Closure (maybe)

Hiya classmates, applicants, current GSBers, MBAers from other programs, envious Stanford undergrads, and Derrick Bolton -

Thanks for reading and for all your awesome emails and comments. Whenever I get an email addressed to this blog, I get a warm and fuzzy feeling in my heart that brings back delightful memories of my time in Palo Alto at the GSB and that brings more appreciation to the amazing relationships and opportunities I still have because of the GSB.

Stanford GSB offers the awesome opportunity to leave daily professional activities and explore businesses and markets in a quasi-academic environment. Quasi because the MBA experience is constantly interjected with case discussions led by people out there running businesses, guest speakers bringing up-to-date market information onto campus, and discourse among classmates who are themselves business leaders and operators, past current and present.

Academic because yeah, you are going to learn Black-Scholes option pricing model from Scholes. You are also going to learn NPV, which I have sadly seen very few places outside of a classroom. Oh yeah, and you'll read The Jungle if you're lucky (and Malcolm Gladwell if you're not!)

Please take my prior posts (especially the debbie downer ones) as in-the-moment frustrations along an awesome journey from my pre-MBA life to the GSB and out the other end, and let me just reassure you -- it is worth it.

The GSB costs a pretty penny and forces you to quit your job and relocate to the 'burbs of Silicon Valley, but I wouldn't take back any of it. The only advice I would give my self of a few years ago is -- chin up, smile big, release the worry, and enjoy. For serious.

long strange trip

I am disappointed in myself for not keeping up with this blog on a more regular basis. Thank you for the comments and emails and many apologies for being unresponsive the past 6-12 months.

I am however pleased that my reasons for being withdrawn from the blogging world are happy ones - namely that I have been enjoying so much of my time the past 8 months or so.

My classes have gotten better with the addition of electives as early as winter of my first year. Having a full year at my disposal to take whatever I want this year is shaping up well. My favorites so far and ones that I am looking forward to:

- Interpersonal Dynamics ("Touchy Feely")

- Designing Happiness

- Managing Growing Enterprises

- Understanding the Recent Financial Crisis

- Paths to Power

I am learning so much that already feels applicable to my life and career.

In other news, I am getting ready to embark on a vacation with classmates to a third continent this calendar year (first was my study trip, second was my international internship).

I had a fantastic summer at my two internships - I learned the type of organization that I would aspire to build and lead and also saw the type of organization that stifles problem-solving, creativity, and high performance.

I have begun to leverage the Stanford GSB network and have been amazed and thankful for the responsiveness of even very senior people. Stanford grads are, with few exceptions, universally willing to open their rolodexes and minds to other GSBers.

Meanwhile, my relationships with classmates have gotten both deeper and broader. I know more people and feel more at home in almost any setting at the GSB. In addition, having a full year of context, including time away from people this summer, gives my close friendships much more depth than we had even in the spring.

I am certainly glossing over some of the struggles that I have had the last six months, but generally, I love the GSB.

things are looking up?

Internship - check

Partial-quarter classes starting to go away - check plus

Summer housing - check minus

Summer travel plans and flights - check minus

Alienating my academic advisor - check plus

So that's the latest around here, folks. And with the quarter ending officially in less than 3 weeks, I don't feel a drop of nostalgia, anxiety or fear that my time at business school is passing too quickly. All I can think is, so long farewell I'm out.

I cannot wait for the school year to end and to re-enter the working world in a relatively risk-free role as the summer intern. I get to make a little money (precious little). I get to socialize with people who aren't my classmates. I get to learn about an industry that makes me tick. I also know that during my fifteen weeks away from the GSB, I will get to do a lot of reflecting on the good and the bad at Stanford. There is a lot of good, but I often need to be removed from a situation to remind myself of all that I love about it. I hope that my summer experience will help me solidify my business school "learnings" and reinvigorate me for my second year.

Or at the very least, I hope I'll get a good tan.

Summer dreams ripped at the seams

I have no summer internship and it is starting to get a little bleak around here. I'm tired. I'm disheveled. I've lost track of my "story." And I'm really really whiny these days.

I have learned a couple things that I am happy to share with other job searchers:

1. Balancing an interview "pipeline" with companies you're waiting to hear back from is tricky to say the least.

2. Don't assume that you'll be juggling multiple offers and will have to turn away one of the companies nicely. Get over that assumption, pick your ego off the floor and move on.

