviving a neglected group. I have high hopes for the 2010ers. However, I believe CWiB would be more effective if the school took on a more active role rather than expecting 6 students to do everything. (The website for a key group should not be left out of date for years, for example.) Membership should be free and universal to all female students, subcommittees should be formed to handle various initiatives and events, leadership should be voted in not appointed for greater accountability and members, not co-chairs, should decide which initiatives they feel are worth pursuing. And yes, I've already shared these opinions with CWiB and others long ago.
• LOE, recruiting, lactation room, internships: all true stories. Improving the lactation room is on my to do list but given how challenging it was to get the thing set up in the first place and how busy I've been, I've just not gotten back to it.

I get that institutions are imperfect. I get that making change is hard. I get that one should try to effect transformation before complaining. And I expect that any person of reasonable intelligence reads this blog with a grain of salt. I represent just one woman in a sea of women with a myriad of stories to share. I would love to hear more of them. And never thought my opinions would be that controversial.

This was my story and I've shared it. As graduation draws near I am excited to embark on the next phase of my life and have no qualms about choosing to MBA in the original question.

Just wanted to clarify.
Best to all in their MBA journeys or otherwise.

Woman, Help Thyself (or the real story of MaB, and, I Quit)

Haven't been blogging much this week because I've been preoccupied and behind in sleep but also because I've been a bit low in spirit and I don't like to blog when I'm in a bad mood.

Quite predictably, on Friday evenings I find myself frequently anxious and unsettled about various Booth happenings in my life, largely related to student parenthood. And I thought perhaps finally coming clean with nearly two years of frustrations might help me sleep.

I've had many good experiences at Booth but nearly all of my bad experiences have been tied to being a student parent. I naively entered Booth thinking that I could turn my experiences into constructive feedback for the school and contribute to making the program more friendly for moms and moms-to-be. I had some facts to share and thought the feedback would be welcome. And all the strange set-backs and dead ends and unexpected politics and meaningless lip service just made me all the more stubborn and more determined about the mission. But I certainly didn't mean for it to become a core part of my MBA identity and such a huge expenditure of time and energy. And as an unrepentant cost-benefit calculator, I have to admit at this point that it's all cost and no benefit to me.

Selfishly, I want to see the world change. I want to see Booth in 10 years have a graduating class that is 50% women. I want to see 50% of the top ranks of the business world populated by women. I want "work-life" balance to no longer be considered a "women's issue". I want to see pay parity by gender. I think all of these things are interrelated. I think all of these things matter. And I think until business schools address the baby factor that no true progress will be made. (Hint: women's ROI on bschool is substantially less than that for men ... largely because they have babies. Apparently the women can do the math but the bschools cannot. And Bertrand gets it but Becker does not ...)

I'm tired of the lip service business schools and women's organizations pay to the issue of low representation of women while trying to ignore the fact that women have babies and it changes their lives in important ways. And I am astounded by how politically controversial such a relatively matter of fact issue seems to be.

MaB should not be a student group. It should be an administrative initiative. It should have been taken on by CWiB. (They refused.) (Which btw should not be a student group either but also an administrative initiative - but more on that later.) The success of this endeavor should not live and die by a few overtaxed students trying to scrub up pennies for a lunch and learn while the school doles out free booze every Friday afternoon. Student moms are an extreme minority at business schools by design not by coincidence - schools do an abysmal job of attracting women at all, let alone women with children. At least at Booth, student moms are reminded time and time again, sometimes subtly and sometimes outright, that fitting into the pre-existing mold is much preferred to falling outside of it. (Pregnant during recruiting? Try to hide that. Have a 10 week old during LOE? Please leave him at home, thanks. Drinking beer and climbing ropes is critical to your peer bonding experience. Need to pump between classes? We have a nice storage closet for you. Not able to do a summer internship for family reasons? You are messing with our numbers!)

Women between 28 and 30 have babies. Even well-educated, high achieving women have babies. It's not a coincidence that they shy away from business school, it's the result of systematic failure on the part of business schools to address the root issues which make business school an incredibly poor investment for many women if they are not fully prepared and informed for/about the ramifications of childbearing. Most women in business school these days will go on to have children after graduation. And they are in for some nasty surprises.

