Mark and Jie's Journey to B-School

Psst, I'm blogging again

2009-02-09T07:29:00.001-05:00

Check it out: Mark, Jie, and Walter’s Journey to Amsterdam

It's so hard to be Mark

2006-06-09T00:05:00.000-04:00

Originally I was going to title this post with a reference to the song 'The End' by The Doors, one of my all time favorite songs and bands. However, after the events of the day I decided to instead quote my sister, who used to sarcastically repeat that phrase during our lunches while she was in grad school and I a freshman at UT. I arranged my schedule to be off from Thursday afternoon to Monday afternoon and after I reminded her at our Thursday lunch each week of my busy plans for the remainder of the day she would reply that it must be so difficult to be me.

After a wet and wonderful graduation ceremony, with a solid D+ speech from Dean Light (there's grade disclosure for you!), we hung out at the reception for a while before heading back for a pre-dinner nap. We had dinner at Ristorante Fiore, the site of our first North End dinner over admit weekend over two years ago. After a delicious and enjoyable dinner I decided that yes, it is hard to be me.

I've decided to end my blogging career, at least for the time being, with this business school blog. Sadly enough there won't be a BCG (oops, I let it slip!) or Chicago blog forthcoming. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did, the last two+ years have really been something special. I hope to wrap this up with a table of contents, but this could be The End. As Tex would say, Good bye, and good luck!

A little advice for future graduates

2006-06-08T10:05:00.000-04:00

Here's just a little tip for future graduates of HBS (or HLS for that matter). If more than one of the following are true you should not attend the Harvard University morning graduation ceremony:

You are claustrophobic
You might not even attend graduation if it weren't for the fact that your family is in town
It's cold and sprinkling/raining
You were up late the night before
You're hungover

Seeing as all these things are true of me to one degree or another, I ditched the morning ceremony after standing outside for hours and then sitting in a cramped, wet folding chair for about 45 minutes. I don't see how everyone is going to get back in time for the 12:30 HBS ceremony, much less the 11:30 lunch, but we'll see. With all that in mind, I decided to shamelessly bail and come back for pizza with the family.

Wha???

2006-06-05T10:07:00.000-04:00

I just got back from jogging and logged on to find a direct link to my grades for this last semester. Expecting all 2's, or perhaps some mix of 1's, 2's, and 3's, I was amazed to find scores high enough to put me into consideration for 2nd Year Honors. Who knew?

Ironically, the two classes that I thought I struggled through the finals were my best grades, while the two "easier" finals were not as good. It would be kind of a nice end to my HBS experience to wind up with some sort of honors.

Back in Boston

2006-06-04T19:08:00.000-04:00

This is the third and last time I'll be using this title for a post.

Jie and I drove back into Boston today with A&A from a sectionmate's wedding reception in NYC. The reception was at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center and was a fantastic event. The food was great, I got to drink Sam Adams again after having none in Texas, and we got to hang out and dance with several people we haven't seen in a month. As they say, a good time was had by all.

This week should be a busy one. Graduation week activities commence tomorrow, culminating with commencement on Thursday. After that we'll spend the weekend hanging out with Jie's parents (at the cape?) and then the movers come on Monday. Amidst all this other activity I need to get preapproved for a mortgage and tie up other random loose ends in Boston. The tying up of this blog will probably occur after we get back to Texas on June 16th.

Special Notification of Data Theft

2006-05-08T15:22:00.000-04:00

I just recieved an e-mail from the McCombs school with that ominous title informing me that my SS# and birthdate were both stolen from the McCombs servers in that security breach a few weeks ago. Per their advice I went online to Experian and placed a 90-day fraud alert on my account. This is going to be somewhat inconvenient during the mortgage process, but better safe than sorry...

Finis!

2006-05-03T18:35:00.000-04:00

It looks like everything is said and done on my academic career at HBS. I finished my last final this morning and then after a brief respite put the finishing touches on my write-up for my field study. My field study partner and I are going to continue to work on the concept we've thought up and I think there is a pretty good chance that we will actually make some money on it. Unfortunately, profits are inversely related to the number of people who know about the idea, so I can't share anything.

My plan for this blog is to wrap things up over the next few months and finish it off with some sort of table of contents post or something like that. After that it will just be a record of my time at HBS and hopefully useful to future applicants. The original purpose was to provide a way to keep our family and friends in Texas informed of the happenings in Boston, so with that in mind I think I will probably keep blogging when we move to Illinois. I guess at that point people may want to know what it's like to be a consultant, so the blog could serve a wider purpose, but I may just keep it private. We'll see, I have lots of time to sit in a patio chair (like I am now), drink a cold beer (like I am now), and think about these things (like I am now).

There is a good chance that I won't get back to blogging until after graduation next month, so see you then!

One more in the books...

2006-05-02T21:10:00.000-04:00

Jie and I made the drive in two days this time around (my 4th in two years, in case anyone is counting). It was entirely uneventful, again, which is great. This time we went down 81 into Tennessee and then turned right to go through Nashville and Memphis to hit Texas via Arkansas instead of Louisiana. I know our money would be welcome in LA but I didn't want to suffer delays or detours. Selfish, I know...

Today I took my Professional Services final, which was about as easy as expected, and now I just have Investment Management tomorrow. I actually also have to submit some wrap-up paperwork for my Field Study as well, so I'm working on that also. By this time tomorrow all should be done and I'll be enjoying a celebratory dinner at Lupe Tortilla's.

2 down, 2 to go

2006-04-29T18:59:00.000-04:00

My afternoon final yesterday wasn't bad at all, it turns out. Although I did write almost 2400 words, it only took 2.5 hours so it was ok. Today Jie and I have spent most of the day packing and getting ready for our drive tomorrow. In a way it's actually a good thing that we had to buy a new car, as I don't think there is any way we would have fit everything in the Honda.

Today was the NFL Draft, which is probably my favorite day of the year after the Super Bowl and before the start of the college football season, except perhaps for my birthday. I was a little surprised by the Texans decision to pass up on Reggie Bush, but it does make some sense. Kudos to Tennessee for seeing the potential in VY and drafting him at #3, though it does pain me to see Bud Adams take a homegrown Houston talent. Ah well, I guess I should be following the Bears now anyway...

One down...

2006-04-28T13:03:00.000-04:00

Oh man, I wasn't ready for that final at all. I'm not sure what I could have done to be prepared without spending many hours reworking models from the beginning of the course. Given the incentives I outlined below, that wasn't going to happen. Ok, time to regroup for the afternoon.

A few pre-finals thoughts

2006-04-28T07:57:00.000-04:00

Google Calendar is really, really cool. A few features deserve mention: You can share calendars with another person (like a spouse) and their appointments show up in one color while yours show up in another. This makes it really easy to see what you have going on, particularly if you're married with two separate calendars but one social life. It also has a quick add function where you can just type in appointments. So, I can type something like 'Dinner with Melanie at Sushi Sake in Austin at 7pm on 6/21" and it will automatically generate an entry at 7pm on 6/21 titled Dinner with Melanie and with Sushi Sake in Austin as the location. On the entry there is a map link to Google Maps which pulls up the exact Sushi Sake location. Very cool.
Everyone is getting pregnant here. Some very good friends of ours announced last night that they are pregnant, and they are merely joining a long list of couples we know who are preparing for a(nother) child. (Note to parents: Don't read anything into this!)
I start the first of my four finals in about 2 minutes. This afternoon I have the most difficult of them, a 2500 word word-limit marathon that touches on just about every case of the entire course. The "1-2-3" grading method creates strange incentives for me, as I only have a long shot at 2nd year honors, no shot at Baker Scholar, and no shot at MBA w/ Distinction (1st & 2nd year honors but not Baker). Since I have about a 90% of getting a 2 in my classes it leads to things like inadequate preparation for my finals, taking two in one day when I could spread them out, and so forth. With all that said, wish me luck!

Dean Light = More strenuous academics

2006-04-24T23:28:00.000-04:00

The announcement today that Jay Light will go from Acting Dean to the real thing was probably not a real surprise to people who have followed the situation closely, though I was caught a little off-guard. I guess with the situation with Summers at Harvard they wanted to get someone in here before Summers left so there wouldn't be the uncertainty and instability of two Dean searches at the same time.

Regardless, it is probably important to know that the official appointment of Dean Light is definitely a signal that HBS will be returning to it's academically rigorous roots in the coming years. The creation of Learning Teams and the return of grade disclosure already heralded more rigor in the program and this is just confirmation of the trend. According to classmates who had Dean Light as a professor last year, he was a big fan of the cold call and didn't tolerate students who were unprepared. I think that's great, as nothing kills class discussion faster than a low level of discipline and thus lack of preparation. However, as I outlined in my position on grade disclosure, this institution needs to make sure that the benefits of the HBS experience outside the classroom aren't diminished more than the experience inside the classroom is enhanced. It will be interesting to see how the administration accomplishes its goals without a return to the supposed cutthroat days of HBS.

An abysmal repeat

2006-04-23T15:21:00.000-04:00

Alas, the chili cook-off ended once again in a drunken defeat for the team of Section G. This time I think we were even more robbed than last time, but it's cool, I've learned to accept it. Just 10 classes and four finals left and then I'm completely done.

You can't spell revenge without G

2006-04-22T08:32:00.000-04:00

Among other things, my apartment currently contains just over 25 pounds of beef, 8 pounds of roma tomatoes, paired bottles of champagne and orange juice, a 30-pack of Coors Light, several gallons of beef broth, chicken broth, and tomato sauce, and miscellaneous other chili-making ingredients.

It’s a good day for revenge.

Hand off successful

2006-04-20T14:35:00.000-04:00

We just finished handing off stewardship of the Career Teams program to the next generation of captains. Career Teams has been one of the most important parts of the HBS experience for me, and I can honestly say that I think I got more out of the program, both as a participant and a leader, than any other aspect of my HBS experience. I have a final dinner with my own career team this Sunday and then after that it's all memories.

You are looking at...

2006-04-18T23:02:00.001-04:00

...the proud new owners of a 2006 Toyota RAV4!!! We went down to test drive one at 5:30 this afternoon and by 9:30 we'd settled on a price, traded-in our car, and were heading to Anna's Taqueria to finally get dinner. Woo hoo!

21 days and counting

2006-04-09T18:12:00.000-04:00

I had this grand plan to post something every day in April, our last month in Boston, but sadly I have completely failed to do so.  Not without a very good reason, though, as my roommate from college Kelsey and his then-girlfriend now-fiancée Sandy were in town.  Kelsey and I lived together my junior year at Texas and he was instrumental in several important days of my life, including the day I met Jie, our wedding, and the sailing trip where I set my personal best for beers consumed in a 24-hour period (28).  With that history it should be no surprise that I was too busy over the last few days to write anything.

I’ve got a lot that I would like to accomplish between now and April 30th, the day we drive out of here for the last time (we’re flying in and out for graduation).  The handover of the Career Teams program to next year’s Captains will happen within the next few weeks, as will my last meeting with my Career Team, the conclusion of my field study, and a great number of irritating tasks that you have to do when you move from one city to another.  It looks to be a busy three weeks.

In Professional Services we found out on Thursday that our professor did not make tenure and thus is concluding his teaching career at HBS.  The school has a pretty strict up-or-out policy and so professors denied tenure are out within a year.  It’s too bad, because Professor Nanda works hard than just about anyone to prepare for class, teach cases that fit a specific purpose, and engage students in the classroom.  Though over-theatrical at times, he’s one of my favorites here and it’s a shame future classes won’t get to experience him.

I've been transformed!

2006-04-04T21:24:00.000-04:00

Jie and I have finally more or less finalized our summer plans.  We decided to eschew the Europe trip and instead will use that money towards nice furniture and other furnishings for our new place in Chicago.  So, it looks like we’ll be driving down to Texas during finals (I have several days between my only in-class final and my first at-home final) and then enjoying the lake for most of May.  Then we’ll be in NYC in early June for a post-wedding party for a classmate and Boston for graduation.  After that the movers come and pack us up here to store our stuff until we move in sometime around August.  We’ll be going to Chicago to look for a place to live and then back to Texas for the duration of the summer.
The typical summer vacation for b-school grads involves travel through many countries, so we’re going against the grain on this one.  The general consensus is that in 10 years the $7-10k that a 3-4 week vacation would cost us will be long forgotten while the memories of Europe will be invaluable.  I take issue with that reasoning for a couple of reasons.  I’ve always been adamant about taking all my vacation each year, so I don’t think this is my last opportunity to go to Europe (and as a consultant I may have miles and points to use in the future that I don’t have now).  Furthermore, I can’t imagine a more relaxing and invigorating way to spend my “last free summer” than lounging at the lake for nearly three months.

The clearest sign of my HBS “transformation” was my long chain of idle thoughts while walking through the knock-off market in Shanghai over Spring Break.  Rather than spend the time wondering what we would do the next day or how many more hours Jie would spend shopping, instead I found myself fascinated with the supply chain and industry structure around the market.  Take the supply of fake Louis Vuitton purses, for example.  It seems to me that these products are probably manufactured in small shops around China and then shipped to the major knock-off markets, probably by a few powerful distributors.  These distributors then turn around and extend financing on some undoubtedly draconian terms to the merchants that then sell to the public.  This raises all sorts of interesting questions about securing inventory, payment terms on purchases, margins at different points in the chain, and so on.  I guarantee that none of those thoughts crossed my mind when I was in the same market three years ago, pre-HBS.

Congrats!

2006-04-01T11:45:00.000-05:00

A very belated congratulations to all the R2 Admits! As I said this time last year, this is the beginning of a great time. You start winding down at work, making those travel plans, and enjoying the next two years. Congratulations!

The beginning of the end

2006-03-30T14:56:00.000-05:00

I only have 34 classes left this semester.  That’s just amazing to me, I’m not sure where the last two years have gone.

China was a blast.  We flew into Beijing, spent 1.5 days in Xian, and then spent the rest of the time in Shanghai.  In Xian we used Hyatt points (thank you consulting firms!) to get a queen room, but we got lucky and were upgraded to a King Suite instead.  It was a really nice room and on the same level as the Regency Club, which is Hyatt’s little perk room where you can get free breakfast and cocktails.  We assumed we were upgraded to Regency Club since it was on our floor so we partook in a free breakfast before realizing that evening that we weren’t.  Ah well, the breakfast was nice for the first morning.