3. You know you aren't that psyched about a job when the thought of interviewing with them seems like the most annoying chore on your to-do list, and you wish the hiring manager would just pick up the phone and tell you that they are canceling your interview because the position has been filled.

4. People expect a lot more from MBA candidates than they do from undergrads and pre-MBA job switchers.

5. Have questions for your interviewers. Good smart questions. Write them down in the notebook you're bringing to the interview so that you don't go blank.

6. Having a put option on yourself (i.e., an offer to return to your old company) can make you really jaded/lazy.

7. Remember when I said not to pursue crap you're only marginally interested in? That was good advice.

8. Stay hydrated.

I'm off to the GSB show, which should be highly entertaining. Have good weekends!

HBS perspective on spending

March 1 Harbus article

Mo money Mo problems

For a while, I have wanted to write a post about money at Stanford and more generally, at top American business schools because I don't believe that the spending mores of GSB students are unique among business school students.

Two events spurred me to stop delaying:

1) 2nd quarter tuition is due tomorrow. (That's two for two that I have paid on time!)

2) The weekly GSB email of compiled announcements and deadlines informed me today that the Stanford Board approved a 3.5% tuition increase for incoming GSB students. Class of 2012 will be paying $53,118 while members of the class of 2011 (current first years) will still be paying only $51,321 because the school commits to keeping tuition flat during each student's two years of study. (Before I get comments from readers who are outraged that I consider $50K+ a paltry sum, please take a deep breath and realize that "only" is being used facetiously in the previous sentence. Thanks.)

The issue that has been troubling me is the buy-now pay-later spending habits of members of the GSB community. I don't have time tonight to discuss in depth, but I want to begin to write about how we Stanford business school students spend money and what that means about our attitudes towards our job prospects, how that might limit our abilities to take risks, and why everyone else should also be worried.

How we spend money: Recklessly (e.g., mid-week trips to Vegas, regular jaunts to San Francisco and wine country via party bus, numerous official events that cost >$30 per person, international travel every chance we get). How we pay for it: Loans for the vast majority of us. How we treat people who express concern about not being able to keep up: Dismissively and derisively.

How we implicitly view our job prospects: Optimistically. Clearly if we are willing to saddle ourselves with US$200K in debt, we are confident that we will be able to pay roughly $10K per year for the first twenty years of our post-MBA careers. Important to note is that if we decide to stop the principal amortization clock for any reason (e.g., inability to find a job because of prolonged elevated unemployment levels), interest continues to accrue.

How this debt limits our career choices: Safe bets on consulting and banking take the place of start-ups. It's tough to pay down debt when you're getting paid in equity from a start-up or bootstrapping your own venture with credit cards or money from friends and family. The monthly fixed payments from debt skew career choices towards well-worn tracks, while existing debt load makes it difficult to take out a new loan to start a business.

Why everyone should worry: There may be more reasons, but two immediately come to mind:

1) The first stems from the issue I raised above about MBA grads veering away from riskier careers. This is problematic because well-trained managers should be trying to start new businesses to solve the world's problems. Losing a portion of young, energetic, but debt-strapped MBAs does not bode well for the "innovation economy."

2) This endemic attitude is inherently irresponsible and short-sighted, and it is distressing to see the business leaders of the future refusing to make tough choices about how to spend their own money.

The Summer Hunt

I am trying to be very focused on my summer internship search, which should take me out of OCR (on-campus recruiting) for the most part. However, I am finding the job board and classmates' aspirations to be very distracting.

A winery in northern California, a New York private equity fund, Apple's online store--none of these are great fits for what I want to do this summer. However, when I think long enough about them, I seem to be able to fit them into a box that makes them acceptable enough to invest 30 minutes writing a cover letter. But do I really want to invest a couple hours preparing for an interview and then an hour actually doing the interview on campus? And if I got an offer, would I accept it? No and no and no.

But the real problem is actually not the 3-4 hours applying and interviewing for a job I don't want. The problem with this strategy is that when I expand the universe of jobs to pursue from truly excellent fits to maybe-I-can-get-them-to-fit jobs, I am completely inundated. There are enough potential positions that are truly excellent fits that I barely have enough time in the day to make the connections I need to pursue them, so opening up that universe by even half a degree is to truly open the floodgates.