So I thought I'd like to do something about all of this. But I can't do it alone and it's been an incredibly lonely trek. I hear over and over again from alumnae and students how important this issue is to them but no one seems to want to do more than talk about it. Greater than my disappointment with the institutions is my disappointment with my fellow women. If the women who cared about this issue would step up and help, we wouldn't need to rely on the institutions.

So I quit. I need to turn my time and attention to my career and my family. I certainly don't need help. I've figured it out for myself. I'm going to have all the kids I want. I'm going to enjoy my life. I'm going to make a hell of a lot of money. (Sorry so crass, but that's absolutely top on the agenda.) And gender and family status is certainly not standing in my way. I thought it would be valuable to make this a shared learning experience but it looks like women prefer to learn on their own and the school is happy not to stand in their way on that.

So fine. Good luck to all. I quit.

New student group at Booth for moms and moms-to-be

Well, we actually launched this in winter quarter but I was waiting to settle some logistical things before announcing it here. So spread the word! www.mothersatbooth.com. Bet you can guess who I am :)

Some days I'm really excited about finally getting it off the ground. And some days I don't know why I spend the time. I'm really worried that we're not going to find first-years to take over the leadership :(

Which is why my preference was for it to be an initiative under CWiB ... but that's another story!

Performance Measurement: Everybody can be a winner.

There have been a few moments at Booth in which I realized I was not just in the minority on a particular issue, but perhaps completely alone. Two such instances occurred in Taxes (on corporate tax "evasion" and the estate tax) and one instance occurred in my "HR" class with regard to performance evaluation.

One of the reasons I chose my second undergraduate institution was because of its very unusual grading policy. We received regular grades so when we applied to PhD programs (as most did) we had a transcript to show for our work but we never received a report card. If you wanted to know your grades you had a make a special trip to the registrar. And I never made that trip.

And I loved it. At my first college I was living for the grade. I was absolutely miserable. Grades motivated me but in an unbearable way. Rather than learning for myself, I was simply trying to please my professors. Relieved of grades, my performance became dramatically better.

So the quarterly report card at Booth was jarring. And being graded on a curve was even worse. I understand the role of the curve at a large institution. (Much easier to grade 120-180 students by.) And I get the rationale for relative performance measurement. (Constrains grade inflation ... and perhaps egos.) Being aware of the average and striving to excel beyond that is certainly not a bad thing. But I challenge you to determine from a discussion with 25 randomly selected Booth students which one's are the A students and which are the C students. (In other words, how often to grades tell us anything useful in a group that is above average as a whole?) So I was surprised to realize in my HR class that this sort of grading scheme was standard at many corporations for the purpose of performance evaluation. And I was completely alone, so it seemed, in my assertion that in an organization, especially of high performing individuals, that this seemed ludicrous and counterproductive.

If you have a group of hard-working people who all did a damn good job, what's the matter with splitting the pie and calling it a day? Why do we need to focus on nearly imperceptible differences in order define our hierarchy? And if the higher ups are too chicken to identify and address very perceptible differences, creating the risk that slackers will receive just as much reward as hard workers, then that's a completely different problem. You need to hire some better managers. And if you are continually hiring under achieving employees, then improve your hiring practices.

This has bigger implications than collegiality at work, or lack thereof. And I don't think this is just applicable to organizations of exceptional achievers. How is living for the grade all that different from living to beat quarterly earnings expectations? How is grading on a curve all that different from judging employees solely by whether they managed to beat the next guy, even if that means a fantastic decline in business practices (such as lending standards)? I don't see how long-term excellence or truly innovative, independent thinking (that firms allegedly desire) can ever come from the short-term perspective that is created by relying on quick and easy grades and relative performance standards. And I don't see how rubbing employees' noses in temporary setbacks or down periods, in order to fill your X% under achiever quota, does the organization any good. And if this measurement scheme is the only way to get results in your organization then perhaps you're hiring the wrong people.

I believe that it is more important to be absolutely good than relatively good. I believe that boiling one's life efforts into a tidy score sheet is unenlightening. I believe that life is not a sum zero game: my "win" does not necessarily require your "loss". And I believe that surrounding myself with people who excel for themselves, not for someone else's approval, will make me not just happier but ultimately more successful.

[The title of this post comes from my puzzlement at the backlash to the "everybody's a winner" self-esteem movement, for lack of a better term, for kids. But that's another story.]