Shanghai was a whirlwind trip involving numerous lunches and dinners with Jie’s family.  The food was fantastic and it was great to reconnect with all the people that I last saw three years ago.  There were two new kids to play with this time, which is always a lot of fun for me.  Aside from eating, I got to ride my first Chinese train this trip, which was an interesting experience.  We also went to pay respects at the grave’s of Jie’s three deceased grandparents, which was a personally and culturally significant experience.  My China galleries are available on smugmug, just follow the smugmug link to the left and look for the featured galleries.  They’re also listed under Travel.

Now that I’m back for the final run in school Jie and I have turned our attention to summer plans and the number and timing of trips to Chicago to look for a place.  I suppose I’ve also got to figure out what to do with this blog.  I think I’ll keep blogging in one form or another, but I have a feeling that the best thing for this blog is to end at graduation and live on to provide a somewhat encapsulated recording of the HBS experience.  Any other thoughts?

Oh yeah, special thanks to Ben who loaned me a copy of The Face of Battle by John Keegan.  The book was great and I recommend it to anyone looking to read a little history.

Of visitors and trips

2006-03-16T15:49:00.000-05:00

This last weekend we had some very good friends in town from Austin, our first non-family visitors this year.  We had really warm and fairly nice weather so we did quite a bit of touristing, including the Freedom Trail in its entirety and dinner on Newbury Street.  Jie and I are aficionados of a “cult classic” board game called The Settlers of Catan, and I’m pleased to report that I won 5 out of 8 games.  That’s unusual for me, as I generally drink myself out of contention on board game nights.

Summer travel plans are way up in the air for us right now.  We’re planning on buying in Chicago and so it’s hard to rationalize spending $5-7k on a vacation right as we’re about to put $40k+ down on a condo, part of which we’ll be borrowing from somewhere.  And that’s just to hit 10% for an 80-10-10 loan.  It feels a little irresponsible to pay for a big trip, especially when we have a sweet lake vacation spot in Texas, with the home purchase looming.  On the other hand, when are we going to have three months off at the same time again?

We leave tomorrow for Spring Break in China.  We got our RT airline tickets to Beijing for just 30k miles each, and our hotel in Xian is paid for with Hyatt points, so it will be a pretty inexpensive trip.  It should be a lot of fun, too, as we’ve never been to Xian and we’ll get to feast with Jie’s family in Shanghai for almost a week.   I’ll put pictures up when we get back in a few weeks!

Grading at HBS

2006-03-09T19:04:00.000-05:00

One of the things that bothers me about grade disclosure at HBS is the arbitrary nature of grading at the school. Most classes base 50% of your grade on your final exam or paper and 50% on class participation. The final semester grade is in the familiar 1/2/3 format, with ~20% receiving 1’s, ~70% 2’s, and ~10% 3’s. Final exam grades are shown on your grade report as well, though for those they use I/II/III/IV to denote the quartile ranking of your exam grade within the section. For classes with papers you only get a final semester grade, they don’t tell you what you got on your paper.

Now, this is all well and good, except that it has come out in conversations with fellow students that grades sometimes don’t add up. Here are a couple of examples from trusted sources:

In one 2nd year class four students who all participated in class on an approximately equal basis worked together on the final paper. Two students received 1’s for the semester and two received 2’s. Not too strange, you may think, except that another group of three students who worked together on a paper in that class received the range of grades: 1, 2, and 3. How is it possible if the paper is 50% of your grade for one student to get a 3 and another a 1??? Perhaps one student spoke constantly and the other not at all, but that seems unlikely.

Another student received a 1 in one of his first year classes while also scoring a IV on his final exam. How does that happen? Is it really possible to be in the bottom 25% on the exam and top 20% overall?

Anyway, I have more stories but I don’t have approval from those people to share them so I’m not going to. I no longer think grade disclosure is going to be the cultural disaster that I once made it out to be, but I still think it causes unnecessary stress in the first year and is troublesome due in part to the arbitrariness of the grading system at HBS.

Admit Weekend

2006-03-03T15:54:00.001-05:00

It was really nice to see all the (hopefully) future Class of 2008 students around campus today for Admit Weekend. Jie and I are not as involved this year as we were last, though we did attend the Partner’s Club event last night at Tommy Doyle’s and we each participated in Career Panels today. I had a lot of fun meeting people last night and managed to get free drinks off the Texas Club, Canadian Club, and Partner’s Club. Hopefully I didn’t say anything exceedingly stupid to any of the admits like I did last year, though for the record that guy still came to HBS so I think it turned out ok.

I finally got around to putting up my pictures from DC last weekend, so if you want to see some choice shots from around the Capital City you can check them out. I’ll be the first to admit that my photography hasn’t been very inspired lately, but the views from the top of the Washington Monument are pretty cool, as is the “Freedom is not Free” wall at the Korean War Memorial

Are big decisions really that big?

2006-02-23T22:26:00.000-05:00

The other day Jie and I were talking about where we want to live in Chicago and it occurred to me that I would probably be in the exact same situation if I had gone to Stanford instead of HBS for school. Choosing HBS over Stanford probably didn’t make a difference in my summer internship (in fact, one of the people from my apartment complex in Houston who was accepted to Stanford with me also interned at the same firm) and it’s pretty doubtful that it made a difference in full-time recruiting either. Of course, the offer I eventually accepted was only extended to me based on a relationship I had here at HBS, so I might not be at the exact same firm, but I would likely be doing similar things at a similar firm in Chicago.

Just went to an HBS people to Chicago happy hour. Not in a position to type more tonight. Bye.

Pontifications on HBS

2006-02-22T22:09:00.000-05:00

Walking back from the gym today I pondered the meaning and value of my experiences here at HBS. I think this is a fantastic place to spend two years but it seems to me that the value lies not in the education but instead in the features of the school. The people, students and professors, have a profound effect upon the experience, enriching the learning experience far above the actual learning. There are also the opportunities created, due to the reputation of the school and the network, that are only available at comparable educational institutions. After all that, though, I still think of HBS as an expedient of success rather than cause of it. In the working world people only care about where you went to school for a little while, after that it’s about how you do the job. If career success is like climbing a ladder, perhaps HBS is an elevator that starts you off at a higher rung but doesn’t necessarily push you to the top. Getting there is about your skills and abilities (and luck!) and not as much about where you went to school. Or I could just be hopelessly naïve.

I found several bands on Napster to Go that I’m really enjoying: Beth Orton, The Postal Service, and Arctic Monkeys.

2nd year, 2nd semester

2006-02-21T20:00:00.000-05:00

I can now see why so many 2nd year blogs don’t make it through the year.  There really isn’t that much to blog about, at least not the way the material just flows in the 1st year.  Now that my job search is settled all that’s left is to plan our vacation for the summer, find a place to live in Chicago, and enjoy the rest of the term.

Everything is going really well right now.  At this moment it looks like we’ll try to travel in Europe in May, house hunt in June, enjoy Texas in July, and then close on a place in August.  That will give us 3-4 weeks to move in and do all those new home-owner things, which seems like a lot of time right now but probably won’t be when all is said and done.

Classes are going well enough, though I confess I’m not as into them as I should be.  I keep thinking back to the whole grade disclosure debate as I shirk off my work, but I honestly don’t think it would make any difference if my grades were disclosed.

That news that came out today about Larry Summers was pretty interesting, if only in that it means that I’ll graduate HBS and attend the ceremonies at Harvard and HBS without a permanent Dean at either school.  I don’t have an opinion on Summers’ resignation, nor do many of my classmates, judging from the lack of buzz around the school today.

STOP SNOWING!

2006-02-12T11:17:00.000-05:00

I underestimated the blizzard that’s currently dumping on the Northeast and now Jie and I are stuck in Chicago, possibly until Tuesday morning. This is not good news, as I’ve already missed a day of class for Colorado and I’ll be missing two more for Spring Break in China. In the meantime, we spent 45 minutes on hold for American Airlines this morning and another 40 for the corporate travel agency, which just disconnected me. Now I’m called back in and we can’t go to breakfast until we know whether we’ll be able to stay in our current hotel tonight.

I guess this is truth in advertising for my future career in consulting…

Anniversary, skiing, housing, mistresses, and UFC

2006-02-09T08:39:00.000-05:00

I can’t believe I completely forgot to note the second anniversary of this blog.  I guess it really isn’t exciting to anyone but me, though, and if I can’t even remember then really, what’s the point.

Skiing in Colorado last weekend was amazing, they had so much fresh snow in the week leading up to our trip that we had perfect conditions.  The midnight drive from Denver out towards Vail on Thursday night was a little stressful, but the more important drive to the airport on Monday night was a breeze, so it worked out.

Tomorrow morning I head out to Chicago to visit the office of my new employer and then spend the weekend scouting neighborhoods and getting to know the city a little better.  I spent a few days over the last week building an awesome spreadsheet to inform the rent vs. buy decision, which includes remarkably accurate estimates of state and federal taxes, investment returns, and so on.  The conclusion is basically that it is better to buy as long as underlying home price appreciation is greater than about 2% per year.  While that is below the 3 year Chicago average, certain areas that we’ve been investigating have experienced falling prices over the last year.  I think in the end the decision will come down to whether we find a better property to rent or to buy, regardless of the financials.

Yesterday in class featured two of the best comments that I’ve heard in a long time.  In Entrepreneurial Management in a Turnaround Environment we had the former head of the workout group for one of the largest national banks in class.  This guy looks and sounds like he could be out repossessing cars, not whole companies, and had some interesting things to say.  The best story: The manager at one company they were working with told him that they better treat the company well during the workout process, because he knew which busses the banker’s kids rode to school in the morning.  The guy at the bank sent the manager a picture of the manager with his mistress with a note saying that if he even spoke with his kids then he would send the picture to the manager’s father-in-law.  Can you imagine having an MBA from Wharton and working in a job where getting pictures of your clients with their mistresses was a normal part of the negotiating process???

Later in Investment Management our professor explained the short sale process using an analogy to Ultimate Fighting Championship.  One fighter, Tank Abbot, used to be a street fighter in California.  The inherent dilemma in street fighting is deciding who should hold each fighter’s wager on the match while they fight.  Abbot’s solution was to give his money to his opponent, and then take it out of his pockets after he finished beating the guy into submission.  Similarly, if you’re Tank Abbot you probably don’t need collateral when someone short sells a stock, but the rest of us do.

Travel Junkies

2006-01-31T09:27:00.000-05:00

This is really what second semester second year is all about: trips. Jie and I will hardly be in town this semester, it seems, as just about every other weekend we’ll be flying off somewhere. This weekend we head to Colorado for four days of snow skiing, if we can get a good deal on last minute fares we’ll go to Texas for President’s Day weekend, a week later we’ll be in D.C. for a four day weekend, and we’re spending Spring Break in China. Two more trips are in the initial planning stages, as we’ll be heading out to Chicago a couple of times to look around for housing.

Today I’m sending off my written job acceptance and my preference on how to receive my signing bonus, so hopefully I’ll get that check soon enough to pay for this new jet-setter lifestyle we’ve acquired. Oh, and I also selected a start date in September. Now we just have to get cracking on our summer travel plans!

Procrastination Works!

2006-01-28T14:02:00.000-05:00

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about recruiting, except to say that I was having a lot of trouble making a decision.  Here’s a brief rundown of what happened just to get everyone up to speed: I interviewed with several consulting firms and one operations firm, received a few offers in consulting, but didn’t get an offer from the promising operations job or with my first choice in consulting.

I’ve been waffling back and forth since mid-December between two consulting offers, one in Houston and the other in Chicago.  The deadline for one offer was yesterday, so Jie and I had finally made a decision and I was ready to pull the trigger.  I decided I was going to work on my field study in the afternoon, confirm my decision with Jie, and then call the firm that afternoon to accept.

A funny thing happened before I could make that call.  I was contacted early in the afternoon by the firm that originally rejected me two months ago.  They wanted to let me know that they unexpectedly had a spot open up and they were going to offer it to me, pending Partner approval.  Three hours later, at about the time I originally planned to accept another position, I had a new job offer in hand.  Jie and I talked about it briefly and lo and behold, I’m going to Chicago with my original first choice firm.

Straight Out of Undergrad MBA Students

2006-01-25T15:37:00.000-05:00

There are strong sentiments among some MBA students, both at HBS and elsewhere, that applicants straight out of undergrad have little to add to the program and thus shouldn’t be accepted. The HBS Class of 07 has somewhere between 10-20 such students, which equates to about 1-2 per section. Not anything to get upset about, in my opinion, but some people still do. Here’s a snippet from another blog that I feel is representative: “As I stated previously I am a first year HBS student. I am in my late 20's like many of my classmates, though we do have a few straight-out-of-college people (I don't like them, I'll probably post on that later).”

I thought it worth mentioning that two-thirds of the winning team of this year’s BCG Case Competition at HBS are students straight out of undergrad. I view that as proof-positive that someone without traditional full-time work experience can be a valuable addition to a section, seeing as case discussions rely heavily on prior experience and an understanding of the competitive dynamics of industries and firms. Of course, not all straight out of undergrad students are going to be as capable and add as much to the MBA experience, but in my opinion there is an equally wide disparity in students with plenty of full-time experience.

Courses and jobs

2006-01-23T20:11:00.000-05:00

Course add/drop for the Winter term was completed on Saturday, so my schedule is now set and courses are really starting to get going (one tip for future HBS second years: if you aren’t “shopping” for courses you can skip the first two days of class each term of your second year). Here is my course load:

The Coming of Managerial Capitalism – a cool business/American history course

Entrepreneurial Management in a Turnaround Environment

Investment Management

Professional Services – An interesting course that discusses the aspects of being a professional.

Finance Field Study investigating trading and arbitrage strategies in online gambling markets.

I wasn’t able to get into one course in particular that I really wanted (Corporate Strategy), but instead I am doing what I think will be a really interesting Field Study with a very good friend of mine, so it’s alright. I do have the benefit of three great professors and one very good professor, so it should be a good semester.

On the job front I still haven’t made a definite decision, though with a Friday deadline I’m going to have to make a choice soon. There are numerous issues involved, including location, compensation, overseas opportunities, and work/life balance. The differences between the two firms on most of those criteria are small, but cumulatively they may lead to a decision one way or the other. Location is the 800-pound gorilla, so it will be interesting to see where we end up on that.

Finally...

2006-01-23T19:49:00.000-05:00

This wrap-up of our California trip is woefully overdue, so I’ll be brief just to get it over with.  Over our last 4 days in California we spent time in Carmel, drove to Napa, spent a day in Napa, and then spent our last day in San Francisco.  Here are the highlights:

Point Lobos – We went hiking in Point Lobos and took lots of really nice scenery shots.  Unfortunately, we started our hike in a less scenic portion of the park so we didn’t spend a lot of time in the really nice areas.

