Ten days into interview prep, I still cannot say I'm confident about landing a job during interview week. This could be one of the banes of studying in a place with 800 students. The conversation in the halls is constantly centered around interviews and dings and closed lists and case prep. Walk into MBA Cafe at 7pm on a Saturday and you'll find the place buzzing with students steeped in case prep and mock interviews with their prep groups. The level of collaboration, given that everyone is competing against each other, is heartening to behold. When I say this I'm sidelining for a moment the cynical MBA who would say they are all ultimately motivated by selfish interests :D. Nevertheless, the intensity of the atmosphere jumps out and grabs your gut. It's quite an experience!
However, I believe that these weeks of preparation and the interviews themselves will hopefully increase my depth of understanding of the stuff I've learned so far by forcing me to pay more attention to detail. I think this is a good outcome to achieve irrespective of the status of the job search process. Now that I have indulged my craving to write at 2am, I should probably try really hard to sleep and ensure that the rest of the day is productive. Ciao!
I should get a job. No, I will get a job. I might just get a job. I won't get any interviews. But I have a few interviews. But what if I don't get any interviews from the firms I'm really hopeful about? And I go on and on this way, night and day. The relaxed feeling from the break is gone and paranoia and lunacy have taken its place. Internship interviews are looming large and soon I will know who I'm interviewing with. There's nothing else on my mind.
I don't even know if I'm handling this right. I have a great group to prep for interviews with and I have time to become really well prepared. I'm making a conscious effort not to let my academics slip in the race for a job. I keep myself gainfully occupied all the time and am keeping close tabs on the caffeine intake. It still does not feel quite right or enough. Crazy! At least I'm glad I'm not stressing too much. Because when I think of ending the interview period without an internship in hand it does not give me a shiver or make me lose my mind. I'm happy about the level of perspective I seem to have. Hopefully I won't be a nervous wreck if I really am in such a situation :-). Time will tell...
It's 4.18am and school starts today (can't call it tomorrow anymore) and I just can't get myself to sleep. What a way to begin the new semester! I always nullify all the good a break does to me on the last night of the break. I just cannot reset my sleep cycle (not that I have one). My body refuses to obey the clock when it comes to sleeps. And I think that is logical in a way, you sleep when you are too tired to function, which really happens only once in 48 hours or so. When I claim this, my friends say I'm perfect for Wharton and the jobs after. Whatever!The winter break, however, was great. I did nothing related to Wharton, MBA or jobs, though I should have. I read a lot, though not quite enough. But then there's no such thing as enough reading. I finally gave Camus his rightful time, I made him wait for too long. But there's a different place and time for book reviews. I watched a whole lot of movies too, some of them for the first time and others all-time favorites. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Roman Holiday, Godfather I & II, Fight Club, Om Shanti Om, Schindler's List, Shawshank's Redemption, Simpsons-The Movie, The Man from Earth and a few more I think. 'The Man from Earth' was particularly good and all thanks to a friend who brilliantly recommended it on another such night of insomnia. I went to a party in California for New Year eve. I ate home-cooked south Indian food for the rest of my stay there, met up with some friends and slept in till noon the whole week and stayed glued to the internet. Bliss!I think I will feel jealous of myself when I read this post again two weeks later... Nevertheless, here's to a new semester!
I vividly remember this time last year. I was ecstatic about being admitted to Wharton and was still dealing with the enormity of the change my life was about to take. One year later and after six months of Wharton, life is still changing, inexplicably so.
I believe a large part of business school is the continuous change it entails. I came in naiver than I am today, maybe even less sure of myself than I am now. I discovered the much feared peer pressure, dissected it and would like to think I conquered it. I found new ways to stretch time to make the days seem longer than 24 hours. I found stimulating pursuits to replace sleep and achieved new levels of insomnia and new levels of inebriation. I learned to "deal" with email, to skim, sift and separate the important from the not-so-important. I even mastered the art of color coding, tagging, flagging and archiving to surpass human levels of organization. I confronted the American grading system, got bewildered, questioned every method I've employed thus far in my previous academic life and finally devised a way to make results proportional to effort. I made friends, friends I can call at 3am. I have friends I can discuss philosophy, economics, films and music with while getting drunk; I can even be my cynical self to them. I realized I don't miss India, neither do I think America is the end of my journey, I proved to myself that geography holds no significance in my life. I witnessed cultures from all over the world, analyzed them to death and ultimately decided diversity is overrated. I understood that everything is negotiable, that perseverance pays, that charm is a weapon, that diplomacy can delude.
I learned all of this and more, way beyond what this blog can express. Here's hoping Wharton continues to be the enigmatic, priceless, eye-opening lesson in perspective it has been so far. I'm enjoying my journey. I hope you enjoyed my retrospective rant. Wish you a very Happy New Year!