Spring Quarter 2009 Preview

Farewell, spring break. Here's to the last quarter of my MBA life. Crazy. It's almost over. I keep feeling that perhaps I'm not enjoying my education as much as I should be. But I've never been one for school and I certainly never shed a tear for my student days after getting my BA, so I have a feeling I won't mind graduating at all.

I have many posts in backlog, including a recap of winter quarter classes, so stay tuned for that, but just wanted to give a spring quarter preview today.

I only have two classes left to fulfill my graduation requirements, electives as well, and it looks like I'll be taking New Venture Strategy with Schrager (bid every point I had to get that and it should be good) and perhaps Network Structures of Effective Management with Phillips. (I'm still trying to get into Eisenstein's Managing Service Operations but do not have high hopes.) No offense to Professor Phillips but 39002 was not exactly top of my list of courses but it was free (point-wise) and looks like a good second year spring quarter+newborn option. And frankly, I am very curious about what we will talk about - it looks very MBA to me.

So this means that I'll have only 6 hours of class per week and what should be an immensely manageable homework load. (The antithesis to last spring when I had Portfolio Management, Time Series, Competitive Strategy and Commercializing Innovation. I would not recommend that schedule to anyone and definitely not someone with a child under the age of 1.) I am very excited about that and plan to to fill the remainder of my week (or whatever remains after #2 is fed, changed, etc.) with whatever I am in the mood to think about. Ah, that's my kind of schedule.

Technically, I could start taking advantage of my "free classes" (Booth lets eager beaver over achievers take up to 3 classes for free once graduation requirements are met, separate from the 3 free classes you get once graduated I think) but I am not in the mood for that especially since you can only get into classes with empty spots which tend to not be that interesting but mostly because I am trying to minimize my classroom time anyway.

Farewell Winter Quarter

Another non-post. Technically I have one more take home final that has not actually be turned in, but I've done as much as I can with it and turned it over to my group mate to polish it up. So at long last I have the afternoon to revel in the joy of reclaiming my brain and my time. This quarter was the antithesis of last winter when my life was consumed by the job search and academics were but a little side thought. This quarter, with 5 classes, I felt like I did virtually nothing but academics. I'm looking forward to a better balance of "career", classes and family/friends in my last quarter. I have lots to say on MBA land, babies, gender, the state of the economy, etc. but not today. Today my brain needs some time to wander.

Finals Week

Just a little non-post to say that this is finals week. Yay! I think I survived the quarter. My health has been awfully spotty for the last month but I am feeling shockingly ok and unstressed about the week. But I probably won't be posting much until spring break.

Happily, I have a nice mix of take home finals, projects and in class exams. My only two in-class exams are both on Thursday, running from 8a to 2:30p with only a 30 minute break which is somewhat unfortunate (and unusual) for my brain (and stomach!) but so it goes.

So if all goes well and the old immune system holds up for another 5 days, I'll be done with 18 of my 20 MBA courses this Friday and feeling very cheerful.

Mother Love

It strikes me that women who express concern that they don't love their newborns as they should might be being a bit premature. Although I found newborn Baby Y pretty remarkable, my feelings were more of astonishment and curiosity than deep love. For me, the love grew over time, as it does with any relationship. And it has grown to become overwhelming. Additionally, my feelings about working as I approach graduation are definitely more complicated than they were when I entered school. And unlike the opinion-less newborn I arrived at Booth with, I am now mother to an increasingly opinionated little boy.

The week before last I skipped virtually all my classes and hardly moved from the couch which Baby Y thought was just fantastic. We read books and cuddled and whenever he went out with Grandma, I was right there on the couch when he he got back home. So this week with me back on the regular schedule, was a hard adjustment. And I actually thought on Thursday that he might be mad at me. I didn't think 20 month olds could get mad but he refused to have anything to do with me when I got home that night which was crushing.

It's been an incredibly unproductive weekend. And I don't mind. I just want to spend time with Baby Y. Every homework assignment just seems trivial and useless compared to foregone or distracted hours with him. Normally, Baby Y goes down for bedtime and naps without a peep. We put him in his crib, wave good bye and go on with life. But today he was completely beside himself if left alone. We held him and sang and rocked for a good hour. And that's all I wanted to think about. So many times during my life at Booth, I have wanted Baby Y to take only the pre-allotted time in my daily schedule so I could get right back to homework or interview prep or stock pitch research. My reasoning at the time was that it was all for him. Ultimately, the preparation would turn into a good career for me and a college fund for him and happiness for my family.