Monterrey Bay Aquarium – The Monterrey Bay Aquarium was recommended to us by a lot of people and I think it was definitely worth visiting.  I’m not usually big on touristy stuff, but the aquarium had a lot of cool hands-on exhibits.  Jie and I were so inspired that we went on a search for fish tacos afterwards, which we found at Turtle Bay Taqueria, a local chain of restaurants I would highly recommend.

Napa Valley – As part of the Section G Charity Auction last spring Jie and I won a personal tour of Napa Valley with one of my sectionmates.  He’s an employee of Gallo, so we had the opportunity to purchase wine at a discount in addition to being chauffeured around Napa and treated to lunch.  We visited Cakebread, Beringer, Louis Martini, and Grgich Hills.  Cakebread and Beringer both had cool tours (Cakebread was better), Martini was for drinking (it’s a Gallo winery, so unlimited tastings), and Grgich was mainly to buy a few bottles to bring home.  In fact, I think we’ll be breaking out the Grgich dessert wine tomorrow to celebrate our 3 year wedding anniversary.

San Francisco – We spent the day in SF tooling around Union Square and then having dinner in Chinatown (at King Tin Restaurant, which was pretty good).  One notable event occurred at the Golden Gate Perk korean bbq restaurant/coffee shop with free wi-fi, where I broke one of their Ikea-like chairs.  It bore an uneasy resemblance to that scene in Shallow Hal, though in my defense the chairs were really crappy.

Congrats!

2006-01-18T15:34:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to all those who were accepted to the HBS Class of 2008!!!

California Day 5

2006-01-15T16:36:00.000-05:00

We woke up on Day 5 in Pismo Beach and drove up the coast, stopping briefly in Morro Bay to check out the Morro Rock and then continuing on to Hearst Castle.  We didn’t actually do the tour, though, as we didn’t really have time if we wanted to get to Carmel before sunset.  Instead of the tour we wandered around the exhibit at the base and looked at all the history behind the estate.

After the castle we drove a short way up the coast and stopped at Piedras Blancas, off 1 just north of Hearst Castle, to look at the elephant seals.  There were probably 50-60 of them, including males, females, and newborns.  I took a ton of pictures while we watched them lay around, covering themselves with sand to stay cool and generally just being really fat.

After checking out the seals for a while we drove the rest of the way up the coast to our hotel in Carmel, the Highlands Inn.  That was supposed to be our splurge hotel for the trip, though after paying less than half as much for the Kon Tiki Inn in Pismo Beach we were honestly a little disappointed with the hotel in Carmel.  Our twin benchmarks were the Park Hyatt in Chicago and the Kon Tiki, and while the rooms were not as nice as the Park Hyatt the view was not as good as the view from the Kon Tiki.  That’s not to say that it wasn’t a great hotel, but I think I would have preferred to be closer to the water rather than across 1 and a few houses.  In fact, I think their website is pretty misleading, as they really make it seem like the hotel is right there on the edge of a cliff overlooking the water.

Anyway, we met up with Ari and Charlotte, a sectionmate of mine and his new wife who were also in Carmel at the same time, and had drinks at the California Market restaurant at the hotel while watching the sunset.  After that we went out to Passionfish restaurant in Carmel where we had a great meal.  I had the crab and avocado salad and the beef short ribs, which were both fantastic.  I highly recommend visiting Passionfish on your next trip to Carmel.

California Trip - Day 3 and 4

2006-01-10T02:34:00.000-05:00

So, after waking up and recovering from our Japanese beer night Jie and I hit the road and drove up through Malibu and had brunch at Coogie’s restaurant, a place I found through a random google search.  The food was actually really good, and I’m pretty sure we spotted Reggie Miller, formerly of the Indianapolis Pacers, eating lunch there.

After Coogie’s we drove up 101 through Santa Barbara, where we stopped at the Mission.  The Mission was ok and Santa Barbara was pretty, but given what we have since experienced in San Luis Obispo and Carmel it wasn’t really that great.  Of course, we probably missed the nice parts of town to visit, as we pulled off at the last second on a whim.

We drove up 1 whenever possible, so we took 1 instead of 101 from Gaviota to Pismo Beach.  This was probably a mistake, as you can make much better time on 101 and 1 isn’t very pretty between Gaviota and Pismo.  We stayed at the Kon Tiki Inn in Pismo Beach, which was a really neat hotel/motel in an otherwise forgettable town.  Pismo seems kind of like the poor man’s Carmel, but the Kon Tiki had really friendly service and a great view of the ocean.  I would highly recommend it to anyone doing the LA to SF drive who is looking for a moderately inexpensive place to stay a night or two.

We started Day 4 of the trip with a morning jog along the beach in Pismo.  Unfortunately, Jie wasn’t feeling well after the exercise and so we decided to have a pretty relaxing day.  We drove up to San Luis Obispo (SLO to those in the know) and spent a few hours walking around the town.  That was a lot of fun, so we hung around and had a late lunch at Pepe Delgado’s, a Mexican food place in town.  I had the beached whale burrito, which was awesome (and as big as my face, see smugmug for a photo).  It was so big I ate half of it for lunch and the other half for dinner.  Jie and I just hung out at the Kon Tiki that night and watched a little football.  I’ll have Day 5 action coming up soon.

See smugmug for pictures through today!

Cali Trip Day 2

2006-01-06T21:35:00.001-05:00

The morning after watching the greatest football game I’ve ever seen Jie and I slept in and then watched the entire morning after press conference on ESPN2. It was really neat to see VY and Mack so relaxed and really enjoying the post-championship questions, a far cry from the kind of questions Mack usually gets. I really hope that Vince comes back next year (for selfish reasons), but I would completely understand if he decides to go pro.

Anyway, after watching the press conference we finally got out of bed and headed up to Hollywood in the car. I found a nice place for brunch in a hotel magazine, and we had a pretty good meal at Off Vine before doing the tourist thing. Hollywood was fun, but there was less there than I thought there would be so I guess in the end it was a little underwhelming. After Hollywood we got back in the car and drove down Sunset Boulevard through Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Bel Air, and the Pacific Palisades. We wound up on Route 1 and took it back down into Santa Monica, where we parked the car and watched the sunset from the beach.

After all that activity we were finally starting to get hungry again after our monster brunch so we headed back to the hotel and walked to Sushi Gen, which was right around the corner. The service, ambiance, and food at Sushi Gen were all incredible, it was possibly the best sushi we’d ever had, and definitely the best experience. Feeling good after a good meal, we stopped at the Japanese grocery store on the way back and picked up a half-liter Sapporo and one-liter Asahi for the hotel room. See smugmug for a fun pic of me with our beers.

Ok, I’ve uploaded pics through today but I’m not going to get into today’s activities until tomorrow…

National Champs!!!

2006-01-06T01:10:00.000-05:00

We started out our trip on JetBlue, an airline that always impresses me.  We flew into Long Beach airport, which was actually really nice and convenient despite its small size.  I picked up our rental and we headed to Miyako Hotel Los Angeles in downtown, which I booked through priceline.  This is actually a funny story, as I idiotically bid $100 and wound up getting a hotel that we probably could have had for $90/night through their website.  Oh well, what the hell…

After checking in at the hotel we headed straight for Pasadena for the Rose Bowl.  Although we couldn’t get into the game, we had a great time in the parking lot watching the game on TV with the hundreds of other Texas fans who went to the game expecting to be able to buy tickets.  And oh my, what a game.  Vince Young is something else.  That’s about all I can say about it.

I still can’t believe we won another National Championship.  Jie and I slept in this morning and watched the day-after press conference all the way through on ESPN2.  I just can’t believe I didn’t tape the game.  Ah well, I’ll buy the DVD.

Hook ‘em Horns!!!

The Granddaddy of 'em All

2006-01-03T23:39:00.000-05:00

After a week of doing almost nothing but watch football (including an absolutely awesome January 2nd where I watched Notre Dame get thrashed and Georgia upset), it’s finally time for Jie and me to head out to California. We’ll be in Pasadena tomorrow to hopefully get in the Rose Bowl and then we’ll spend the next 8 days exploring coastal California from L.A. to Napa. I’ll be posting pictures throughout the trip as we have time and internet access.

Next stop: A 6:40am Jetblue flight out of Boston tomorrow morning.

Happy Holidays!

2005-12-30T17:58:00.000-05:00

I haven’t written anything over the last few days as there hasn’t been anything really noteworthy to write about. Christmas was great (all three of them) and Jie and I have been relaxing in much the same manner as in Austin. Oh yeah, I did go quail hunting the other day, that was a nice break from the routine in that it involved waking up before 11am (5:15 to be exact) and roughly 6 hours outside.

Right now we’re packing up to be ready to head back to Boston pretty early on New Year’s Day morning. We’ll have a few days to relax in Boston and then we’ll be off to California for 8 days. We’re still hoping to get into the Rose Bowl, but even if we don’t it will be great to be out there supporting the team. Hook ‘em!

Happy New Years!

Lazy Days

2005-12-22T10:54:00.000-05:00

Last year at this time I was busy arranging office visits to equity research departments in New York, making contact with buy-side analysts to network, and writing cover letters. Oh, how I enjoy this year’s break so much more. In the 65 hours since we arrived in Austin I think I’ve spent about 30 hours sleeping, 6 hours eating, and 20 hours reading and playing Civilization 4 on my laptop. Oh yeah, and we went and saw King Kong last night. That, my friends, is the way to spend a break.

Week in Review

2005-12-20T11:26:00.000-05:00

After finishing classes last week I flew down to Atlanta where I met my Dad and brother and we rented a car and drove to Chattanooga, Tennessee to see the Division I-AA National Championship game.  It was a really fun weekend, though it’s a shame that my brother’s team, the Texas State Bobcats, weren’t in the game.  They lost in OT by a field goal to Northern Iowa, who ended up losing to Appalachian State.  The game was enjoyable, as was the city of Chattanooga.  It’s not the prettiest city in the world, though the surrounding area is really nice.  What really struck me, though, was how cheap food and drinks were there.  I don’t think we paid more than $3/beer anywhere, and food was similarly inexpensive (though not always good, either).

Jie flew down on AirTran over the weekend to meet me in Texas, and thanks to generally lousy customer service and unnecessary delays (supposedly caused by a missing flight attendant’s bag), she wasn’t able to fly down Saturday and instead came on Sunday.  We’re using some free AirTran tickets they gave us after we spent 6 hours on the runway in Atlanta last January, but after our experiences this time I don’t think we’ll ever fly AirTran again.  It would have to be a serious price difference for me to even consider that airline.

On the job front, we appear to be getting closer to a decision.  I received a call Saturday from one firm to let me know that since we’re interested in spending a year or so overseas then they are willing to start us in an overseas office, like Singapore, and then after a year we would move back to Houston.  That is a really appealing option, since we wouldn’t have to worry about Jie finding a job and then leaving to go overseas.  I expect to have a decision soon, hopefully before the end of the week.

The good news first

2005-12-14T14:55:00.000-05:00

I finished my final final today around noon and shortly thereafter signed off on my last paper.  A teammate should be turning it in this afternoon and I’ll officially be done for the semester.  Now I just have to pack, clean the house, and enjoy a nice dinner out tonight.

On a less happy note, the administration officially announced today that grade disclosure is back.  In a letter to students, Acting Dean Jay Light said that the prohibition on students releasing grades to recruiters will be lifted for the Class of 2008.  The letter basically says that they feel the concerns raised by students (most of which mirror those in my letter) are valid yet can be minimized and GD won’t have the detrimental effects students think it will.  Going forward, the administration wants to form student-faculty working groups to develop guidelines for the Class of 2008.

Personally, I’m disappointed by this move.  I think it is rash to announce a potential change in October, provide scant details until November, and then make the change in December.  That doesn’t even begin to address the fact that the decision was made by a temporary Dean who almost certainly won’t be in that position when the Class of 2008 arrives in September.  This decision also says very negative things about how the administration values student feedback, and I have very low expectations for these “working groups.”

It will be interesting to see what the Student Association does in response and how students handle it.  Perhaps I can’t see the forest for the trees, but I still think GD is a very blunt instrument to improve rigor in the classroom.

4.5 down, 1 to go

2005-12-13T18:17:00.000-05:00

I was really lucky this semester in that two of my classes had no final or paper.  I finished one paper yesterday, my portion of a group paper today, and I have a final tomorrow morning, so as of tomorrow at 12:30 I will be officially done with my third term at HBS.  Rather than being excited I actually find this kind of depressing, in that in just six months I’ll graduate from HBS and be on my way back to the working world.  Sigh…

Speaking of the working world, I’m still no closer to making a decision on where to work than I was a month ago.  I seem to only become more confused as more time passes, rather than the other way around.

Oh, I did find out today that my -100% return in one week in Dynamic Markets probably wasn’t enough to relegate me to a 3 in the class for the semester.  We did pretty well the last three weeks, but it was a strong showing early in the class that really kept me out of 3 territory.

Stay on target

2005-12-08T23:16:00.000-05:00

Papers have been progressing along nicely, I’m on track to finish both of them on time. Aside from that, I’ve got four more class sessions and a final and I’m ¾ of the way through HBS. That’s kind of a depressing thought, but there’s really no time to focus on it as we’re going to be out of town this weekend and I leave next Thursday for the Holidays.

Of course, we will only be out of town this weekend if we can actually get out. That big storm that’s been moving through the country is on our doorstep, and we’re supposed to get 4-7 inches of snow tomorrow. I think the airport can probably keep up, but I haven’t had to fly out in weather like this before so we’ll see.

More on grade disclosure

2005-12-01T23:47:00.000-05:00

The following is the actual e-mail I just sent to the head of the MBA program, Rick Ruback, regarding grade disclosure.  It appears the administration is on the verge of ramming this through, despite nearly unanimous opposition by the Student Association and the student body as a whole.  If you are an alumnus or future applicant, I encourage you to make your voice heard on this issue.

Dear Dr. Ruback,
I am writing this letter to express my extreme dismay at the proposal underway to move to an “optional” grade disclosure model from the current non-disclosure system.  While I agree with you that disclosure will lead to some of the benefits you have put forth in defense of the change, I believe that the benefits will be small and the costs large, thus making the change a monumental mistake.  In order to demonstrate my reasoning I will address your argument issue by issue, raise the significant risks I see to the MBA experience, and conclude with an alternative suggestion.
Before I do that, though, I would like to say that I don’t believe there is any such thing as optional disclosure.  If disclosure is allowed and a company requests grades then you must disclose because to do otherwise is to allow them to assume the worst.  This view has been affirmed in discussions with at least three recruiters at the top consulting firms that recruit from HBS.