Time to refocus.

Q1 Complaints

After my last post, several readers asked why I did not liked business school during the first quarter. I will try to sum it up, but because time seems to be a great eraser of discomfort, my memories of exactly why I was so unhappy are getting fuzzier by the day. Let's try a list:

1. Social awkwardness - constantly meeting people and having the same mundane conversations is not only tiring, it is downright depressing. With time comes familiarity and the awkwardness noticeably dissipates.

2. Posturing - it is very hard to get to know anyone and very hard to let your own guard down when you are worried about preserving your personal "brand" as the aloof heir or the high-fashion financier or the plugged-in media guy. Again, time seems to break down personas into real people.

3. Support - there isn't any official support and it can be very isolating and lonely. By second quarter, genuine friends are there for you; plus, Stanford offers stellar back-up in the form of WIM groups, 2nd year coaches, and student activities.

4. Bubbly - first quarter at the GSB covers you in a hard plastic bubble that doesn't let in news from the outside world (say good-bye to all your favorite blogs), friends from the past (even ones who live in the Bay Area), or connections to long-term goals (the one downside of the exclusive academic period).

5. Misaligned expectations - classes and schoolwork are both valuable and time consuming. Don't expect anything else.

6. Herding - MBA1s are pack animals. There is tremendous tension for independent-minded adults to constantly follow the flock or risk feeling left out.

7. Email overload - it's truly overwhelming. It doesn't let up, but you get a bit better at managing it.

8. Weather - Kidding.

I'm sorry for the heaps of negativity in this post. I really am much happier this quarter. In recent news, I applied to a couple summer jobs through on-campus recruiting and have signed up to help manage two activities I think are interesting. I still struggle with the Sunday night blues, but it's not so bad.

A new year, a new day

At some point during the winter break I stopped being quite so disgruntled about my business school experience. The curriculum started to make more sense, content that I learned in my first quarter classes actually seemed relevant, and I realized that I made a few friends during the first quarter who I like and respect. There was no "aha!" moment, but rather a gradual softening of my negative stance. (Sorry if you never got the memo that I wasn't loving business school, but sharing the bad news on my blog took a backseat to complaining about my experience in real life.)

Now I am back at business school for the 2nd quarter (Stanford is on the quarter system which means that each year we have three terms of classes and the fourth quarter is summer) and am busier than ever. This weekend, I started to feel the familiar and insidious grasp of anxiety to which I was so susceptible during the first quarter. And then I let it go.

One reason I can now let go of the worries is that grades don't matter. They truly don't--anymore. I say "anymore" even though second-years tell us from day 1 that they don't and we then first-years tell each other and our spouses and friends that they don't. Then we try to tell ourselves that grades don't matter. But as the achievement-oriented people who we all are, we cannot truly internalize this. How can we strive only to be in the top 90% of a given course (the level at which you must perform to "pass" a class) when the reason we were permitted to matriculate here is that we have always aimed to be in the top 10 or 5 or 1 percent of any pool to which we have belonged?

But after a quarter under my belt, I now finally know that grades do not matter. What matters is that I use the next 18 months to find people, classes and activities that excite me and that I find an internship that moves me towards my goals. I haven't gotten that involved in clubs and activities, but the ones to which I am committing, I care about and will allocate my time accordingly. I have classes that excite me (economics) and classes that are dull (statistics and modeling) and I will allocate my time accordingly. Grade non-disclosure gives me the freedom to do just that and for that, I am thankful.

post-midterms

Mid-terms were predictable and manageable. The GSB doesn't hold classes for an entire week for all first-year students. We had one test each day on Monday (Finance), Tuesday (Organizational Behavior) and Wednesday (Global), which is actually really manageable in comparison to my undergraduate university when classes, papers, and life are not put on hold for mid-terms.

I spent the better part of Sunday and Monday morning studying for Finance and then switched gears after the Finance test to OB and Global, with the help of an impromptu study group. The Finance exam was long, but not particularly hard. OB and Global were also fairly predictable and fair.

So that's that.