What I'm wondering these days is how it will be with two little ones. How I can bear to send them to daycare once we leave Chicago, assuming my mom returns back to her normal life, and is no longer full-time grandma. Will entrepreneurship will give me the freedom and flexibility to be with my babies or whether the all-consuming nature of starting a business will prevent me from feeling as though I'm ever fully present for children? Would a summer spent as a full-time mama leave me satisfied or frantic and bored? But it's interesting to reflect on how much I'ved changed during bschool: month by month my childless identity grows fainter in my mind, and the mother love grows deeper. It's an interesting ride.

Student life at Booth

So I've been struggling with this post for awhile. Booth is a fairly large program which means (a) any one person can only know a particular segment of the population and (b) any generalizations I try to make here can easily be countered. Also, since I have absolutely no experience with other MBA programs (I don't have friends at other schools), I have no frame of reference to help me decide what distinguishes the Booth experience and what is just like any other bschool.

But because this is such an important factor for folks, I thought it deserved a post. After all, how I felt about the folks I met at the GSB was one of the primary reasons why I applied. I thought they were the smartest, most interesting bschool population of all the schools I visited. (MIT was my other favorite on this front.)

First - what's my angle? My social circle at Booth is comprised almost entirely of IM folk (who arguably tend to be a little brighter and more thoughtful than average) and, secondarily, the entrepreneurship folk (who tend to be more interesting than average). I know very few hard-core ibankers, consultants, marketers, and general managers beyond the casual sporadic chat. Most of my social circle also tends to be married or in a stable long-term relationship and I do not participate in TNDC or other bschool mating rituals.

• Freedom of association: personally I couldn't handle a cohorted school. While we are technically assigned a cohort for LEAD, the cohort experience generally ends there, leaving us to pick our own study groups and find our own social niches. While forced bonding/socialization might be nice in theory, in practice I find it miserable. I have a feeling I'm not alone at Booth in this.
• Diversity: although my husband thinks all MBAs are more or less the same (boring and money hungry) there is far more diversity at Booth than I ever expected when I embarked on my MBA adventure. By no means is everyone a former consultant/ibanker (no offense, former consultant/ibankers, I know you're people too ;) from an Ivy League school with the sole goal of making as much money as humanly possible. (Sorry, that's what I used to assume everyone getting an MBA was like!) Interested in the arts, the environment, soccer, fine food, chess, community service, religion? You'll find compatriots at Booth.
• Smart: I went to some pretty damn nerdy undergraduate institutions where nothing was prized more than intellect and I have to say I'm pretty impressed by the intelligence of my Booth peers. While there are more than a few disappointments on the smarts scale, on the whole it's a thoughtful, critical bunch who don't pull the old automaton, rote MBA learning nonsense I observed when visiting some of the other bschools.
• Busy: I imagine this is the case at any bschool worth its salt, but (and this goes back to the freedom of association and diversity) I'm not just referring to how much free time Booth-heads have or don't have. People at Booth are busy with life. Unlike some schools in which life revolves around the campus and bschool, we live all over the city, intermingle with the part-timers in our classes, moderate the timing and location of our courses, run businesses, have families, etc. Booth feels like a school for adults (though there are plenty of exceptions to this). As a married person with kids being able to find folks who have more on their mind than getting drunk and laid and spreading gossip is important to me.
• You are not going to like everyone by any stretch of the imagination: though I try to keep it all neutral to positive, there are plenty of students who I've met during my time here who I actively dislike. Hey, it's a big school full of all sorts of people. I'd prefer that to a uber-small, cultish school. We have a few bad apples and some so-so apples (depending on your POV) but there are some really great, sincere, thoughtful people here and I've made some damn good friends along the way. And I don't make friends lightly. And I continue to meet and like new people.

So pardon all the generalizations. Not sure if this answers anything at all. Trying to write something about student life has got to be one of the harder posts I've attempted. But that's my best shot.

Now lay on your questions.

Week 8 of 10

So I logged on to try to finish the ever-unfinished student life post but decided I need to go to bed instead. Last week was a complete waste. Spent Monday through Friday on the couch. Skipped 4 of my 5 classes (yipes!). And only started to feel somewhat normal this weekend. Unfortunate timing but I think I'll make it.