The current system of Grade Non-disclosure is inconsistent with the mission of HBS and signals that we do not believe performance matters.
I believe you undermine this issue even as you raise it, stating in your letter that you believe that students are committed to the educational experience, the transformational experience, and upholding the high standards of this great school.  My challenge to you is to really define what value we create for this institution by signaling not that we are an enclave of cooperation and learning, but instead that this is a competitive arena of professional development.
It seems to me that over the last decade this institution has worked very hard to shed an image of uncooperativeness, cutthroat behavior, and an unhealthy atmosphere.  By removing non-disclosure you would erase all that effort in exchange for a questionable benefit arising from sending a different signal.
Students have little motivation to excel under the current system and must be given incentives to work harder.
First of all, let’s be clear that disclosing grades will provide very little motivation for the significant number of students who are returning to a previous career or employer.  Students who are sponsored or have an established track record in an industry will be judged on that experience and not their grades, so this incentive will mean little to them.
Beyond that, I question the relative value of providing external motivation to a group of students who by their very nature are internally motivated and highly competitive, regardless of the environment.  Accentuating an external scorecard will only serve to take that healthy competitive behavior and focus it to make the entire HBS experience less enjoyable for everyone.
You state in your letter that grade disclosure will motivate students to make the most of their time at HBS.  I seriously question whether more time studying will really lead to getting more from our time here.  Based on my discussions with alumni from several different eras of HBS grads it seems that a significant portion of the value of business school came from the friends made, networks built, and the variety of experiences that take place outside the classroom.  More time studying and more focus on grades will mean less time for clubs, less time for networking, and less time for reflection and transformation.  The richness of the HBS experience will be diminished in direct proportion to the increase in time spent studying.
Finally, I question the benefit in terms of motivation that will be attained above and beyond what is already accomplished by the mandatory attendance policy.  The classic example cited in support of disclosure is the study from Wharton showing that undergraduates outperform MBA students in the same classes.  However, Wharton does not require classroom attendance and thus I don’t believe that data can be applied to HBS.  This is a different school with different professors teaching different students in a different method of instruction, and what is best for Wharton is certainly not best for HBS.
Students should be able to use their grades in their job search.
     I believe that grade disclosure would actually be most harmful to the very students that you purport it will help the most.  Students who are changing careers are generally more dependant on their classmates for assistance in the very classes they are trying to excel in to change careers, and they are less likely to receive that help under a disclosure policy.  Furthermore, students seeking internships will generally only be able to show one or two grades directly relevant to their desired career, not nearly enough information to form a meaningful sample.  Rather, spending time learning about the desired industry, the companies within it, and then networking with those firms is at least an order of magnitude more important than the grades in one or two classes.  At best this is a very marginal benefit to career changing students, at worst it is extremely detrimental.
Providing recruiters with grades would be better than the current system of GMAT scores, undergraduate GPA, and the like.
     To begin with, your argument is based at its core on the idea that grading at HBS is not arbitrary and is an accurate representation of a student’s knowledge in a given subject.  I find this a questionable assumption given the teaching and grading format at this school.  The case method, by its very nature, means that there are usually no problem sets or written homework assignments.  Without periodic tests of student knowledge on specific areas within the course I question whether professors can really provide adequate grades.  Furthermore, in most classes grading is based equally on participation and the final exam.  Participation is notoriously hard to judge and it is unlikely that two professors would view any one comment or even the sum of a student’s comments through the semester in the exact same way.  Similarly, the final exam is case based and therefore offers significant advantages to students who are fortunate enough to have prior familiarity with the industry, company, or country portrayed therein.  I recognize that almost all professors exert significant effort to reduce the level of uncertainty in grading, but I believe that by the very nature of education at HBS grades will always be somewhat arbitrary.
     Another facet of your support of grade disclosure relates to the increased relevance of HBS grades compared to other measures that firms currently consider.  I find it hard to believe that one semester (at the internship recruiting point) of graduate level coursework gives a recruiter a better idea of a candidate’s work ethic or knowledge than four years of undergraduate coursework.  In addition, the work experience outlined through a resume provides ample opportunity for a student to provide recent and real-world information regarding their abilities and attributes.  I believe the information contained in one semester of grades at HBS pales in comparison to those two sources.
     Finally, I disagree with the notion that disclosing grades at HBS will in any way lead to better matching between students and employers.  The mere idea contradicts everything I have learned from MBA Career Services over the last 15 months.  A good match between employer and student comes only when passion, desire, personality, environment, and opportunity all come into alignment.  Grades have no place or relevance when considering the fit for employee and employer.  Furthermore, I find the argument that recruiters are requesting grades and thus we should provide them to be completely irrelevant.  Through my position as Career Representative, my extensive interaction with Career Services, and my conversations with numerous recruiters, I am confident that grade disclosure is well down on the list of things that recruiters would like to see changed at HBS.

     Having addressed all of the supposed benefits of grade disclosure I will now reiterate the numerous costs involved.  I have already raised many of these points, but it is worth addressing them in one place to reinforce the fact that while the benefits of disclosure are elusive, the costs are very real and very serious.
Grade disclosure will reduce the richness of the experience at HBS.
     It is hard to argue that even half of the transformation that occurs at HBS occurs within the classroom, though perhaps this is the reason for the move to disclosure in the first place.  Whether it is consistent with an academic institution or not, the great features of HBS are not confined to the classroom, instead they are in the numerous club activities, intramural athletics, networking with peers, networking with companies, participating in Career Teams, attending Section social events, etc.  Each and every one of those activities is diminished if only because grade disclosure=more time studying=less time for everything else.  Perhaps you look at that same equation and say yes, that is what we want.  Even so, I think the benefits from increased effort on studying will not nearly make up for the loss of diversity in activities outside the classroom.
The classroom experience will be harmed by disclosure.
     One of the key memories of HBS students from previous eras, perhaps best exemplified in Year One by Robert Reid, is the misery of the first month as everyone adjusts to the case method and there are 90 hands in the air for every comment.  My experience was entirely different; it was far more relaxed, enjoyable, and conducive to learning.  Adding to the natural level of competitiveness at HBS is a dangerous game and many aspects of the Section and classroom experience will be harmed.  There is currently a tremendous amount of support for students within the section, including review sessions, informal tutoring, and the like that simply won’t take place the same way if there is disclosure.  Just as disclosure creates an incentive to work harder, in a forced curve environment it also creates an incentive to not help your fellow student.  This is a powerful effect, and it would naïve to think that you can have the former without the latter.
Grade disclosure will limit risk-taking for all students in their EC year, but primarily for the very students it is designed to help.
     By their very nature career changing students are taking classes that are outside their comfort level during their EC year.  Students like me, who are from an operations background, find themselves in schedules stacked with finance, for example, and filled with students who spent 3-5 years in finance before business school.  Under a forced curve system with grade disclosure I would be less likely to take those classes and more likely to take classes where I have some prior expertise.  This mechanism feeds upon itself and the competitive nature of HBS students will reduce the breadth and variety of classes that students take their second year.
Like Learning Teams, implementing Grade Disclosure without the complete buy-in and support of the Faculty will lead to significant problems.
     As the Administration should have learned from the first Learning Teams assignment this year, implementing a new program without an overwhelming level of faculty support is bound for trouble.  The day-to-day operation of the MBA program is largely undertaken by the faculty, and if they do not accept grade disclosure and raise the rigor, detail, and reasoning in their grading it will cause friction between students and faculty.  In addition, several faculty have expressed to me personally that they feel grade disclosure is a bad idea and runs counter to the current goals of this institution.  Ramming through a new procedure while ignoring the voices of your two primary constituents seems like a very, very poor exercise of power.
Removing Grade Disclosure and ignoring student input on the second consecutive major change to the MBA program will negatively impact applicants’ opinion of HBS.
     Sooner or later the Administration should consider the long-term ramifications for operating in a way that disenfranchises its current customers and by extension potential future customers.  Forcing through grade disclosure would mark the second time in the last year that major changes have been made to the program over the objections of current students.  HBS was willing to spend 8 years and thousands of dollars perfecting a new classroom design for the renovation of Aldrich, why can’t you spend 12-24 months carefully considering the impact of grade disclosure?

I will be the first to agree that the program at HBS could be more rigorous at times.  However, grade disclosure is a very blunt and ineffective tool to make the program more difficult.  Rather than setting students against each other to increase the rigor of the program, why not take the novel step of setting higher standards and making classes more demanding?  The first term of the program is already extremely stressful and demanding, why make that period even more difficult with disclosure?  Instead, in Terms 2-4, change the way cases are delivered and taught in the classroom.  Professors could use more cold calls, stop spending the first 15-30 minutes of class re-hashing case materials, and grade comments more critically.  Of course, those things are far more difficult for the administration to accomplish, so I can see why grade disclosure is more attractive from your perspective.  But this is Harvard Business School, one of the great institutions of education in the world, don’t take the easy way out.

I appreciate the opportunity to share my feelings on this issue, please seriously consider the input of me and my fellow students, we have no skin in this game, but we love this school and feel so strongly about it that we are determined to fight grade disclosure for those that follow us.  Don’t think that you can push through this decision over our objections and end the discussion, unilateral action resolves nothing.

Sincerely,

Mark

Execution vs. Strategy

2005-11-30T00:32:00.000-05:00

Interviews are officially over.  I think.  I just finished a pretty tiring day of 8 interviews at an operating company in Houston.  Now I’m sitting on a packed Continental Airlines plane approaching Boston, and I’m going to be wiped out after this.  The bad news is that I have major work to do for my paper in International Financial Management and I need to make the most of the 40 or so hours I have in Boston before Jie and I leave for Chicago on Thursday afternoon.  So, my free time will be spent in the library over the next few days as I try to get up to speed on this assignment.

One of the major issues I’ve been thinking about over the last month has been this issue of Execution versus Strategy that my MSO professor raised in class just before Hell Week.  She asked us to write down whether we preferred Execution or Strategy, and then also estimate what percentage of our classmates agreed with us.  I wrote down execution and 60%, thinking that sounded about right, but I was off a little, the class favored Strategy 60/40.

Anyway, as I consider whether to begin my career in consulting or operations I’ve been wondering a lot about that question.  There is no doubt in my mind that execution is where the real value is created in a company.  However, it just may be that I am better at the Strategy side than the execution side.  Case in point: My Dynamic Markets class (or investing in general), where I am great at creating trading strategies (or picking stocks), but I usually botch the execution and leave a lot of money on the table.  Of course, those are both pretty harsh tests, since not many execute well when it comes to the market.

I should find out about this operations job over the next week or so, basically over the same time frame that I will be visiting consulting firms in Chicago and Houston.  I am hopeful that I will have a decision by Christmas Day, but I’m not sure it will be much earlier than that.

Exhaustive Update

2005-11-26T13:30:00.000-05:00

This week Jie and I have been back in Texas for Thanksgiving.  We booked our flights early this time and so we got a good deal on them, and then it turns out I have a 2nd round interview on Tuesday and so my flight will be reimbursed as well.  Woo hoo!  Every time we are in Texas we do the Houston-San Antonio-Austin triangle in some order, which makes for a lot of driving while we’re back.  Luckily, my step-dad is always nice enough to loan us his car so we don’t have to pay for a rental.  The complications occur over Christmas when we are back for over two weeks, it’s tough to borrow someone’s car for that long…

Yesterday was a major scare on the college football front.  I was about to go in some sort of catatonic shock with the way my Longhorns were playing against the Aggies.  Luckily, we pulled out the win anyway, and this will definitely be motivation for next week against either the Cyclones or the Buffaloes.  In fact, given that we won the game, this was probably the best thing that could have happened.  It takes the Heisman pressure off Vince, gives us motivation for next week, and it was a moral victory for the Aggies, who were in desperate need of one.

One exciting development this week has been the planning of a trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee with my brother and Dad to see the Division I-AA National Championship game on December 16th.  I was able to change a previously made AirTran reservation (they bend over backwards to deliver customer service some times, and other times are incredibly obstinate and difficult to work with), and will meet my Dad and brother in Atlanta where we’ll rent a car to drive to Chattanooga.  It should be a fun trip, and it means that I should get to attend the Division I-A and Division I-AA National Championship games in the same season.  Many pictures and contrasting impressions will be forthcoming…  (First point, ticket for the Rose Bowl: $175, ticket for Davenport Field in Chattanooga: $20.)  The trip is actually my graduation present to my brother, he’s excited about it because his Texas State Bobcats are in the I-AA postseason for the first time, and they have an excellent shot at reaching the National Championship.

The big story in my life right now outside of the job decision process is the short fuse I have on my papers for my two paper classes.  I am getting dreadfully behind on both of them, and need to really focus over the next few weeks to get things taken care of.  Complicating things has been the fact that my laptop battery has basically died, it lasts only about 45 minutes now, making it impossible to get work done on the various plane rides I’ll be taking over the next few weeks (I’ll be in Boston for only 10 of the 19 days between now and Christmas Break).  I finally caved and bought a new battery from IBM, shelling out $160 for an extended life battery.  I’ll try to limit the use of the new one to travel so I don’t end up ruining it in a year like I did this one.

Brought Down the Class

2005-11-17T15:27:00.000-05:00

So it turns out that I was a little modest about my role in the blow-up in Dynamic Markets on Monday.  The way the simulation was designed the price of this one stock that many people were shorting was supposed to go from 10 to 16, thus likely liquidating one or two players and pushing the stock up to about 32 as they buy to cover their positions and in the process sinking a few other funds.  It would teach everyone a lesson and set up a nice lecture.

Enter Mark, lone trader for the Bringing Down the Class fund.  I was short about 7x more shares than any other fund, and about 8x more than the professors thought anyone would be dumb enough to hold.  When the price of this shorted stock moved from 10 to 16 I was liquidated, and due to my liquidation alone the price shot up to 112, far above the 32 the professors were planning on.  Now, since in about a second I took the price to 112, about 9 other funds liquidated.  The liquidation of those funds pushed the price to around 450 and caused four more fund liquidations, effectively sinking funds that only had a few percent of their portfolio in the position.

In a very real sense I recreated almost exactly what happened in When Genius Failed.  Yesterday my teammate, who unfortunately will be suffering the effects of my trading along with me, forwarded me an e-mail I sent to him the night before the trading simulation.  The last line?

