A peek at my classes

There hasn’t been much going on in the past couple of days that is out of the ordinary. I’ve finally had about a week to focus on classes. I’ve found this Mod’s classes particularly interesting.

Financing Deals has very good practical materials mostly because it is not a class that can be taught with a single textbook. It is very applied and the materials are from industry. We had a team present a pitch on why a particularly huge private company in North Carolina should IPO. My team will be making a presentation in the next class about Convertible Bonds. These deals resonate well with me because I covered similar transactions during the summer.

Private Equity has also been fascinating. We open up each class with the professor asking for volunteers to update us on any private equity related news from the financial press. So far, the class has covered a lot on how the different funds are structured and how the fees and such are shared. I sure will like to be one of those General Partners when I grow up! It also helps that the professor has more than 30 years experience in the Private Equity space. We had a special all-day session by Scott Rostan from Training the Street to cover the LBO modeling part of the class.

Advanced Financial Reporting is getting a little hairy now that we are in the realm of accounting for derivatives. Nothing ever seems straight forward when derivatives are involved. We have a great professor that is by far the biggest Beatles fan I’ve ever met. The class typically starts with a Beatles song, video or trivia.

I have a unique class tomorrow and Saturday. I call it unique because we only meet 3 times. Each meeting will however be for an entire day. It’ll be my first foray into sustainable enterprise but it still has a Finance twist to it. The class will focus on how to make an investment case incorporating environmental and social factors.

For my last two Mods in school, I intend to completely go out of character and go for very very soft core classes like Managing Diversity in the workplace, Negotiations, Corporate Governance, Power, Politics & Leadership etc. I will kick back, relax and golf from January to graduation day on May 11, 2008. It’s not like I’m counting the days or anything.