The MIA quarter

These days, I haven't been blogging as frequently or as well as I'd like to blog. True to its reputation, winter quarter proved to be very very hectic. Academics went up a notch or two, we got involved in numerous activities in school and occasionally, there are things and people to catch up with. If i could do a snapshot of the last three months, it would be full! Such has been this quarter. I'll try to capture what happened, as succinctly as possible.

Academics: This quarter ended up being as painful as i thought it would be. If you remember, i had two accounting courses and the other one was investments. I thoroughly enjoyed (call me a geek) the intense arithmetic, especially in investments, and the accounting courses helped me learn accounting at a much deeper and wider level, after basic accounting in autumn quarter. If i read a annual report, i can make a LOT of sense today, and also derive a lot of conclusions about the firm. It was a LOT of work though, especially towards the end, what with one of the profs teaching the entire course through assignments! I also attended an excel based financial modeling seminar, which surprisingly ended up being super fun. Besides all the accounting i learned, the course on Investments turned out to be really enjoyable. This prof talked formula as if it was his mother tongue; he was better in this language than English, much to the chagrin of many of my classmates! I was enjoying a feeling of dejavu, as he reminded me of of my engineering days, including the cheap thrills when i could recite formulas from the top of my head ;) Irrespective of the grades, this was a fulfilling quarter in terms of what i learned.

Internship: I saw someone asking me the question in the previous post, and the short answer is "No. I don't have a job yet." I went through on campus recruiting, interviewed with a few firms (big name banks included) but unfortunately things did not work out for me. I still value the experience as it helped me learn a lot of things i would eventually use in my career, and it also helped me re-assess myself and go at recruiting all the more harder. It also took me to sides of GSB's career services that i would have never seen. Not to sound boastful - GSB's career services team is absolutely fabulous. Now i see why Economist rated them so high. As for my internship search, i am working on a set of exciting opportunities. Hopefully i will have good news to share soon.

Chibus: This deserves special mention. We're 33% done, unless we delay transition next year, which we intend to do. Being responsible for Chibus has been the single most important experience for me at GSB. It has helped me meet people i probably would not have met otherwise. It is enriching me with experiences which i would have certainly not had. It has offered me perspectives of the kind that would have required a few more years for me to learn. All in about 10 weeks! I love it and cant wait to work on the next issue!!!

Winter Quarter: I've been through a lot this quarter. I gave myself the time to assimilate and absorb the things i learned about myself. I started the quarter as a wreck and today, i feel better than i have felt in quite some time. Both personally and professionally, I've found myself in situations where i was forced to ask really deep and difficult questions to myself, in places where i had to reassess my beliefs and opinions about people, and i believe i made the right decisions. To sum it up, i think this quarter completed what started sometime last quarter - to help me learn about myself, and to improve upon what i saw. I believe I've done that well. Time will tell.

Spring Quarter: I have a packed quarter ahead. I have four courses - Corporation Finance, Economics and Policy of TMT (with Mr. Goolsbee, economic adviser to the famous-person-i-met-in-the-elevator), Marketing Strategy and New Venture Lab. I am super psyched about NVL. I got the project i SO wanted to do and I am sure i am gonna learn a lot, while having good fun, with the project. I'm quite excited about the other courses too, so overall it looks promising.

So with four courses, Chibus and recruitment - I guess I'm gonna be the same infrequent blogger in this quarter too. I am gonna make a genuine attempt at being more frequent that last quarter though. I missed blogging this quarter :)