“…Those [trades] are really risky, so I can’t go too deep in them.”

Book Report - Freakonomics

2005-11-15T10:02:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I finally got my hands on a copy of Freakonomics, that book supposedly about economics that has been all the rage since it came out six months ago or so.  It’s a quick read, I finished it late last night while watching the Cowboys pull one out against the Iggles.  I have to say that I found it to be a disappointing book.  Sure, it’s filled with interesting anecdotes and a different way to think about the world, but I don’t think it makes enough of an impact to actually change the way you think.

The obvious comparison would be to Tipping Point, which I read last year.  TP presented a new framework for thinking about trends and how they catch on, and thus is a really practical and useful way to think about the world.  Freakonomics, on the other hand, is written in somewhat the same style but I would be hard pressed to say the thought approach Levitt takes is novel.  Rather, it reminds me a lot of some of Carl Sagan’s books, which take the same skeptical approach to interesting problems.

All this isn’t to say that Freakonomics isn’t fun to read, because it is.  However, the really interesting stuff is in the anecdotes and not the approach, and you might as well just read a one-paragraph summary of the anecdotes and not 20-25 pages for each one.

I even read When Genius Failed!

2005-11-15T09:41:00.000-05:00

I think I’ve mentioned my Dynamic Markets class before. It’s the class I’ve nicknamed Competitive Finance, because we basically use financial concepts in a “real world” trading setting to compete with our classmates for profits. Anyway, over the last few weeks it’s moved out of the finance arena and into a more pure trading world, which has been pretty fun.

I don’t want to talk about the exact subject matter of the class in case anyone who takes it next year is reading. Last week my partner was running the trading while I ran the spreadsheet. He is pretty conservative when trading, and we wound up with only about half the gains of the leaders. This week, though, he was in NYC for interviews and so I was left to trade our account myself, and I wanted to finish in first. Well, it turns out that a conservative diversification strategy like my partner pursued would have been a good strategy, as I got aggressive after falling behind early and got heavy into several deals that eventually exploded. Perhaps our name should have been Short Term Capital Management after all, because I grew our portfolio roughly 3x and then ended up at -6x. Yes, as in liquidation of the positions and negative equity.

Lesson learned.

Paper Classes, nice for now...

2005-11-13T23:45:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow marks the first day of the semester where I don’t have classes in the courses I am taking that require papers.  At HBS 2nd year classes either have 20 or 29 sessions, depending on whether there is a paper or a final.  I have two paper classes, both of which are on X days (M/T/some W), so from now on I have only one class on Monday and Tuesday.  Of course, I’m supposed to spend that time working on my paper, so it’s not really a free lunch.

In Strategy and Technology I am in a group writing a paper on Sirf Technologies, a company with some cool IP in GPS that it is trying to sell into cell phones, automotive markets, and the like.  We’ll be investigating their business model to see if they can succeed in carving out a niche and profits with their IP.

In International Financial Management I’m writing a paper on personal investing in international markets and whether it makes more sense to go with actively managed funds in less developed markets (read: less efficient) and index funds in well developed markets.  It’s a huge subject, so I’m trying to carve out a spot that will make for an 8-10 page paper and can get researched and written in less than 40 total hours, which is the standard for individual papers in that class.

The blight spreads

2005-11-10T21:58:00.000-05:00

It seems the great grade disclosure debate is now moving to HBS. For an excellent summary of what has happened thus far see this article from the Harbus. Here’s my response to the administration’s reasoning:

Recruiters want to know grades – Personally, I really don’t think this is true. Recruiters know that when they come to HBS they are getting someone with the required mental horsepower to get the job done. If not disclosing grades actually changes recruiter behavior then why are interviews run exactly the same at HBS as they are everywhere else? In the end, recruiters who come to HBS want to select the ideal few students for their firm, and that generally means the students who are really interested in the opportunity and have the skills and experience necessary. Grades have nothing to do with that selection process.

Career Changing Students want to reveal grades – As a career changer, I think this is complete BS. I really don’t want to disclose grades because I want the freedom to try new subjects, take risks at school, and focus on recruiting even when that may cost me in the classroom.

Disclosing grades will raise the level of effort in the classroom – I actually agree with the administration that this will happen, but I don’t think the associated benefits of disclosure will outweigh the costs. First of all, only students who don’t come in with offers to return to their old firm will care at all about grades, so the full student population will not be affected. Aside from that, the downside of increased focus on schoolwork means less effort on social events, recruiting, clubs, organizing events (both Treks and Symposiums), etc. In other words, the richness of the HBS experience will be diminished. Furthermore, disclosing grades discourages cooperative behavior and a relatively uncompetitive atmosphere. I fear that disclosing grades will cause a return to the kind of cutthroat behavior that matches a reputation HBS has worked very hard to shed.

I know the likely responses to my arguments, primarily that schools with disclosure still have social and school events and so forth. However, I feel that the mandatory attendance policy combined with 1st year honors and Baker Scholar accomplishes all the disclosure that is necessary. Stay tuned for more information, I’ll be tracking this issue closely at HBS, as I feel passionately that disclosing grades (even under an “optional” disclosure model) will be bad for the school.

My least favorite time of year

2005-11-08T23:24:00.000-05:00

Now that Hell Week has come and gone I’m starting to get in the difficult business of making decisions. Long, long time readers will remember the irritating back and forth surrounding the HBS/Stanford decision, while long time readers will remember the angst over the summer internship decision last year. Clearly there is something wrong with my massive-life-changing-decision making process, but I don’t know what so I guess I’ll keep banging my head against a wall trying to figure this out.

Anyway, the first decision is whether to go back into operations or spend some time in consulting. I think I’ll probably only end up in consulting if I think I will be there a long time, perhaps 10+ years, so it’s not exactly an easy decision to make. If I choose operations, which is pretty likely, then there is only one job that I have my eye on. If I choose the consulting route, though, then I have to make another decision around which firm to go work for, which involves issues like travel, geography, and firm culture.
This uncertainty always drives me nuts.

I am Iron Man!

2005-11-06T12:19:00.000-05:00

I have a key addition to make to the short list of interview advice I posted the other day.  One of the things I can’t stand about interviewing is the fact that I have to spend so much time ironing shirts during interview week.  I only have a few interview quality shirts and ties (and my second suit is looking a little tired, so only one suit), so I spent a lot of time ironing this past week.  Jie and I had an old Black and Decker iron that she picked up in college for pocket change.  She had been telling me for a while that we needed a new iron, and an expensive one, but I didn’t really believe it.

Anyway, my average process time for a shirt was 10-15 minutes with our old iron.  Someone sent us a coupon for 25% off at Linens and Things, though, so we used that on Friday afternoon to go buy a Rowenta Professional DX-8800.  The iron was $75 after the coupon, which is a lot more than I ever thought I would spend on an iron, but good grief was it worth it.  Jie offered to break in the new iron to prepare my attire for my final consulting second round interview, and while she finished breakfast I managed to iron a few sleeves just to get a feel for the new purchase.  That thing is sweet!  It’s like the Porsche of irons, complete with smooth handling, lots of power, and made in Germany.  I bet I could iron two shirts in the 15 minutes it used to take me for one!

One final interviewing tidbit:  UBS was my hero last year because they did a second round interview in the form of a dinner, which I thought was really cool.  No trip to NYC, no stuffy suits, just dinner.  This year BCG gets props for holding a second round interview in business casual, though they did schedule me for a Sunday evening at their office in downtown, so I suppose there is a trade-off.

Interview Ideas

2005-11-05T00:58:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of things that I would point to if someone asked me to explain my unexpected success this interview season. Neither of these strategies is particularly unique or insightful, but they worked for me so I thought I would pass them on:

Interview Attire: There is a great deal of peace of mind and efficiency to be obtained by wearing a “Round 1” interview outfit and a “Round 2” Interview outfit. This week that meant that I wore a white shirt and silver and black tie on all 1st round interviews and a blue shirt with a blue/silver flower tie for 2nd round interviews. That simplified the whole process in terms of remembering what I wore when and for what firm.

Motivation: One of the key features of an interview is your energy level. Now, there are two components as far as I can tell, physical and mental. Physically, you want to make sure you are well-rested and properly caffeinated in order to be at peak interview condition. Mentally, I think the best preparation involves a little motivational music. This varies for everyone, of course, but I found Lose Yourself by Eminem to be particularly motivating. I listened to it before every interview except one, and one of the comments I received after that one interview was that I didn’t seem energized. I won’t make that same mistake for the 2nd round with that firm, Eminem will be playing as I walk in the building.

Hell Week Update

2005-11-03T20:55:00.000-05:00

This has been a remarkably different Hell Week than last year’s, all for very good reasons. First off, the weather has been absolutely perfect for trekking all over the place to interviews. It’s been sunny and in the 60’s all week, which is about the best possible situation in early November in Boston. It doesn’t seem like I am interviewing nearly as much as I was last year, though I do have 5 first round interviews this week as opposed to 8 last year. I was focused on equity research and investment management the first time around, so there were a few more firms to talk to. This year I am interviewing with consulting firms and one operating company, so there aren’t quite as many players.

The biggest difference, though, is that the results have been much better this time around. I’m still in the process, but I think I was dinged by a firm basically the first day last year, so this is definitely an improvement. There is a very immediate payoff when you change from trying to get into an industry with macro trends that work strongly against you to one where the trends are strongly in your favor.

a.k.a. DIP Week

2005-10-27T23:10:00.000-04:00

Next week is Hell Week, the week people love or hate around here.  For those with sponsorships or who are going back to their summer employer it means trips to Vegas or other exotic locals.  For us poor souls without a job it means 2-5 hours of interviewing each day followed by (or interspersed by) hours with nothing in particular to do.  I got pretty lucky this time around in that I basically have one interview per day, though hopefully that will be complicated by 2nd round interviews.

My focus this year is on consulting and general management positions.  I’m looking for something more challenging than typical general management jobs, yet more socially interactive than something like investment management.  I’ve been practicing my case interviews over the last few weeks with classmates and I think I’m doing pretty well at this point.  Now it is more about execution than preparation.

Thanks for the submissions on the Hedge Fund names.  Our top choices are Bringing Down the Class, Milken the Market, J.T. Marlin (think Boiler Room), and then Highwater Mark (which would be perfect for me but doesn’t work for my teammate).  Hopefully with one of those clever names we can induce massive inflows and then go to work outperforming the class.  That’s the idea, anyway…

Who knew TV was so exciting?

2005-10-25T20:21:00.000-04:00

It’s funny that I wrote my cynical post yesterday, as I had a great day of classes today. In International Financial Management we learned about an American company that partnered with a local figure to launch a TV station in Eastern Europe. All was well and profits were rolling in and then they found out their partner had ties to the Russian Mafia and the former secret police of his country, and he managed to screw them out of their investment. Fortunately, international courts came to the rescue and the local government wound up leveraging an additional tax on the citizens of the country to pay the settlement to the American company. A very interesting case.

Then in Dynamic Markets we finally reached the point in the semester where we form the Hedge Funds that we will use for the rest of the year. I’m teaming up with a guy from my section, we planned since signing up for the course to work together, and we’re looking forward to kicking butt. Anyway, we have to think of a catchy name for our fund so that we can market it to our fellow classmates and try to gain inflows to put to work. Our initial thoughts are either Short Term Capital Management (an obvious play on LTCM) or something using our initials… Any ideas for catchy hedge fund names?

Comment of the Day

2005-10-24T23:43:00.000-04:00

I suppose it comes off a little arrogant to pronounce something I said as the comment of the day, but so be it. This was a good day in terms of comments for me, so I might as well celebrate it.

Anyway, today my old study group got together for our second reunion breakfast. After talking about our wives, how much we drank at the tailgate this last weekend, and other standard conversation we finally got around to the inevitable topic of 2nd year conversations: how EC classes are going. I think the reason this comes about is because inevitably people are disappointed in their classes. The reasons are numerous, but I think I really distilled the issue down to its essence in one simple comment:

“There really just isn’t that much to learn about management.”
- Mark

We laughed about that for a while, that perhaps I should be featured on the HBS website with that as my soundbite, but the fact is that in a definite sense it seems to be true. HBS is a general management school, and in that context there just isn’t that much in-depth knowledge to be learned about leadership, strategy, marketing, etc. Since you aren’t trying to learn the nitty gritty details of each specialty, but really how to manage each process, the lessons are general and apply to many situations. As such, after the first 10-15 cases in each class you reach the point where the major methods have been introduced and it is just a matter of applying them in a new situation, which makes for a less interesting class. So, every EC class is bound to be a little disappointing once the heavy duty learning stops. Finance, accounting, and tax can be different, but it depends on the class.

Anyway, after that I went on to my next class where we had Andy Bryant, the CFO from Intel, in class visiting. Our homework had been to create 3 slides on Intel’s biggest problems as if we were presenting to the Intel board (instead of just 2 of them, our professor and guest). Anyway, I think that Intel’s biggest problem is that their core business, which is all they have been able to do profitably, is growing slower. That isn’t really a problem, except that management doesn’t accept slower growth and is fighting it tooth and nail with their billions in free cash flow. I told them to be happy with their 10% PC market growth and give cash back to shareholders…not exactly what they wanted to hear. Fun discussion, though.

What was I thinking?

2005-10-20T21:43:00.000-04:00

Props to my sectionmate A., who rescued me in class today when I committed the unpardonable sin of raising my hand for a “numbers” comment without even having run the numbers. Man, I must be off my game, I never would have made a mistake like that last year. Fortunately, I was able to do most of the numbers in my head on the fly and my neighbor was able to help me out with his calculator when I needed it.

Helping those around you with comments in class is a somewhat dicey proposition, and many people will have no part in it. I guess the biggest concern is that the professor sees you doing it, though most don’t say anything even when it’s obvious. I try to help all I can, though I’ve been told I’m a loud whisperer, so maybe I should try written notes instead. Too bad no one can read my handwriting…

The Astros won the pennant!

2005-10-19T23:45:00.000-04:00

The Astros won the pennant!

The Astros won the pennant!

The Astros won the pennant!

List Mania!

2005-10-19T18:58:00.000-04:00

Things that I think are cool:

Napster-to-go: By using the ‘recommendations’ feature I was able to find the band Club8, who I’ve grown to love.

Positive Surprises: I thought I was dinged on two of six interview requests for Hell Week interviews and then today when I logged in to choose my interview slots I found out that I got one of them. Fifteen minutes later I got an e-mail from the other firm offering an interview as well.

