January 2007 Archives

Yeah! Finals are over and I can again participate in activities like socializing and sleeping. The last two weeks were challenging. Besides final exams, there was an integrated company project that includes a paper and presentation due the week before finals. The purpose of the project is take everything learned in the core classes and use this information to analyze a company, forecast a stock price, and provide recommendations. From almost the beginning of the semester, we knew about this assignment and the due date. My team and I had great intentions around getting this project done well before the deadline. As you can imagine, we finished at the paper at 3:00 am, five hours before it was due. Luckily, we weren’t one of the groups that had to present that day. We presented the following day, and with the exception of one question that I still don’t know the answer to, everything went well.

Anyway, I am off to celebrate Christmas with my family and relax. Hope everyone has a happy holidays!

What a relief to have survived my first semester of grad school! Two weeks ago, when I looked at my date book and realized that I had four exams and four projects to complete in fifteen days, I was honestly concerned. Not because I didn’t think that I could do it, but more worried about how I would be at the other end. Would I give up sleep for two weeks and live on caffeine and pizza? Did Grainger have cots I could rent for an hour in between projects?

Surprisingly enough, after I set my priorities and clarified my goals, I was able to balance all of the necessary tasks required during one of the most difficult times of the semester. In addition, I found time to sleep at home (there are no cots at Grainger) and eat more than just vending machine food and pizza. Instead of being the complete wreck that I feared, I now feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. It has been many years since I last attended university, and even then, I have never been with a group of individuals as impressive as my UW Madison, MBA colleagues. Still, I was able to do well, learn quite a bit and understand how important these next 1.5 years will be.