I was at Orlando for thanksgiving and had a blast. I enjoyed the weather and the 8+ hours of sleep every night more than anything else. We went to Universal Studios and Sea World, it was awesome fun. It's amazing how they have created a whole new world inside Universal Studios. There's so much for kids to do in the United States! Here are some pics which my friend clicked :D...
I came back to Philly last night and spent most of my Sunday morning writing a speech for my communications class and sleeping some more. Four days is just not enough to catch up on all the sleep lost at Wharton :-)
I am writing this post when I should actually be studying for my Statistics final. But then anything beats studying stats and blogging wins hands down :-). The truth is I have no idea what to study.
In more exciting musings, I have a day off on Wednesday. I guess I will spend a part of the day shopping for clothes! I really need to sleep too, hopefully the drinks I am sure I will have tomorrow night to celebrate the last final will take care of the much needed extra sleep :-). I'm going to Florida for thanksgiving and need to research what fun things are there to do. I also have a meeting with the Follies team and a bunch of things to do for the Wharton Journal. (&#%* this post is turning into an exhaustive to-do list!) Speaking about the Wharton Journal, it is an awesome place to get the insider scoop on life at Wharton. All the major events that happen over the week are covered and there's some fun stuff to read too. The journal is living proof that people at Wharton do cool stuff and are not all quant jocks who only study, recruit, network and do other such boring stuff. So check it out at http://www.whartonjournal.com
I will sign-off as a painful all-nighter is staring at my face. Ciao...
How would you react when you walk out of an examination hall with no idea whatsoever if you did well or not? I had my marketing final today and was rather bewildered when I walked out of the exam half hour early. This post is not a rant about how well or badly I am doing academically. It is about a certain train of thought I have been mulling over for a while now that came to a sort of culmination today.
What is the right approach to academics in an MBA program? Is there a right approach at all? Taking the issue of grades - Most people come to B-School to advance their careers or to find their calling in life. In my opinion, grades are not the deciding factor for success or failure of such pursuits. With heavy student support for grade non-disclosure policy, no employer really asks for grades or uses them to decide whether to make an offer to students. That said, it is really easy to stay near the mean grade at a place like Wharton. It is going from B to A that takes all the time and effort. The worth attached to that effort varies from person to person. For some it might be effortless, for others good grades might be a way of validating their mastery over a subject, for others it could be a mere ego trip. What is important to realize here is that it is a personal choice and endless comparison of grades with fellow students (trust me it happens even in grad school, even in B-School!) is a criminal waste of time and energy.
Coming back to the approach to academics, this is how I look at it. I believe it does me a world of good to measure my academic performance by how much I have learned, how much of new knowledge I have imbibed over the duration of the course. A mere number or a letter says nothing to me about how much of say, economics, I know after six weeks in a microeconomics course. Can I talk eloquently about what I learned in class, can I apply the concepts to real life situations? I would much rather answer in the affirmative to these questions. I know I am on the right track when I see the warranty card of my new iPod Touch and wonder what expensing method Apple might use to estimate the warranty expenses they are likely to incur. Or when I think about "price discrimination" when I choose two-day shipping on Amazon. I might sound like a geek, but I maintain that an MBA is all about application of the concepts you learn. I expect an MBA to change the way I think about the things I observe and I am extremely glad that at a most rudimentary level, it seems to be happening to me.
I guess I can now go to sleep, nonchalant that in the larger scheme of life today's Marketing exam and Monday's Economics exam and Tuesday's Statistics exam are all inconsequential!
 I never once imagined I would go pub crawling in lingerie and coat :-) and I did just that on Saturday. Yep, bedroom casuals below the waist and business formals above the waist, that's "Walnut Walk" for you! The girls looked uber sexy and the men, hilarious, as we marched all night from pub to pub. The weather was awesome, a tad too warm for October but just right for the occasion... The highlight of the night, however, was a bunch of random guys on the road who insisted on pulling down their trousers and taking pictures with us :D.
There are just too many exciting things to do at Wharton. There is something for everybody and more. I'm already loaded and rearing to take on more. I got the two positions that I really wanted, I had decided to shoot for them even before I reached Wharton :-). I will be taking up some more work in one of the professional clubs. I am part of one sports club and will join one more shortly. Then of course, there are various ongoing community service activities that I intend to participate in. Time management is key when it comes to managing academics and parties and clubs and your personal life. And I must say, I am hanging in there for now.
Last week was called "Hell Week", fondly describing the numerous exams, submissions and cases due day after day during the week. It gives you the impression that if you get through this week, and you do so only once, you are apparently over the hurdle. But I think that is misreading it completely. It's just that this week is the first of its kind at Wharton, once you get through it, you learn to expect it and to accept it the next time. So I feel the worst is yet to come and it seems quite logical because recruiting has not even begun yet. So many more hell weeks are in store :-). I know I sound unusually cheerful about it. Maybe I found an efficient way to manage my time, or I learned how not to be stressed, or it is all the liquor from last night's party lingering around...
|