PTI on my DVR: Or Pardon the Interruption, to those who aren’t in the know. This ESPN show is my new favorite half-hour on TV, and with my DVR I don’t have to worry about missing it.

Spreadsheet Kudos: Yesterday in IFM I whipped up a spreadsheet for my Dynamic Markets class that turned out to be really cool. The professors were impressed, they said I was the only one this year or last to make it work (mad props to my neighbor in IFM, he planted the seed). Too bad I wasn’t able to capitalize on my excel skills to actually trade well in class.

Helpful Classmates: Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be taking advantage of the generosity of my classmates to practice case interviews.

Things that I think suck:

PCP’s: As in Primary Care Physician. My PCP at the HBS health center misdiagnosed a minor condition that I had been suffering from and actually recommended a treatment that was making it worse! Lucky for me, I had an open referral from last year to a specialist. I finally got in to see him today and he immediately made the correct diagnosis and put me on the right meds.

Half Courses that are really Full Courses: My half-course professor admitted to us that she only took out one exercise that was in the full course. No wonder I’ve been so d@mn busy.

My Creative Zen Micro: If it weren’t for Napster I would just sell this thing on ebay and buy a Nano. The battery life is awful, connectivity with Napster is an issue, and lately it has been stopping in the middle of random for no reason. A minor annoyance, except that it starts repeating the same songs after you push play again.

With apologies to Peter King

2005-10-16T22:50:00.000-04:00

Ok, after spending most of a Sunday sitting inside and either doing cases or watching sports, here are a few things I think I think:

A quick analogy: black and white is to color as color is to HDTV. The more I watch sports in HD the more I realize how incredible it is. Jie and I went and had dinner with another couple on Friday while a few sectionmates of mine actually sat at our place to watch the baseball game on our TV. Is it worth it to go through all that trouble to watch in HD versus SD? Yes it is.

The Astros are really pulling it together. Today a guy on The Sports Reporters was wondering if the Cards could grow up the way the Red Sox did last year after being shut down by the Yankees two years ago. I thought the reference would be more appropriate to the Astros, who were within one run of the Series in Game 6 last year and then lost two straight games. Here’s to hoping they can get there this year, now they only need one win in the next three games.

The Houston Texans can’t catch a break. They’re down 14-3 in Seattle when Jerry DeLoach forces a fumble and a Texans linebacker scoops it up for what would be an easy touchdown. The problem? The ref ruled no fumble and whistled the play dead, rendering it unreviewable. To add insult to injury, the announcers don’t even bother discussing the fact that the replay shows an obvious fumble.

I’m not as useless with tools as I think I am. Our cheapo Ikea cabinet has been falling apart lately, and I was too lazy to do something about it until the bottom three drawers finally became unusable on Friday. Today I took it apart, basically fixed all the shelves, and then put it back together. Not bad for a sick days work.

Woe is me

2005-10-16T11:27:00.000-04:00

The first big temperature change of the year is usually the time when I catch my first cold, but it’s been a while since I’ve been this sick. It started with a sore throat on Thursday, added a small cough on Friday, and then by Saturday afternoon I was in trouble. Stuffy nose, sore throat, cough, headache, etc. Anyway, after lying around all evening and getting a Nyquil night, I’m feeling somewhat better but far less than 100%. It’s too bad, too, because this is a pretty busy week from a school perspective. So, as I sit here in sweat pants, a long-sleeve fleece shirt, and a bulky fleece vest I guess I’d better get to work.

Something to carefully consider

2005-10-13T16:32:00.000-04:00

I meant to write about this topic for a while but then forgot about it until I read this post from Will’s blog.  In it he relates how Medtronic is apparently joining a number of firms who do not recruit at HBS.  It doesn’t really bother me that many firms don’t recruit here, after all it wouldn’t make sense for every large company to come on campus.  What is bothersome, though, is the number of firms that don’t recruit here and refuse to interview students from the school.

This may not be a wide-spread issue, but I know that several companies like Wrigley, Campbell’s, and Quaker will not interview HBS students.  When pressed they state that they want to built relationships with a few select business schools and use them to source their MBAs.  I have a hunch as to how this came to be and I think I understand their position, even if I don’t agree with it.  Most likely they recruited at HBS and similar schools for many years and simply got tired of only getting a few applicants for their positions.  They come and set up presentations, perhaps hold dinners, and then when it’s time for the resume drop they get 3 or 4 students, and it’s just not worth the effort.  On the other hand, perhaps at schools that are more focused on their industry or located in their geography they get a great reception and lots of interest.  The difference in the caliber of students is probably not significant, so it makes sense to limit recruiting to those schools.

What I don’t understand, though, is why they refuse to even speak with applicants from other schools.  If someone is from the area, passionate about the industry, and went to another top school then it would make all the sense in the world to work with them.  Anyway, regardless of what I think is rational certain companies in certain industries take that stance with HBS graduates.  So, it really does pay to take a close look at the kinds of jobs and kinds of companies that graduates of a given school go work for, because you don’t want to be in the situation of trying to buck the trend.

Texas 45 - ou 12, and other scores

2005-10-11T16:13:00.000-04:00

I’ve been completely remiss in discussing the fantastic couple of games that my teams put together this weekend.  The Longhorns finally manned up against oklahoma and executed a convincing beat-down of the sooners, the Astros hung on through 18 innings to stick it to the Braves (2 in a row, after all those losses in the 90’s!), and the Texans blew another game and are one step closer to firing Dom Capers and hiring a real coach.

Let’s discuss the Longhorns first.  They held ou under 100 yards of offense through 3 quarters, scored on some beautiful big plays, and didn’t even come close to playing to their potential.  On the one hand, it’s a little nerve wracking to watch your team continue to play sloppy, on the other it’s pretty exciting to imagine them putting together four quarters of their best football.  Plus, when you can hang 96 points on two decent opponents without playing particularly well you know you’ve got something special.  Now we just have to execute and stay focused and there’s really nothing standing in the way of a big game in Pasadena this January.

As for the Astros, it’s impossible to look at what Roger Clemens has done in Houston and not be in awe, and doubly so when you consider the guy’s age.  Those three innings of relief were incredibly clutch, though probably not as much as Brad Ausmus (yes, Brad Ausmus!) stepping up to deliver the series-winning home run with two outs in the bottom of the 18th inning in the longest playoff game in MLB history.  Ausmus has made a career as a good catcher who doesn’t completely suck at the plate (career .255 average, has never hit 10 home runs in a season), so for him to step up and win the game like that is really amazing.

And finally, the poor Texans.  I’ve got confidence in Charlie Casserly, though many people are beginning to question him.  I’ve never liked Dom Capers, for what my opinion is worth, and I’m glad this season is going so badly that they’ll have to fire him.  I heard today that they might bring in Gary Kubiak, the OC at Denver, and I’d be ok with that.  We’ll have to see how this develops.

Someone asked me last night if I would trade David Carr straight up for Joey Harrington.  I wasn’t really sure, but as I think more about it I bet both QB’s would like a change of scenery.  Things couldn’t get much worse for either one…

Customer Service?

2005-10-09T23:27:00.000-04:00

Jie's parents flew up and back to Austin on Northwest Airlines for this trip. They got a pretty good price on their flight, and they flew out of La Guardia, so we spent the weekend in NYC. That was fun, in addition to being cold and very wet. We did the NYC tourist thing, a first for Jie and me, including the Statue of Liberty, WTC site, NYSE, J&R Electronics, Central Park, etc. All in all it was a really fun weekend, I just wish the weather had been better, because it was lousy.

Not as lousy, it turns out, as Northwest's customer service. When Jie's parents arrived at the Austin airport to start their trip they were informed that their flight had been cancelled and they were now flying on a Continental flight through Houston. Furthermore, Northwest informed them that they had notified everyone of the flight change several months ago. In fact, Northwest was kind enough to send a itinerary reminder e-mail the night before the flight, showing the original itinerary! Anyway, this is just an example of disorganization, not really bad customer service.

This morning in New York we decided to check the flight status right before they left for the airport. I'm glad we did, because their flight was delayed by 30 minutes for mandatory crew rest, which meant they would miss their connection in Minneapolis. We weren't notified of the delay, which was a little irritating, but whatever. Anyway, so Jie gets on the phone to Northwestern to get their flight changed so they don't have to spend 5 hours in Minneapolis waiting on a connection to Austin. The NWA guy is generally uncooperative and puts her on hold for several minutes at a time so he can check for alternatives. First he says why don't we go to JFK instead for an on-time flight to MSP leaving earlier, but we explain that they can't make it there in time for the 45 minute check-in window. At this he responds that they would have to fly stand-by. Huh? Anyway, Jie argues that we would be on-time to LGA but we can't make JFK, and they didn't notify us, and so on. His response? A terse line informing us that we would have to resolve this at the airport and *click*

I'm not sure how much it has come up, but I used to be a manager in a customer-facing call center. Now, my workers and customers were more savvy than your average call center techs, but it is the same basic environment. I learned a few things about how to get the most out of a call center based on seeing the reactions to different kinds of callers by the staff on the inside. It sums up to this: if they don't like you, you'll get the slow, tortuous path to problem resolution; if they get invested in your problem and don't dislike you, miracles can happen. Anyway, I called NWA back and got Jie's parents on a better flight than their original (left later, arrived earlier, stop in DFW instead of MSP) on American. So, after offering that shread of credibility, here are my recommendations for dealing with call centers:

Assuming you've got a legitimate issue with their service, start by calmly telling the rep that you are extremely hacked off at their firm for reasons x, y, and z. Give this new rep a chance to solve your problem, even if you know they can't. This gets them invested in your problem, even if only by dint of the sunk cost of their time.
If the rep can't solve your problem and gives you a line about how there is nothing they can do, then tell them that's fine, you will suffer the abysmal service of their firm this time, but you will never use their services again (remember, still calm), unless, of course, they can send you to a manager for further assistance. The primary purpose of this is to get your rep to act as your advocate with their manager, rather than just handing off an irate caller. It improves the attitude of the manager immensely.
Once you are working with the manager, you basically repeat step 1. A nice tactic to add in here if you can is to suggest solutions. It's only possible where you have information on alternatives (like you do with flights), as it offers that subtle message that you will know if they aren't looking into something. Hopefully this manager will pull the strings to get things taken care of, if not you have a couple of options. You can either try to escalate again, which is only advisable in a high stakes situation (like business services rather than personal stuff), since you need clout to make a 2nd level manager take any notice at all.
Option 2 is to finally lose your temper, and say all of those nasty things that you've been thinking this whole time. There is a time and place for this, but hopefully the manager you're dealing with is competent enough to resolve the problem before that time. Of course, there will always be times when truly nothing can be done, in which case I hope you didn't get nasty, because you probably ruined someone's day for no reason. Just something to think about...

Career Catharsis

2005-10-06T20:42:00.000-04:00

Ok, change of heart, I will blog after all.

I’ve been bizarrely quiet about my summer experience thus far.  The primary reason is that I am an outed blogger, so to speak, so I have to watch what I say to a certain extent.  (Interestingly enough, I was discussing this just this morning with the old blogger Joey, who is also an HBS student, who had no problem staying anonymous.)  Anyway, my summer went pretty well.  Jie was in Boston for the summer because she had to work, so I went down and stayed with my parents.  I was working for an investment management firm, which I was excited about but had a few concerns as well.

The concerns, as astute readers may remember, centered around the amount of interpersonal interaction I would get in investment management.  My career team, people from the industry, my career coach, and others all told me that this could be a deal killer, and in fact it more or less was.  Now, the firm I was working with was extremely team-based, and I worked with some great people (one guy in particular turned it from a good experience to a great one), so I could see myself returning after school.  I couldn’t, however, see a long term career in investment management.  Now, there are two ways that can go, one is that I could stay long enough to make my millions and then who needs work, and the other is that I should look elsewhere because at it’s core IM is a destination industry.  To make my decision a no-brainer, the firm I was with restructured after I left and so it’s highly unlikely that they will even have a position for me.

So after all that I was back to the drawing board.  Now, since everyone and their dog had predicted that I would not find eternal bliss in IM, I decided to actually listen to where they were recommending and I looked into consulting.  I resisted initially because I didn’t want to follow the MBA herd, but what I found was encouraging.  In consulting I could find interesting work, indulge my desire for high-level problem solving with a dose of numbers thrown in, and I would get to work closely with lots of bright people.  After an absolute mania of networking events I think I’ve found my full time career, and now it’s just a matter of becoming an expert in the case interview and away we go. Of course, there are several interesting general management positions that I am looking in to as well, so it’s not all consulting.

In other news, the Astros won game one against the Braves in the NL Division Series, and Texas plays ou this Saturday at 1pm EST in Dallas.  I hope the Astros do well, but I would trade my first-born for a Texas win.  I’m having dreams about the game already.  I have butterflies in my stomach.  The wait is killing me.  (One advantage of the NFL: I don’t care who wins, so it’s low stress…)  Come on Texas, take care of business!

Numbers

2005-10-04T22:36:00.000-04:00

I just watched my first episode of Numbers, and boy is that a bad show. Of course, I also thought CSI was terrible and look how successful that turned out to be.

School is keeping me busy, and Jie’s parents are in town, so no real updates this week.

Another Near Miss

2005-09-28T18:51:00.000-04:00

I found this article interesting. Another example of something that shouldn’t happen in a city that faces natural disasters and theoretically potential terrorist attacks year after year. There must have been some sort of colossal breakdown in communication for that plant to go down without anyone knowing about it.

Hit or Miss

2005-09-28T16:36:00.000-04:00

Classes thus far have been pretty hit or miss.  On the one hand things are pretty interesting and move pretty quickly in just about every class.  There are several reasons for this, including the fact that the professors are teaching subjects near and dear to them, the students chose the class, and we’ve had the benefit of the RC to get up to biz speed.  What has surprised me (but shouldn’t have) is the unevenness in the quality of the courses.

I am in Managing Service Operations with Frances Frei, a world-class instructor if there ever was one, and the class is terrific.  I probably average more than one “a-ha” per class period, which is a pretty big deal.  She is incredibly passionate about the subject matter and it comes through, so I absolutely don’t regret putting her course #1 even though I could have gotten in with a lower ranking.

Then there are other classes, which I won’t single out by name.  Those professors are also experts in their field and display passion for the subject, but for some reason the learning just isn’t there and I don’t feel like I am really being transformed, to use the HBS lingo.  Fortunately, I only have one or maybe two classes in this bucket, so I’m doing well.