To answer Soni's recruiting question - folks are getting jobs. Allegedly, we are tracking just about even with last year's class in terms of 2nd years with jobs but that doesn't necessarily mean that folks are as happy with their offer as they might have been in good times. (In other words, just because you have a job, doesn't mean you like the job you have.) Definitely, the financial services industry (in all it's shapes and forms) is pretty much non-existent right now. It will come back eventually ... not this year. And even though the 1st years might be struggling on the internship front (I don't know this for a fact, just anecdotes), getting a full-time job is more important than securing an internship anyway. So at least they get another go at it next year. (Not that that helps with the frustration/disappointment now.)

Ok, must sleep. Might not do much posting in the next couple of weeks as I try to finish this damn quarter.

To be cont ...

Y was sick all weekend which made me effectively a single parent. (I can't parent one kid alone ... 14?!!) (Happy Valentine's Day!) And my immune system finally gave in yesterday. (Not helped by some very meager sleep patterns.) So I don't think I'll be posting anything this week. I am working on a student life at Booth post ... so stay tuned.

It's the 7th week of classes which I find really exciting since I can't wait for this quarter to be over. Chicago is thawing out a bit which is nice. I can now walk to campus rather than using the bus which gives me a couple miles of much needed exercise as well as a little extra vitamin D.

From what I hear, first-year recruiting is a complete nightmare. (My sympathies to all the first-years!!!!) Second years continue to recruit. I am happily not-engaged in any of that.

Anyhow, more later.

Waste Not, Want Not: Kovler Cafe Ecofies

Finally! Kovler Cafe (courtesy of Aramark) just switched over to biodegradable utensils and receptacles. Kudos to whoever engineered that reform. I hated throwing out all that plastic each day. Now if we could just figure out some way to minimize our lunch and learn packaging and get students to stop putting garbage in the big blue bins (is this the internationals??) we'll be making real progress.

Midterms Already??

Well, the good news is that it's half over. The bad news is that it's only half over.

Maybe I'm just projecting my own state of mind on my classmates, but the atmosphere in class seems awfully subdued this week. A lot of nodding off in the afternoon class. Sleep has not been my friend this week either. (Is it ever?) This is the time in the quarter when the optimism I always feel with a new set of classes has worn off and I'm just ready to be done already and weary of feeling eternally disappointed in myself. And I think there is something a bit more gloomy about the winter quarter with all the first-year recruiting nerves and piercing, cold weather.

I have only two midterms this week and one next (happily 2 of my classes are midtermless). My midterm tomorrow is for a pass/fail class. We shall see how my strategy of just "not failing" (a tricky threshold to judge) pans out. I'm operating under the assumption that if I at least write some reasonable sentences for half the questions that I will pass. But I have fallen well short of the 100s of pages of required reading. (easily 1,500 so far) So we shall see.

I can't wait until March 20th. I am going to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep and ...

[note 2/5/09: that midterm was not worth worrying over at all! i'm not sure why i can't seem to learn this already.]

Senioritis

I assume I'm not alone in my general lack of enthusiasm for all things academic? In fact, the GSB (Booth) itself is beginning to wear a bit on me this week. (I see why we hand over student group leadership positions around this time.) I can't seem to figure out how to make classes take up less time. Every assignment, big or small, takes hours more than I budget for. I've yet to crack the art of getting by. Doing all or nothing feels much easier. But "all" is just not an option right now. I am itching to get back to "real" life where I get paid to do work rather than paying someone else so that I can do work :)

Career Services II

The longer I blog, the more I begin to repeat myself, so bear with me if this is old news. But I realized after my recent career services post that I left out an important component - my fellow students. Career services at Booth are very good but equally important in the job search, and addition to career advisers (the official student face of career services) are student groups and miscellaneous peers and alumni. The career oriented student groups (for me this was the investment management group) play a big role in resume feedback, interview prep, and general knowledge of employers and what to expect. The IMG assigns you with second years mentors which may or may not be helpful and gives you an opportunity to pitch stocks to the entire group (which may or may not be helpful ;). I also made extensive use of all the second years who would give me 5 minutes to talk about their experiences and often reached out to alumni.

So I just wanted to mention that as well. For those on less typical post-MBA paths, this might be less viable, simply because there won't be a big pool of peers on the same path as you to share the wisdom. But, likely for most of us, the peer network is as big an asset as anything officially offered by the school.