After mid-terms, we had two days of career center stuff, including panels and a speech/workshop by Keith Ferrazzi. Wednesday, Thursday and the weekend after mid-terms were relaxed, fun, and served as a reminder for why I came to business school (meet good people, have good career opps)

Since mid-terms, I've been trying to go out more, to sleep more, and to do less work. We have a couple group papers, but otherwise, nothing too stressful for a while.

Only one more full week of classes and then it's Thanksgiving. Today is "Diversity Day," whatever that means, so I'll have to report back soon.

Workload

Stanford MBA1s have three 1,000-word papers plus comprehensive feedback on 7 classmates due in the next 8 days.

And then we have mid-terms the following week.

Applicants: please do not believe that business school is not a ton of hard work. Even if you're just aiming to graduate, the workload is overwhelming.

Fellow MBA students and business school graduates: please stop perpetuating the silly idea that business school is a joke.

Condoleeza Rice & Trips

1. Condi Rice is teaching two of my classes this week. I think she just published a bunch of new business school cases and is coming to the GSB to teach them to us in our "Global Context of Management" class. That is pretty cool in my book. I definitely read those cases a bit more closely than I usually do. Don't want to be cold-called out by Condi!

2. Trips were assigned. We had to fill out a ranking and then some algorithm sorted through them to place people. I got a trip in my first choice bucket and am really excited. But troublingly, about 10% of my class was not placed on any trip. There just aren't enough spots and so some people got left out of the mix.

This is unacceptable for several reasons:

a) The GSB promotes these trips aggressively during admit weekend without mentioning that 10% of the class doesn't get one.

b) A "global experience" is required to graduate and while there are other ways to fulfill that requirement, the trips are by far the least time-consuming and the most popular.

c) There is no good reason for there to not be enough trips. Stanford claims that these trips are subsidized and that budget cuts have forced them to reduce the number of trips, but most trips cost $3-6K. How subsidized can they be?!

d) A small number of both second-years and significant others are allowed on the trip. It is non-sensical for tuition-paying MBA1s to be excluded in favor of MBA2s who have already fulfilled their global requirement and significant others of MBA1s.

As one of my classmates said, no algorithm, no matter how "fair", can fix the lack of trip spots!

I miss blogging

I have many posts clogged in my brain, but little time to coax them out of there. Strapped for time, and yearning for more sleep, I must neglect my blog for another few days in favor of homework.

However, given that the round 1 deadline for the GSB is rapidly approaching--this Thursday I think--I want to wish all applicants the very best of luck. Take a deep breath in through your nose, click submit, and exhale a long "ahhhhhhhh" out of your mouth. You've done what you can do. Let it go for a while. Resist the urge to reread your essays and instead, rekindle your neglected relationships and rejoin your forgotten hobbies. Read a book. (I wish I could read something other than cases.)

Also, here is a preview of topics I'd like to touch on in the coming months:

1. Stanford GSB classroom norms

2. The social life

3. Trips and other cool opportunities

4. Leadership Labs & CAT (the two most interesting classes of the quarter in my opinion)

Crazy little thing called FOAM

F.O.A.M. = Friends of Arjay Miller.

F.O.A.M. = Stanford GSB Tuesday night drinking club (with occasional dance-off).

F.O.A.M. = annual 12-hour trip to Vegas in 1970's garb.

F.O.A.M. = one of the quickest ways I know to spend $190 (cost of annual membership).

F.O.A.M. = the reason I am exhausted and hungover in my Wednesday morning Leadership Lab session (to be discussed in a later post).

...and on that note, to bed I go.

Campus is Crowded: "Week 1"

Today was the official first day of classes for the entire MBA program, so our once cozy community of first-year MBAs has now been invaded by our second-year counterparts. All of a sudden, it's not quite as easy to wander up to a group of students and start chatting with them because they might be--gasp--second years.

As I previously mention, last week ("Week 0") was entirely filled with an organization behavior module and an accounting module, plus a half a dozen info sessions/meetings. Now, we are getting down to business with the classes of the quarter:

Managerial Finance

Strategic Leadership and Leadership Labs

Organizational Behavior

Global Context of Management

Critical Analytical Thinking ("CAT")

All of our classes, except finance, are taken with the same section or sub-group from the section. Stanford divides finance into three levels--base, accelerated, and advanced--based on some kind of algorithm.

