Not ready for Summer '11

I mean the summer session at school of course. A glorious school-free month ends this weekend. As much as I miss my fellow FEMBAs, I'm loath to give up the lifestyle I've gotten re-accustomed to.

Snapshots from the last few weeks:

- Camping and white water rafting on the Kern River.

- Hiking to the peak of Mt. San Jacinto.

- Boogie boarding in the Pacific Ocean.

- Parties and more parties : day events, night events, mid-day events.

- Catching all the newly released movies.

- Brunch, lunch, dinner and happy hours with old friends and new.

I can do all this and more when my Saturdays aren't spent in and on the road to LA. 

When I don't have to spend Friday nights studying for tests and Sundays on chores.

When I don't have to spend lunch hours finishing homework. 

Instead, I'm going to be giving it all up to spend the next five Saturdays studying Operations Management in marathon 8 hour lecture sessions. Oh the joy.

Bitter much? Oh you bet.

Reflection

One year of MBA got done on June 11th. Time sure does fly when you're having fun. Now I'm on a four week break from school and I'm trying to catch up with regular life. Giving my all to work projects, making those long pending phone calls and visits and getting other major essentials (like my US visa) out of the way. In fact I'm working from Mexico over the next few days while waiting for my visa interview at the US consulate here.

I attended a leadership class at my workplace a couple weeks back where the coaches stressed the importance of reflection at the end of each day. I thought it was an excellent suggestion, and made a mental note to practice it, in order to improve efficiency/productivity etc. Of course I never got started. There was always the next activity to plan, the email to respond to, the dinner to attend, the movie to watch. Why would I spend precious minutes thinking back about what I did well or badly during my day? But now, stuck in a hotel room with spotty Wi-Fi, Spanish language TV channels, and the inability to make local phone calls, I feel compelled to reflect. Not only on my day, but on the past year.

One year of the FEMBA program. What had I hoped for and what have I gained so far? How has it affected my personal life and my day job? Would I recommend this to others?

I can confidently claim that I’ve gained a diverse (yet like-minded) set of friends, broader life perspective, and confidence in my driving skills. And I've been having loads of fun in the process. The FEMBA experience can definitely be a drain on one’s personal and work life, but it can be managed. I would recommend this program to anyone who is simply seeking new experiences and is happy to learn new things just out of interest.

But is this program helping my current job or career prospects? Am I progressing towards some goal while learning, making friends and having fun? Has it helped me chart out my future in some way? Is there something else I should be doing simultaneously?

I don’t have all these answers yet. My reflection so far has mainly yielded questions, but I guess it’s a good start. After all I have a few more days in Mexico to figure my life out ;)

Mixed feelings

This quarter is weird. I have two  core courses each of 2 credits and one 4-credit elective. The core courses are Marketing for the first 5 weeks and then Financial Markets for the next 5 weeks.

A different professor is teaching the marketing class each week and in the 5th week we'll be tested on all of them. Kinda silly if you ask me 'coz there's no continuity at all. Granted, this course is just an introduction to marketing, but I think I'd rather have the same professor and have a method to the teaching. Also, there's very little reading for the classes. I like this subject so I'd like to read more. Only if it's interesting of course. We had some readings about Disney (something about associating pictures with happy memories) which put me to sleep but another about brand management that was pretty cool. The professor who taught the brand class was great. He had excellent examples, engaged the class in discussion and showed us some awesome videos. I wish he taught us all the marketing classes. Here's my favorite video from that lecture:

My other class is the 4-credit elective on international business negotiations. I don't know what I feel about it. The professor is funny, keeps us engaged, and the reading is interesting (when we bother to read them) but the negotiation exercises are..um weird. This week I'm the President of a Munich based company that wants to cut costs by moving all R&D employees to the manufacturing location at a not-so-hot place. My executive team (study group) and I are negotiating with the R&D scientists (other classmates) via EMAIL all week. Umm okay. We'll see how that works out.

After statistics, economics and accounting this quarter seems like a lot of fluff. I have no idea why I'm complaining - I should be celebrating the lighter workload. But somehow it feels like less bang for the buck.