The pace picks up...

From this point forward I will have little time for outside activities. We gave a presentation Global Economic Environment yesterday regarding outsourcing and whether or not it was good for the U.S economy (hint: it is) and we are following that up next week with a debate on whether the IMF should be in the business of bailing out countries who mess up their finances.

Tomorrow in the same class we have our third and last take-home quiz due. 10 questions. I expect it will take several hours of my evening to finish. I was hoping to play some hold 'em tonight but that might have to wait until a later date when I have more time. Which sucks, because I've been doing pretty well lately and would like to keep the

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's nice to have a long weekend off, but there is certainly a lot of work that needs to get done. I got mid-semester reviews in my non-math classes and am pulling As in all of them. This is good. I also have three final projects and two debates due in this same class. Not so good.

Anyway I could put that aside for a day and just focus on one thing that I do very well: eat. I got up and went to the gym this morning with my classmate Alfredo so we could clear a little extra space to fill with food. We'll be doing the same tomorrow morning to make up for stuffing ourselves to bursting today.

I went to my aunt's house in Lynn, MA for the traditional meal. Turkey, potatoes, stuffing, pie. All that good stuff.

My classmate Dave, who is Korean-American, invited me up to his place in Salem for a late traditional Korean meal. Lots of kim chee, barbecued beef, fish pancakes and a bunch of other things were on the menu there. Several of our other classmates were there with there wives and much drinking and eating were done. This being a Korean household, the karaoke machine was turned on as well.

I just finished up the first part of my research for a group presentation that we are doing on Monday. We have to debate whether or not outsourcing to India is good for the American economy. We divided our group. Three of us, including me, are doing the "yes" argument. And two people are doing "no." We have a very slick video presentation to use for the "no" side so we are hoping that's what we'll be doing (a coin is flipped at the beginning of class to decide sides.) Either way we are ready and will have a lot of solid information to present.

Very big American in Tokyo?

That's the plan, anyway.

As part of Brandeis' MBA program you have to spend a semester abroad (internship or Fall semester of your second year.)

I could play it safe and go off to Europe somewhere, but the plan is to head to Tokyo and go to either Keio or Waseda University. I've never been to Asia and don't know when or if I will ever get another chance. Both schools are in the heart of Tokyo and are top-notch universities to boot.

There will likely be classmates of mine in Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai and Bangkok so there will be the opportunity to see a lot of Southeast Asia at very affordable prices.

I explained this to my wife before I entered the program so she's OK with it. She'll be coming to visit so she's looking forward to that. The two of us will stick out like sore thumbs in Tokyo as we are both very tall (I'm 6'3, she is 6'0) so that should be interesting. One of my American classmates who lived in Tokyo for several years said that most people like Americans even if they might disagree with the current political situation.

I got three midterms back yesterday. Two As and a B, though I was expecting more out of myself on the "B" so I'm fairly disappointed. That was in Finance and the final is worth 50% of our grade, so there is still room to get an A in that class.

That's all for now.

Jeff

Almost like fall break...

This week was very uneventful. This was perhaps the least amount of homework I've done in a week since school started. Midterms just wrapped up last week so I'm certain that this had something to do with it.

I have a case (about Allied Chemical Corp) to prepare for tomorrow morning and no class in the afternoon. The teacher of my normal afternoon class is a former central banker and is a specialist on monetary policy so he is often away doing consulting work. A few weeks ago he was in Peru, I'm not certain where he is this time.

This week could be uneventful, but I won't allow it to be. I need to get cracking on my semester-end projects (three of them) because I don't want to be that guy doing them all the night before they are do. Not the way to get As, and I do aim to get As.

Also, I found out I should be interviewing in the next month or so for a summer internship at Merrill Lynch's Private Client Group. It would be nice to remove the pressure of finding a summer internship from the list so early on in this game.

And I just remembered that the school was hosting a pot luck dinner today. At 4pm. Oops.

A change in course

I've decided to rededicate this blog to a more daily and direct pursuit of mine. In September I started a full time graduate program at Brandeis University to get an MBA in Finance.

Getting an MBA is something I have always wanted to do and truth be told is something that I thought I'd have done by this point in my life. Unfortunately fear and circumstance have always prevented me from making the leap until this past year. I was recently married, and when I got engaged my wife and I decided that this was the time to go to graduate school. We were newly married and had no children. Best to get the MBA and get established in a new career before we had kids and the added pressures that they bring.

So with that decision made I began looking at schools. I liked Brandeis because it was a smaller school and I felt I would be less of a cog in the machine there. The finance department is top notch (as is the operations management/system dynamics staff) and I knew that this would be the focus of my studies. We also wanted to stay in the Boston area as both of our families are nearby and we felt that support structure would be very helpful. My wife also has a job here that she enjoys and that pays fairly well.

Some scholarship money from the school did not hurt either!

So with that said I came to Brandeis on September first and met my classmates. There are 35 first-year MBAs along with an MA program (mainly designed for people with less work experience) as well as a PhD program in Finance and a Masters of Science in Finance. The school is very international by mandate and design, so of the 35 first years perhaps seven or eight are American. The rest of the class are fromt he four corners of the globe. Among my circle of friends are students from Korea, Mexico, Venezuela, Turkey, France, Italy, India, Thailand and the PRC to name only a few. It makes for very dynamic discussions in class, especially when the case being discussed concerns one of the countries that students are from.

I like to think that I'm fairly open minded about most things cultural, but in terms of economics I'm pretty much a hard-core free-market type and most of my professors know this and use my viewpoints accordingly in class. The idea is for all of us to make each other think and have a logical base that supports our views.

So far, one week after the completion of mid-terms I am close to where I thought I would be academically. I have A's or very high B's in all of my classes and plan to have straight A's when things are said and done. One of my best friends is a second year MBA at MIT's Sloan School of Management and so far has straight A's. He has set a high bar and I intend to reach for it as much as possible.

My first semester classes are mostly case-based. Only Financial Theory is test/problem based. This means that I am prepping 3-5 cases a week on average. That alone is about 20 hours of time outside of class so time management is a key component of success.

For the record the more case-based classes are Organizational Behavior, Organizations and Management (focusing on corporate strategy and structure and the interplay between them,) transnational Negotiations and Global Economic Environment where we focus on international financial institutions, trade policy, and globalization.

Add to this that much of the benefit of getting a full time MBA is in developing a network. This also takes time and effort.

Oh yes, and you need to find an internship and eventually a job. This also requires a lot of time and our Career Services department makes sure that you are aware of this very early on in your semester.

And as the cherry on the sundae I work ten hours a week in the school's Admissions Department.

Mind you, the job I left had me working upwards of sixty hours per week and I knew from the experiences of several friends that I would likely be spending more time than that on school and social activities and this has been very much the case. The biggest difference between school and work is that you have much more flexibility in both where and how you spend your time. For instance I can take two hours during the day to go to the gym. It might mean that I'm up late studying, but it also means that when I do work out I have a lot of energy and make the most of it. That was far more difficult to do after working a 12-hour day that left you completely drained.

So this is the start of this blog. Better late than never. I am still going to try to get the old honeymoon stuff posted, possibly by simply modifying the previous posts to add content. We shall see.

My goal is to post several times a week on the happenings at school and talk more on my career goals and how the school provides the opportunity to reach those goals.

Let's see if I can keep up the pace!

Jeff