1 - 4 month mark: share your rants, raves and war stories

Sounds familiar. A close colleague graduated from Haas in 2002 (worst year imaginable) and still managed to get into GS. Overall he's a modest guy, so when he says he took four day took road trips to Kirkwood and Northstar every other weekend and still managed to pull off a 3.5, I believe him. Indeed, intensity levels here on the west coast are low; lower yet if you study up in the great PacNW

So I've been in school for just about 1 month now and can finally join in on the rants/raves!

Raves:
-feeling that I'm finally moving forward in life
-I have fabulous group members
-the fact that I'm surrounded by motivated, intelligent people who actually want to be there and come to class prepared
-Profs that understand and acknowledge that you have other classes, actually know your other professors, and are willing to accommodate their classes at times because of that
-The feeling that I'm learning useful, practical knowlege rather than just how to analyze a poem or other useless undergrad-type stuff

Rants:
-Having to buy a laptop (yeah, I knew that I would probably have to break down and buy one eventually, however, I didn't think I'd have to have one for my very first day - I'm taking a stats class)
-Having to learn how to function at both work and class on much less sleep than my body is used to
-the horrible, horrible Operations Management midterm I just took last night. Seriously, it seems that no one I talked to had prepared properly for that test. Probably because the prof. had given us absolutely no clues as to the format of the test.

I would now like to share the best piece of advice I have heard yet. In one of my classes, an abbreviation of a term was being thrown around as if everyone in the class knew it (it wasn't anything from the book or readings - it was a conversation based around a comment made by a student). It took me a few minutes of feeling stupid, but I thought that I finally knew what the abbreviation meant. Then, a classmate sitting next to me leaned over and asked if I knew what it meant. I told him what I thought it meant but that I wasn't positive. After class, he asked another classmate who confirmed that it was what I thought. I was so proud of myself for figuring it out. However, I then said that I was so happy that I wasn't the only one in these classes who wasn't already a business expert.

He told me, "Don't worry, most of these people just act like they know all this stuff."

Fake it til you make it.

See... now I wanna know the term...

It wasn’t anything terribly exciting or difficult. People were talking about POS technology, which finally dawned on me meant Point-of-Sale. However, it’s just not a term used in my line of business and somehow I was able to reach deep into the recesses of my brain and recall it from my days working retail.

I am a programmer and I work with POS technology daily. Of course, it doesnt stand for "Point of Sale" when I say it

Unfortunately, your meaning was all I could think of at first!

Thanks for the info guyes!

Bumping the thread

bump!!

jumsumtak - following you has it's own benefits ... found this great thread ...
would it be possible for you to share your experiences at Fuqua?

That's gonna suck big time ... Another round of faking stuff ... And I thought I was better off without it..


VC over entrepreneurship, that's an interesting info. I too have thought about it for a while, guess I'll just have to research a bit more about them once I am in.

People with balls of steel land up with great opportunities, don't they...

Great find jumsumtak! Do share your experiences :D

Raves -
+ I'm enjoying my time at school - with people, in classes etc.
+ I'm learning to manage time - that was one of the reasons I decided to come to school.
+ I'm fairly comfortable with academics. I don't spend a whole lot of time, but I do get decent grades, I feel. That I feel is a decent advantage because I get to spend that time somewhere else.
+ Quite often, I feel that the whole team thing slows me down, but I enjoy being in that setting. Again, that's because I wanted to be around people and form new relationships and also, because I'm comfortable with academics, at the moment.

Rants -
- it is sometimes overwhelming and you definitely experience FOMO. If you step back and think that you get to do this only once and you are essentially choosing your future, it gets scary really fast.
- hard to remain in touch with girlfriend and family
- haven't found time to check my expenses - surely would've overshot my budget by now
- I'm not extremely extrovert, so that kind of puts me at a slight disadvantage while recruiting (can't small talk for long). I'm trying to adjust and play to my strengths though.

Neither a rant nor a rave -
People at business school talk about burning yourself out all the time. I have factored all of that, and I'm actually going for broke. I want to experience the burnout. I'm recruiting for several things that I'm interested in (not everything, but I'm not cutting down things just because I need to 'focus'). I might change this strategy in future, but I will not stop exploring things just because people tell me that I'm going to get tired eventually. I realize this is early and I might have to leave out things eventually, but I want it to happen organically.

That's a first. No one has talked about FOMO yet. Thanks for sharing...

FOMO is definitely very real in bschool. Here's another current student's perspective: how-many-hours-week-for-b-school-bonus-points-for-schulich-172651.html#p1374348

Rave:
1) I love the people. Everyone is super impressive and down to earth. I'm really glad I chose a school that favored high social skills, since I've heard horror stories from other M7's.
2) Location is great. I went to a big city undergrad school and no one really developed a deep bond with their school. I love the small town feel of Kellogg. Every weekend people are going to hang out with Kellogg students, which definitely builds deep bonds. And Chicago is a 20 minute Uber away, so we can go there if things get boring
3) I love the culture. Between KWEST, CIM, and sections they do a great job to ensure everyone has a group of friends. I've very extroverted, but even introverts are easily able to find friendships
4) Everything is so much cheaper than NYC, and free food is easy to find. The bars are cheap, and even though I party every night, I'm actually UNDER budget.
5) People party a lot here, which I enjoy.

Rants:
1) Everyone is sick all the time. We flew off the exotic locations and then were stuffed together for orientation, while not sleeping and drinking every night...definitely has created some superbugs.
2) More homework than I expected. I wouldn't say it's hard, but more time intensive than I thought. I will say that, even though I'm busier than I thought I would be, I enjoy it a lot (Something that wasn't true when I was working).