Entries from August 2008 ↓

Yesterday was my first day of my first year of business school. I only had one class on Monday so there wasn’t much to report, but having now attended three of my four classes I can see that this is shaping up to be a gnarly module. We already have our first team assignment in managerial economics and the my accounting professor kicked off class by telling us that the workbook we were assigned to complete over the summer was only enough to prep us for the first two days of class. Super. I also appear to be the only one in my cohort to have never taken a statistics class before. Also, super. I am confident that I will do well in both classes but I am definitely behind the quantitative eight ball in comparison to my classmates.

In addition to the class work heaped upon us there is a plethora of “optional” extracurricular activities to dive into at UF. Optional is quotationalized because you are not required to attend these activities however you would be a fool not to since they are primarily: 1) Free (my managerial econ teacher would reprimand me if he read this statement) and 2) A key cog in the MBA experience that can shine a light on what to do with your degree. UF hosts three speaker series, the Alfred A. Ring Distinguished Speaker Series, the Finance Professional Speaker Series and the Entrepreneurship Speaker Series. Amongst the three series there is usually one or two speakers to hear on campus every week.

There are also career fairs and GBCSO workshops to attend. If your search for an internship and/or job hasn’t begun before the first day of class then you are already running behind. Finally, somewhere between classes, speakers, career fairs and workshops there are MBAA activities to attend, intramural games to win and tailgating festivities to be enjoyed. This module is going to pass before my eyes in a flash.

MBA orientation kicked off yesterday.  There are only 38 37 of us in the Class of 2010 and everyone seems cool and down to earth.  The variety of life experience is much more diverse than I expected.  There’s a journalist in the class, an ex-fighter pilot and ex-Peace Core(r).  In fact, the class is so diverse that none of my classmates shares a birth city with another and perhaps more surprisingly there are only seven classmates that hold an undergrad degree from UF.  I expected at least a third of the class to have had one.  Equally more surprising is that one of my classmates is also from Los Angeles and was friends with a girl I know back in L.A.  I had never met this kid until yesterday.  It’s amazing how small the world can be.

After the breakfast meet and greet we went into in Stuzin Hall and were bombarded by speeches, information and opportunites.  There is a lot of opportunity to be extremely involved in the program and in extracurricular activities and I plan on diving head first into as much as I can handle.  They also gave us our class stats and they are quite impressive.  The average GPA of my class is a 3.4, the average GMAT is a shade under 690, the average age is 27 and the average years of work experience is four.  I am not sure how I cajoled my way into a class so impressive but I like it.

Day Two was supposed to be our Ropes obstacle course out at Lake Wauberg but Tropical Storm Fay cancelled that for us.  Ropes has been rescheduled for Saturday but of course Fay can’t make up her mind which way she wants to blow and it turns out we could have done the course today.  I am convinced that it will rain on Saturday and we will be the first MBA class at UF to not do the ropes course.  So instead of Ropes we had our Developing Yourself leadership day.  We received our DiSC evaluations, participated in a fun listening exercise, wrote the alphabet chicken scratch style with our non-dominant hands and practiced our elevator pitches.  It was interesting and interactive stuff. Hopefully once school starts our real classes will be as interactive as our orientation has been so far.

I spent the last four days up in Gainesville painting my new house and I learned several interesting things about my new pad and neighborhood.

1. It’s a pain to paint a house that has thirteen foot ceilings. My body is sore in places I didn’t know existed. Last time I ever paint a rental. Probably.
2. I am only a five minute bike ride from Stuzin and Matherly and Bryan Hall. Even though it is a quick jaunt to school I am guaranteed to arrive at class drenched in sweat.
3. It is common practice in Gainesville to leave an old stove sitting on the lawn. In fact it is encouraged.
4. Gainesville has a a thriving tranny population. My house sits in the heart of it. Lovely.
5. Gainesville is crawling with cops. I must have seen at least thirty cruisers in the four days I was there. Strangely, they leave the trannys alone.
6. The previous tenants were numbskulls. It’s okay to put an empty box of cereal up the chimney instead of the trash. It will eventually burn away anyways, right guys?