Anyway, lots to do before I head to a recruiting thing later, so I’d better get cracking.

My Name is Neo

2005-09-25T22:23:00.000-04:00

Last week I kept looking to Saturday for the light at the end of the tunnel.  Career Teams was keeping me really, really busy, and with activities really kicking off on Saturday I thought that would be the beginning of a break for me.  Well, what I initially took for the end of the tunnel now appears to be an oncoming train.  Ah well, such is life.

The next two weeks are job search/networking frenzy leading up to the resume submission deadline of 10/6 for on-campus interviews.  I would say 10/6 is the new end of the tunnel, but it’s really just a transition day to hardcore prepping for interviews that begin 10/31.  Things start to ease up through October, though, as Career Teams wrap-up the week after 10/15 and my extra half class ends 10/21.

Hopefully I’ll be able to start enjoying my EC year some time in mid-November.  Well, I’m enjoying things now, but it’s a little hectic for my tastes.

Anger

2005-09-23T14:20:00.000-04:00

Before I start the following rant I want to say that my thoughts are with those in the path of Hurricane Rita.  I hope that everyone is taking appropriate measures to protect themselves and their families, and that everyone comes through ok.

Having said that, this whole situation in Houston surrounding Hurricane Rita just makes me sick.  How is it possible for a city that faces the distinct possibility of being hit by a hurricane every year to not have a reasonable and actionable plan to evacuate the city?  Why is it taking 12 hours to get to Austin, which is normally a 2.5 hour drive.  (Break that down, that means that you are doing 12.5 miles/hour, essentially the speed of top marathoners.)  For example, the city didn’t have a concrete plan for opening up the inbound lanes to outbound traffic. This is especially shameful regarding Highway 290, one of the major routes to higher ground, because the design of the freeway in Brenham makes it impossible to ever reverse the inbound lanes.  That is practically criminal in its negligence.

Furthermore, low-lying areas to the south of the city had to evacuate all the way through Houston in order to get out.  Not only did the authorities fail to request that the urban population stay put while those in the most danger evacuate first, but they failed to induce any order in the evacuation at all.  Something as practical as asking physically capable people without dependants to stay while those with children and in need of assistance go first probably would have eased the congestion for everyone.

Don’t even get me started on the incident involving the bus that caught fire and killed at least 24 evacuating seniors.  Those deaths are on the heads of the people who didn’t see fit to organize or have a plan for evacuation, whether that be the prior administration of Mayor Lee Brown (a.k.a. Out-of-town Brown), the Texas DOT, current Mayor Bill White, or Mr. Mediocre, Governor Rick Perry.  It should come as no surprise to any intelligent human being that bad things will happen when cars, trucks, and buses are stuck in stop and go traffic in 90+ heat for over 12 hours!

Mayor White, whom I supported previously, made a remarkably dumb comment on the news about how it was good that the roads were jammed because that meant people were evacuating.  Tell me, genius, just how many people will now ride out the storm in Houston because they won’t endure the obscene traffic that is a result of the incompetent and untested scheme to get 4 million people out of the city?

I have always been very proud to be from Texas, and from Houston in particular.  I love almost everything about the city, and went so far as to choose to move back to Houston even with a post-undergrad offer in Austin.  I understand that evacuating a city the size of Houston is a monumental endeavor, but in the age of terrorist threats and in a city that has known the risk of hurricanes since at least 1900, there should have been a better plan.  I am embarrassed by the lack of planning and coordination.

At least the weather's lousy

2005-09-17T12:15:00.000-04:00

I’ve been sitting in a Spangler study room for the last three hours now working on Career Teams and International Financial Management. I had to allocate all of the RC’s to their various Career Teams, which was a surprisingly painful process. We wanted to make sure we didn’t have too many/too few people on any one team with any of the following in common: finance or consulting backgrounds, gender, section, or international experience. While balancing three of the four seemed straightforward, once there were four factors to consider it started to get pretty irritating. I’d think I was all done and then I’d realize I had a team with 3 people from Section I. I’d try and swap one of them, but I had to find a team where I could swap woman-woman or Finance-Finance or something like that. In the end, though, I think every team has no more than three finance people or two people in the same section, and no fewer than 3 women or 2 people with international experience.

My IFM assignment has been even more complicated. 1/3rd of the semester grade is based on a case write-up for one of about 4 cases scattered through the term. I chose this one because it is based on international diversification, which I am moderately experienced with due to the CFA. This is a serious data crunching case, including calculating annualized returns, standard deviations, and correlations in native and USD currencies for multiple time periods. I don’t mind figuring this stuff out, in fact it’s kind of interesting, but the repetitive nature of the assignment is really getting to me. Worst of all, that’s only parts 1 & 2 of 4…

Need sleep...

2005-09-15T21:41:00.000-04:00

I’m feeling really overwhelmed lately, I don’t think I’ve been this busy since early last year, if ever. Right now I’ve got three case days every day since I was dumb enough to sign up for 5.5 classes. On top of that, Career Teams is way oversubscribed so we’ve been working to attract additional Team Leaders and discourage those 1st years who aren’t truly serious and/or are unable to attend all the meetings from participating.

I’ve come to realize that my extra half-class, which I figured would be a bit fluffy, is actually a full 29 session course crammed into 15 sessions. I’m sure we’re not doing absolutely everything they do in the real thing, but we seem to be doing most of it. On that note, I’ve got to go note down the order of my aspect and values cards for the self-assessment exercise we’ll be discussing tomorrow.

E-mails

2005-09-13T22:25:00.000-04:00

I generally get 2-3 e-mails per month, so in the course of writing this blog I’ve received 30 or so.  I almost always respond to a certain type, and I don’t think I ever respond to another sort.  So, if you’re thinking of e-mailing me, here’s a little information as to what I will and won’t respond to.  If you think you’re in the won’t respond category, then please, don’t waste my time or yours by bothering to write it in the first place.

Good
A good e-mail shows thought, demonstrates that the author has actually read this blog and comprehended it, and exhibits a certain level of effort that says they have a serious question and are not just asking because it’s easy.  In other words, they respect my time and theirs.  Additionally, they ask a question that I am actually qualified to answer.  Just today I got a nice e-mail stating that the author was considering applying to much the same schools as me, and wanted to know if I have ever regretted my decision to attend HBS.  Of course, they only asked that question after telling me about their background and indicating why they thought my opinion would be relevant to them, in the process demonstrating knowledge of me via the blog.  Kudos to them, they got an immediate reply.

Not Good
Probably 80% of the e-mails I get show none of the above.  Many times they scarcely mention the blog, write a 3 line e-mail that’s basically all question, and ask me things that I really have no idea how to answer in a meaningful way.  Things like whether with their GMAT, GPA, and work experience they can get into HBS.  Or if Admissions Consultants are any good and if they should use one.  You get the idea.

Worse
There is another category of bad questions, and those are the ones that pry for personal details.  I’ve had questions about my GMAT, my GPA, requests for my essays, etc.  A few things: 1) None of that information is at all relevant to your application process. 2) If I was going to share it don’t you think I would have done it by now? 3) How on earth can someone justify to themselves asking personal details about someone they don’t even know?  Anyway, just don’t ask, your e-mail will be deleted immediately.

Last week at TGIF I ran into a former e-mailer who had asked a good question about living accommodations for him and his wife.  It was nice to hear that things worked out, and I was also pleased that he stills reads the blog when he has time.  I like taking time to help people (the #2 reason this blog has survived), but only when they clearly respect my time and theirs.

Texas 25, Ohio State 22

2005-09-11T00:55:00.001-04:00

Wow. What a game. I don't think anyone, on either side, can say that this wasn't something great. I'll remember this and the Rose Bowl for a long, long time.

Overcommitted?

2005-09-07T20:56:00.000-04:00

Good grief, it’s been a busy week so far.  Jie and I were in Chicago for a wedding last weekend, which was a great time.  We got back to the apartment late Monday night and it’s been non-stop since then.  Career Teams is getting hot and heavy right now, and looks to stay that way at least until the 24th, when the first Saturday session takes place.

Classes started today, I checked out Strategy and Technology, International Financial Management, and Dynamic Markets.  It’s nice to not be doing the course shopping that a lot of people are going through right now, but it does make me wonder if I’m making a mistake by not attending 4 classes a day this week like many people.

Ah well, I’m pretty happy with my schedule.  I have been contemplating adding an additional half-course, to go to 5.5 total for the semester.  The course I’ve been looking at is Self Assessment and Career Development.  Yes, I know it’s very similar to Career Teams and probably repetitive, but it’s intriguing nonetheless.  I’ll probably sit in tomorrow morning and see what I think.  Between Career Teams, recruiting, and 5 classes I’ve probably got enough on my plate already, but one more half course can’t hurt too much, can it?

Katrina

2005-09-01T12:42:00.001-04:00

The pictures and video coming out of Louisiana and Mississippi are just mind-boggling. I was watching Sportscenter on Tuesday and Aaron Brooks of the New Orleans Saints compared the devastation to that of 9/11 in terms of the effects on the psyche of those involved. At the time I thought he was exaggerating, but it's clear now that he wasn't at all. Just to give an idea of the destruction for those who have never been to the affected areas, here is a picture from my visit to Mississippi last May for my step-siblings graduation:

Now watch the SkyCopter on the Coast, 3rd tour available from http://www.wlbt.com/. The church that you can see in the initial shot is the same church that Jie and I are standing in front of in the picture. The entire town of Bay St. Louis, which was as entertaining and pretty as any New England fishing village, is basically destroyed.

Thankfully, my step-siblings and their relatives are safe, but there are many still in need so please donate to charities in order to help the victims of Katrina. As always, The Red Cross is a good default organization for your donations.

The Class the Dollars Fell On

2005-08-31T16:59:00.000-04:00

Things are really starting to ramp-up around here. I’m knee deep in career teams, 1st years are all over the place doing orientation activities, I got my hepatitis B vaccination, and I picked up my course packets for the first two weeks of class.

The way the start of term works the second year is that you get to trial classes for the first two weeks and then try to add/drop into what you want, if you aren’t already in it. My fall schedule is pretty much set, but I have a few changes that I want to try and make to my spring schedule. Anyway, one of course packets I requested is for a course called The Coming of Managerial Capitalism, and it had an interesting first case comparing the class of 1949 (widely considered THE class of HBS) and the class of 2005. Here are some interesting tidbits:

The Class of 1949 was 100% white and male, and of that only 6% were international.

HBS peaked at over 10,000 applicants in 2002 or so, but had less than 6,000 as recently as the early 90’s. I imagine other schools display a similar trend, and thus it’s probably a tad early to declare the current application slump the death of the two year MBA.

Manufacturing jobs dominated in 1949, with over 40% of the class going into the space straight out of school.

The average starting salary of an HBS grad in ’49 was only 20% greater than the U.S. average salary. By comparison, recent HBS classes have roughly tripled the national average.

There are about more MBA’s graduated each year than advanced degrees in law and medicine combined. And I thought there were too many lawyers in the world…

How old are we?

2005-08-29T18:47:00.000-04:00

Sue Shellenbarger wrote a couple of articles in the WSJ Work and Family section regarding overinvolved parents in the college experience (the articles are from 7/28 & 8/25). Labeling them “Helicopter Parents,” she cites numerous examples which would be funny if they weren’t so sad, like parents who communicate directly with the school to arrange roommates, pick courses, buy books, etc. Of course, a certain amount of parental involvement at the undergraduate level is positive and expected, but parents also need to learn to let kids live their own lives.

Why is this at all relevant to a b-school blog? Well, because some parents still haven’t let go, even at this level. I read somewhere at one point that the surest way to get dinged from a school was if your parents called to ask questions about the admissions process. I think it was in an interview with an admissions director, and he ranked heavy parental involvement in the admission process as a greater sin than leaving the wrong school’s name in one of your essays. Apparently a few sneak through the net, though, as a friend of mine overheard a parent inquire of the administration if there was a sheet changing service available for his son. Come on people, we’re all supposed to be adults here…

Review of Aspasia

2005-08-28T22:30:00.000-04:00

Aspasia – Jie and I went there for dinner Saturday night. It’s a small upscale eatery about a mile northwest of Harvard Square. While moderately priced for an upscale establishment (entrees $20-30), the portions were huge and the food delicious. We had a clam and calamari appetizer, then Jie had the duck and I had the lamb. I’m serious about my meat, so I requested that the lamb be cooked “as little as is healthy,” and I wasn’t disappointed. The duck was fantastic as well, so it was an all around good meal. I would recommend Aspasia, and Jie and I are already trying to figure out when we can return and with whom to try out the Prix Fixe menu.

Good luck to everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina. We’ll definitely be watching the news and thinking about those caught in the region.

2 Things I Like

2005-08-27T09:30:00.000-04:00

Yesterday at Costco Jie and I decided to go out on a limb and get some beef tenderloin steaks.  We’ve tried their regular steaks and pork chops, and I wasn’t really a huge fan of either.  Though inexpensive, the meat tended to be a little tougher than what we could get at our local grocery store, Shaw’s.  The beef tenderloin was only around $11/pound, which is about what a strip steak would go for at Shaw’s, so I thought it was worth trying out.  I’m glad I did, because those steaks may just make the Costco membership worth it all by themselves.  They had about the perfect taste and tenderness, even though I slightly over-seasoned and overcooked them.  I will definitely be buying more.

Watching football is really nice on our new HDTV with the HD/DVR service from Comcast.  Last night we watched the Patriots game and during commercials I paused it and watched the Steelers game as well.  In order to avoid getting hopelessly behind I just watched the actual plays in the Steelers game and fast-forwarded through everything else, but it was still nice to see substantially all of the action of both games.  I really can’t wait for football season to get here.

I read on FMG’s blog today that she’s been working on only 3 hours of sleep recently, which she thought would be good prep for getting back into school.  I honestly don’t know how anyone can do that.  If I don’t get at least 6 hours then I’m pretty much useless, and I can’t go more than 2-3 days in a row without at least 7 hours/night.  That’s one reason I’m really looking forward to this semester, no classes until 10am.

Relax

2005-08-26T14:33:00.000-04:00

I’ve been hanging out around campus this week as I get some things taken care of. This morning I was in Career Services for a meeting on Career Teams, and then I’ve also been in Spangler quite a bit since Jie works there now. Throughout all this, I’ve seen a lot of 1st Year’s running around, going to analytics, and getting accustomed to life here at HBS.

