First week down, several to go

The first week was not too bad but there were a slew of club, class and social activities all competing for space on my Outlook Calendar. I had to make some decisions during the week about what career clubs, student organizations and leadership activities I’ll commit myself to and also exactly what type of jobs/industries I’ll focus my internship searchlight on come September when the recruiters start coming around. Fortunately, I got my a-ha! moment to these. I hope this will help with managing my time effectively. I’ve started putting together my database of everyone I know in the industries I’m interested in. My friends who are recent MBA grads have all been very supportive with sharing their job search experiences and how to master the art of schmoozing.

My study group members and I are getting to know one another better and they’ve all been great. One thing I can say is that we all learn and laugh a lot together.

Once again it’s on

Classes officially started today for all students in the MBA class of 2008. August 2006 seemed so far away some months ago when I got the admission offer. As with other Business schools, we kicked off this Mod with the core classes like Finance, Econ, Stats and Accounting. I had three classes today all back to back and the professors all spent some time telling us about their fascinating backgrounds and the rules that’ll govern the classes. The classes were all interesting except that I had to run to the café to grab a cup of coffee to really wake me up for the first class which started at 8am. (Gasp!)

The Accounting professor was especially interesting. Incidentally, he spent his earlier years with his parents who were then living in West Africa and graduated from high school in my home country of Nigeria before returning to the States for college.

I’ll try to update the blog as frequently as I can but it’s going to take some commitment given the current congestion of my Outlook Calendar.

Small World

I found out today that my friend who is also an MBA student at Oxford University in the UK currently interning in New York has been living with my cousin who is also having his internship in New York. I talk to them both every week and none of us made this connection until this tail end.
At tonight’s cocktail party, I ran into a classmate that interviewed just before me at one of the other schools I considered for the MBA. Truly a small world.

Introspection

This has been a fun filled orientation week. We kicked off the week with the announcement of our sections, study groups and car pools. My section has 72 students all of which will take classes together in this Mod. The study groups and car pools are subsets of the section. I fall into a group that I can simply describe as diverse, both professionally and culturally. At my team’s kick of meeting, we all agreed to harness this diversity to make it our greatest strength. I was a bit worried about how the car pool will work out but with the guys in my pool living right next to me in my apartment, it will not be a problem at all especially since we take the exact same classes.
Got a call from a friend at one of the bulge bracket I-Banks still on his internship that he's just been made an offer. He rolls into town on this weekend and has promised me as much beer as I can handle. Too bad I have an 8am class on Mondays. Let the good times roll.

Most of the other activities for the week have been based mostly on the need for us to know who we truly are and identify our career interests to build our 'individual brands'. I can already see some buzzwords creeping into my vocabulary. All fun stuffs…and oh breakfast and lunch have been on the house all week.

A short break

The last week was a very hectic one. I had set a deadline of today to get my roommate and my brother both fully settled in so I can head to Florida for a short break before orientation starts. I was surprised at the prices of used cars in the Triangle area. The cars we were considering were at least two grand more expensive than they cost in the neighboring states. I had even started considering buying the cars for them from Florida. Fortunately, we found some sweet deals that took care of them both. I had quickly introduced them both to Craigslist as part of their America 101 crash course. There was a lot of driving all over town to check out different cars but on the bright side, I pretty much know all the major places in the Raleigh-Durham area now. My last word to them before heading to the airport was that they both needed to make mapquest or mappoint their good friends from hereon.

Orientation starts for International students on Friday and for everyone else next Monday. It’ll run from 8 in the morning till 9pm daily with some few breaks in between. In other words, the famous Mod1 starts in one week. I’ve heard so much about how crazy the first semester (Mods 1 & 2) will be. I am glad I attended ASW (Pre-Term) as it’s tuned me into the academics wavelength. I don’t mean to scare those just coming in without attending ASW but they’ll need to get into the flow of things ASAP and hit the ground running right away. This might take some work.

The heat wave across the country still continues. Surprisingly, the triangle area of North Carolina has been much hotter than Florida. Need to sign off now; the plane is about to land.