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.

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!

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?

Pulled the Trigger

Yesterday was the HBS deposit deadline so I declined, and submitted my Stanford GSB deposit, which isn't due until next week. Also, just before I submitted my Stanford deposit, I got a personal email from Dean Bob Joss encouraging me to email or call if I had any outstanding questions during my "difficult decision." He included both his home and cell phone numbers in the email. I felt special. For about 30 seconds.

I assured him that I was planning to attend Stanford and asked him about the quality of teaching at each school and the argument that HBS is superior because of its case method. He responded that he was glad I had chosen Stanford and that a variety of teaching techniques can lend itself to an even stronger classroom experience. I would have liked more of a discussion about the Stanford classroom experience, but I guess I should have asked my question more clearly.

It feels strange to officially have made my decision, even though I already knew what it was a while ago. I am never comfortable closing doors, whether they are doors to new relationships or career paths. I think I have to get over that aspect of my personality, because my hunch is that, while many doors will open over the next couple years, the choices I make will close a greater number of other options.

Okay... I'm finished waxing philosophical. Time for the weekend!

First Bschool Homework!

HBS sent me a case study they want me to read for my Strategy class on campus this Friday. The gall, the nerve -- homework before I'm even enrolled! The email did stress that I would not be required to participate in discussion, but rather that the reading would enhance my classroom experience. So I will be reading Bitter Competition: The Holland Sweetener Company versus NutraSweet in the next couple days.

This case's title seemed familiar and I realized that this is the case discussed in HBS's online video, Inside the Case Method. I watched this short video when I was prepping for my HBS admissions interview and it's actually informative and interesting.