My advice to them, and to students starting b-school everywhere, is to relax. A lot of people seem pretty uptight and tense about getting the most out of school, and that’s completely unnecessary. There is plenty to stress about when starting a new program in a new place and there’s no reason to contribute to your own stress level by trying to do too much, too soon. So get out there and enjoy the beautiful summer weather and relax and enjoy starting a new adventure.

To Do

2005-08-25T18:49:00.000-04:00

It’s funny how the mind works.  Just a week ago I was wrapping up my last day of work for the summer and it seemed like ages since I’d been in Boston (only a month, in fact).  Now I’m back in Boston for a week and it seems like ages ago that I was working.

I’ve spent the week thus far working down my sizable to-do list.  I’ve managed to complete about 2/3rds of it, which is pretty good for me.  With my work habits, though, it will be December before I finish everything on there.

One of the things I’m trying to do this semester is to finally lose some weight.  Over the last 3-4 years I’ve fluctuated between 185-195 pounds when I should really be down around 165-175.  So, my goal is to get down to 170 between now and Thanksgiving, which means losing 20 pounds.  I think this is doable with some modest changes in lifestyle:

No cokes – during the summer I was drinking way too many cokes, which translated to lots of empty calories. I’m currently trying to kick the habit.

Working out – I’m terrible about working out, and I need to be more consistent if I’m going to shed the weight.

No fast food – See comments about cokes, this is easier to accomplish in Boston because we aren’t near any fast food restaurants

Cut down on beer – This is the hardest one, though I’ve done it before. I’m trying not to drink on weekdays and to limit myself to about a 6-pack on weekends. (Thanks to Dave, I’m already behind on this one… ;)

By the way, I wrote and posted this via MS Word, which is pretty convenient relative to logging into blogger. Also, FireFox never played nicely with blogger, so I think this will work for me.

Baker Library Pics

2005-08-24T16:38:00.001-04:00

As promised, here are some pictures of Baker Library (click on the pic to go to the gallery). I started in front with a few pictures, then got the foyer areas, then the stairs up to the library, the main library, and then the stacks in the basement. Finally, the last picture is the back of the library, which all last year was a fenced in construction site. I like this new layout better.

Wow.

2005-08-22T14:00:00.000-04:00

That about sums up my feelings after touring the new Baker Library on the HBS campus. They spent two years basically demolishing and completely rebuilding Baker Library, and it just opened to the public a few weeks ago. My goodness, the building is gorgeous. I'll go over one day this week with my camera and get pictures, as I don't think I could do it justice in words.

1900 miles to Boston

2005-08-18T18:41:00.000-04:00

Finished internship, everything went great. Leave for Boston in about 11 hours. Should be there in less than 55 hours.

Final Week

2005-08-13T15:39:00.000-04:00

I'm starting my last week down here in Houston. I'm in the office today working on some end-of-internship materials that I can never seem to get a good start on during the regular work day. I have four days left of work, and then I leave first thing Friday morning for the long drive back to Boston.

The route I've chosen this time is via Atlanta and North Carolina, and I think it'll be pretty cool. Everyone makes fun of me for driving a different route each time, but since it makes a neglible difference in driving time I can't see a reason why I wouldn't want to do it. My brother will be driving with me, so it should be a fun bonding experience.

We had a career teams conference call yesterday to get back in the mindsight of school. We are kicking the program off really early this year so it's vital that we can hit the ground running as soon as classes start. If there are any readers out there who are second years at HBS, please e-mail me if you want to participate. We're still looking for 10-15 leaders for a great program, so please help!

I also found out that HBS is implementing a new program called Learning Teams for the Class of 2007. They will be assigned a group to do a couple of different projects during the fall semester. I have very few details, but I do know that this team isn't supposed to supplant study groups, instead it is supposed to provide a way for us arrogant HBS Type A people to learn to work better with others.

Schedules are out!

2005-08-10T20:53:00.000-04:00

Course schedules came out yesterday! It's about time, too, they were really starting to stretch the term "early" August. I did really well, at least relative to the few people I've spoken with, so I'm pretty happy. Of course, I didn't really go for a lot of the high demand courses so I had good odds going in. Looking at how things shook out it looks like I should have done a few minor things differently to really get my ideal schedule, but all in all things went well. Here's my lineup, in the order I ranked them (but broken out by semester):

Fall
Managing Service Operations
Coordinating and Managing Supply Chains
International Financial Management
Dynamic Markets
Strategy and Technology

Winter
Entrepreneurial Management in a Turnaround Environment
Investment Management
Professional Services
Half Course in Behavioral Corporate Finance
Business Analysis and Valuation
Coming of Managerial Capitalism

I didn't get Corporate Strategy because it was full long before my #3 ranking, and a Half Course in Energy that I couldn't get because of a time conflict, and thus I got Coming of Mgrl Cpt instead. I'm going to go to both, I think, and then decide whether I want to try to shift my schedule around in order to get Energy instead, and also be a half-course lighter.

The best part is that my half course in Beh Fin is the only one before 10am, so I won't be in class until 10 for 3/4 of the year. Also, my Thu-Fri will always get out at 1pm, so I'll have long weekends. In fact, I'll be on weekend from 1pm Friday until 10am Monday all year. That's almost as good as freshman year of college when I skipped all my Friday classes and so I was on the weekend from Thursday afternoon until Monday afternoon every week.

So, the scheduling process was a bit of a headache and it could probably be made more user friendly, but it worked out so I'm cool with it. Any comments on my schedule? I wish I could have gotten a marketing class, but the only one I thought about taking is in the fall, and I really wanted the five classes I already have.

Winding Down

2005-08-03T20:58:00.000-04:00

My summer in Houston is starting to wind down. I've got two more weekends here and then I drive back up to Boston with my brother. I'm looking forward to starting my second year, but I'm also kind of sad to leave work so soon. I only have 10 days left in the office and I really feel like I have a lot left to learn and do before I leave. My quality of work has shot up just over the last few weeks and I've made some good friends.

Two funny things happened to Jie and I recently, and in both cases the companies seem to be doing the right things:

Cingular - Our LG LC1300 phones from Cingular have been giving us problems for ages. So, Jie finally got fed up and called in about it and after talking to the lady for a while she admitted they had a lot of complaints about the phones and offered to replace them. She made it sound like we would get new versions of the same phone. Well, the box arrived and not only was there not one for me (we have a family plan), but the phone that arrived was refurbished, and it still had a picture of a half-naked woman as the background and all the menus were in Spanish. Well, that wasn't what we wanted when we asked for new phones. Jie called back and expressed her indignation and this time they eventually offered to send us two brand new Motorola V180 phones. Much better, at least until I get mine and it's a refurbished model with no battery or power cord (Jie got a brand new one in a real box and everything). So, after calling Cingular again a new phone is supposed to be making it's way to me now. We'll see once I get it...

Chase - Someone apparently has my mastercard information because they charged $2900 in wildfire fighting products to it. Well, the jokes on them because I shortly thereafter (and unknowingly) maxed out the card and then Jie caught the charge. After a brief call with Chase the account has been closed (before I could download my statements to Quicken, damn they're quick!), and we'll get the necessary paperwork and new cards in 3-5 days.

Back in Boston

2005-07-16T14:28:00.000-04:00

I'm back in Boston for the weekend, here for the first time in about a month. It's so easy for me to forget how beautiful the city is, but when I'm here on a nice day with clear skies and a breeze and I'm walking over the Charles River I'm always awestruck. Of course, it's only really like this from May-October, but when it's nice here it's really nice.

I had a great flight up last night. I sat next to a marketing manager for a local manufacturing firm that does a lot of business in Texas. It's one of those chance encounters that could one day lead to a job, I think, because it's the kind of company that I could really see myself working for straight out of school if I go the general management route over investment management. They've got some really neat technology and it seems like a great place to work. I got her card, so when I'm back here for school I can follow up and see if it's something I want to explore.

Today I went and got a haircut at my barbershop in Harvard Square and then gave in to temptation and went and got a copy of the new Harry Potter book. On the one hand I suppose it seems a little childish to be reading HP, but I read the last one and I was a little surprised by how intelligent and sophisticated it is. Furthermore, I just read an interesting WSJ article about how the plot of HP5 closely follows British history leading up to WW2. So, if Ms. Rowling is inducing kids to read and also teaching them a little history at the same time, well then I think I should support that by paying $18 and getting my copy to read. If nothing else, it's entertaining.

Last weekend I finalized my course selections (we get a 4 week window over the summer to revise our selections based on demand stats and internship experiences), though not much changed. My internship hasn't been the career path revealing experience I hoped it would be, but then I think that was unrealistic to begin with. It all comes back to the fact that a job is more about the culture of the firm than the actual work, and while I like the culture of the firm a lot I'm not 100% convinced that this is what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. In a way it's disappointing, but then I think I knew it all along so it's not such a big deal.

Neglect

2005-07-07T22:18:00.000-04:00

I apologize, I've been completely neglecting the blog. Let's see, since the last time I wrote Jie and I went to a really fun wedding of a friend from high school. It was a little strange, I dated two of the bridemaids for a combined 4 years...

Anyway, work is still busy, but going very well. I have to admit, I wasn't sure it was the career for me the first few weeks. However, I've gotten further into it and am really enjoying myself now. I can definitely see making a career out of it, the deeper I get in the more fun I have each day.

Ok, more to come this weekend. I am staying in town so I can get caught up on all the things I've been neglecting: oil change, clean the house, blog, pay bills, career teams, etc...

HBS Happy Hour

2005-06-28T22:35:00.000-04:00

I met up with a couple of guys from HBS the other night for a happy hour. We went to Little Woodrow's, which is a great Houston hangout, and had a few beers. We did a little bit of reminiscing about school as well as comparing war stories on our summer internships. I certainly got the award for earliest hours, though one guy who supports energy traders definitely has the hairiest math to do as part of his job. All in all it appears we are all happy with our jobs, but ready to escape back into the world of academia, at least for another year.

Open mouth, insert foot

2005-06-25T11:05:00.000-04:00

I was on a roll yesterday, repeatedly saying things I didn't mean or shouldn't say. This is a common problem for me, but yesterday it was just time after time after time. I'm certainly one of those people who verbalizes thoughts rather than carefully weighing them before I say anything, and it gets me in trouble fairly regularly. It's been a while, though, since I said as many dumb things as I did yesterday.

Work has been going well, though I should probably sit down with my boss again this week and see how I am living up to expectations. I also need to get started on networking while I'm in Houston in case this doesn't turn into a full-time gig, but I just can't seem to get any traction on that front.

One of my heroes

2005-06-20T00:31:00.000-04:00

Robert Horry has been one of my heroes since he helped the Rockets to consecutive NBA titles back in the mid-90's. Tonight he once again proved why, scoring 18 points, including four three pointers, including the game winner, in the 4th quarter and OT. An unobtrusive team player who makes clutch plays, not headlines, he's the type of guy that you want your kids to emulate. Now hopefully the Spurs can seal the deal in the two remaining home games.

Ya gotta take the good with the bad...

2005-06-13T21:49:00.000-04:00

Today after work I went to work out at Bally's, my new gym. So far I've worked out three times and so my average cost is down to a low price of $50. I think when I get down to $5 I'll have gotten my money's worth. Anyway, I got there today and they had a sign on the front door stating that there would be no air conditioning on Monday or Tuesday. Now, this place has been at least 75 degrees every day I've been there, but it had to be well over 85 today. It was so hot that after 2 miles on a treadmill, directly below a ceiling fan, I had to take a break and drink a lot of water before I could do the last mile. Oh yeah, and half the TV's weren't working either. They were running this stupid message that said something about an invalid cable card.

So I get home, and after a while realize that my cell phone won't make incoming or outgoing calls. I call the Cingular help line and get a message saying that their help desk is only open 7a-9p M-F in my local time zone. Wait a minute, it was 7:30pm! WTF? So I call their after hours help desk and get a message saying it is "unavailable." Anyway, I called back later and finally got through. After a 20 minute hold time I'm now talking to a live person, who apparently has the problem solving savvy to call my number and tell me that it went straight to voicemail. Brilliant.

As for the good news, I got the balance of my term two grades today. After scoring below average on just about every final exam I finally did well on a few. Ok, gotta go!

Any suggestions?

2005-06-09T22:38:00.000-04:00

This is one of those times when self-censorship is probably the better part of valor. I have interesting things to say about my summer internship, but I would immediately give away who I work for if I talk about the cool stuff I’ve been doing. I don’t want to do that, so instead I don’t have anything to talk about aside from the ridiculously early hours and the bizarrely warm gym that I have stumbled into joining. I don’t imagine anyone wants to hear about that all summer, so if I am to keep posting I guess I’ll have to think of something to talk about.
…
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Perhaps I’ll sleep on it.

Mark and Jie's Journey to B-School

Psst, I'm blogging again

It's so hard to be Mark

A little advice for future graduates

Wha???

Back in Boston

Special Notification of Data Theft

Finis!

One more in the books...

2 down, 2 to go

One down...

A few pre-finals thoughts

Dean Light = More strenuous academics

An abysmal repeat

You can't spell revenge without G

Hand off successful

You are looking at...

21 days and counting

I've been transformed!

Congrats!

The beginning of the end

Of visitors and trips

Grading at HBS

Admit Weekend

Are big decisions really that big?

Pontifications on HBS

2nd year, 2nd semester

STOP SNOWING!

Anniversary, skiing, housing, mistresses, and UFC

Travel Junkies

Procrastination Works!

Straight Out of Undergrad MBA Students

Courses and jobs

Finally...

Congrats!

California Day 5

California Trip - Day 3 and 4

Cali Trip Day 2

National Champs!!!

The Granddaddy of 'em All

Happy Holidays!

Lazy Days

Week in Review

The good news first

4.5 down, 1 to go

Stay on target

More airline stories

More on grade disclosure

Execution vs. Strategy

Exhaustive Update

Brought Down the Class

Book Report - Freakonomics

I even read When Genius Failed!

Paper Classes, nice for now...

The blight spreads

My least favorite time of year

I am Iron Man!

Interview Ideas

Hell Week Update

a.k.a. DIP Week

Who knew TV was so exciting?

Comment of the Day

What was I thinking?

The Astros won the pennant!

List Mania!

With apologies to Peter King

Woe is me

Something to carefully consider

Texas 45 - ou 12, and other scores

Customer Service?

Career Catharsis

Numbers

Another Near Miss

Hit or Miss

My Name is Neo

Anger

At least the weather's lousy

Need sleep...

E-mails

Texas 25, Ohio State 22