I don't know much about any of the classes, except CAT. CAT is a written and oral communication class that spans seven weeks of the quarter. Each week, we have to write a paper (different topics, different structures, different modes of argument) and then defend it in class. Paper is due Wednesday; discussion is Friday. That is what I will be working on for the next two days. See you on the flip side.

The Sting

During week 0 (last week), we had an organizational behavior module on working in groups and teams. The syllabus clearly indicated that 90% of our grade would be based on class participation (about half of which would be determined by our peers), so naturally, many hands were raised during the duration of the class discussions. My hand was often one of those.

However, after a couple classes and a discussion of what constitutes a valuable comment/question, I began to curtail my participation. I tried to "move the conversation forward" with any comments I did offer. I offered no more than 1-2 comments/questions per class from Wednesday onward. However, in the back of my mind, I worried that my first two days of eager hand-raising had already been indelibly marked on my classmates' brains.

Now, we are being asked to rate each of 10 randomly-assigned classmates from 1 to 10 and if we desire, to provide a comment. I was clicking around in the website and discovered that you can view any feedback about you that has been submitted already; so far, I have received a 5 and a 2 and one of the raters offered his/her opinion that I was participating only because of the required participation component. Ouch.

I cannot tell you how deflated I feel right now. I know that need to develop a thicker skin if I'm going to get through this program (let alone progress in my career), but I am a person who cares deeply about what other people think of me and just those two numbers and that brief comment jotted down have been enough to pull me down today. I am enervated. How is it possible that I have been in classes for only one week?

GSB Class of 2011 Facts & FIgures

Straight from the mouth of Derrick Bolton during today's MBA program welcome session:

Class of 2011 class profile/admissions information--

Admit rate = 6.7% (lowest ever if memory serves)

Class size = 384 (biggest ever I think)

Average GPA = 3.68

Average GMAT = 727

That's all I could store in my capacity-constrained memory.

Otherwise, first day went smoothly--met some people in my section, took an interesting organizational behavior class and a boring accounting class. Now I've got to sign off to do some reading.

Week minus-1

Stanford calls the first week for MBA1s "week zero," so I have deemed the week before that week, "week minus-one." Week minus-one consists of moving to Palo Alto (check), settling in at your new dwelling (check minus), running all kinds of Stanford errands--e.g., getting an ID, buying textbooks, setting up your computer, picking up schedule and course readers, and getting a parking pass (check minus). Week minus-one also means socializing... at least I think it does.

There are many events that are organized by 2nd years and based on what I've been hearing in passing, there are many impromptu outings, lunches, dinners, and cocktail hours. I opted out of the organized events because this week has been hectic enough and I figured that the Stanford socializing would begin in earnest once school starts on Monday. But I wasn't expecting to be so left out of the more casual events. I blame my cluelessness on the fact that I do not live among other business school students; I live off campus.

Maybe now is a good time to explain the housing options for MBA1s at Stanford. Most everyone, it seems, live on campus. First choice across the board is Schwab, the first-year MBA dorm. If you're not among the 200 or so MBA1s to land a spot there (remember our total class is only ~360), you will likely live in Munger, the brand new grad student dorms that house students from all the Stanford graduate programs. I'm not really sure who, besides myself and any married students, lives off campus. I do not regret my decision to live off campus for numerous reasons (space, privacy, ability to live with my non-Stanford significant other, easy access to non-university resources like grocery stores, etc), but I don't think I realized how much additional effort I would need to make to connect with my class. Anyway, with classes starting tomorrow, I'm sure I won't feel quite so isolated.

Doing my finance homework now. Wish me luck.

Short post

California drivers suck.

Apple/Snow Leopard

I took the plunge and purchased a new Mac last week, complete with a free iPod Touch for my significant other. Then Apple released the new operating system, "Snow Leopard," which apparently is a great improvement over the current operating system. So I paid $10 for them to send me the software update, which is on its way to my new Palo Alto address as I write. And then today I got an email from Stanford telling me that there are tech problems with Snow Leopard interfacing with Stanford programs: "We caution against upgrading to Snow Leopard or buying a computer with this operating system until further testing and work to resolve any incompatibilities has been done."

So for those Stanford Class of 2011ers out there who have not yet taken the plunge, this may tip the scales away from a Mac. Just an unpleasant FYI for you this Monday.

PS - Classes start two weeks from today!