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FEBRUARY 2002 MBA JOURNAL: ALUMNI UPDATE Michele Davies: Life After B-School "Since I graduated in September, I've spent two months in southern Spain taking intensive Spanish classes, which were fantastic. Having the time and opportunity to focus on improving my Spanish was wonderful."
Looking back, there's not much I would have done differently. Well, maybe I should have studied a bit more, but then I would have missed out on spending time with all the cool people who were in my class. In the end, if I don't remember something academic, I can always look it up later. I only had a year to discuss global geo-politics with Dhruv and Xunsheng, get Peter's views on our readings which were usually about 180 degrees from my thinking and yet made so much sense, or go out dancing with Lucia. I would not have missed those opportunities, just to finish reading one more article. A one-year program, like Oxford's, has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the reasons I chose it was that two years in a U.S. MBA program seemed like a very long time commitment. On the other hand, now that I've done it, one year flew by incredibly quickly. It means that we've all gotten back to real life sooner. The academic program was very comprehensive, but in a year we didn't have time to take 57 electives, only three. One thing I liked very much that is unique to Oxford was having the college experience (in the British sense of the word "college"). What I mean is that it was almost like my undergraduate years again, in that I lived, socialized, and played soccer with other students who were studying law, physics, and history. It did not in any way diminish the ties I formed with other MBAs, but supplemented them, and gave me a chance to have a social circle outside of the business school as well. Since I graduated in September, I've spent two months in southern Spain taking intensive Spanish classes, which were fantastic. Having the time and opportunity to focus on improving my Spanish was wonderful. I embraced the culture, the tapas and the vino, fell in love with the Moorish architecture, and found the whole Spanish-speaking world opening up to me. My initial impulse to study Spanish came from personal reasons, given family ties in Latin America, but I'm also pleased that this will have professional benefits as well. I'm always interested in emerging markets and Latin America may well be the market of the future, despite Argentina's significant hiccup right now. After Spain, I returned home to Chicago for the holidays, continued my wrestle with deciding where I want to look for work, and eventually booked my flight back to the UK. Here's where the fantastic network built during my MBA starts kicking in. There are a significant number of classmates who have stayed around London and Oxford, either working or searching for work. They are my support, providing everything from a place to stay (I'm forever indebted, Dhruv) to tips on where to find the best afternoon tea in London and leads on prospective employment. Speaking of which, given my backgrounds in both telecom and power, I'm looking at both of those sectors with an eye to doing strategy, business development, or corporate marketing. I had entered the MBA with the intention of pursuing finance, but am leaning in other directions right now. Coming from a science and engineering background, I've always been very quantitative and the numbers come quite easily for me, but I've decided that I no longer want it to be my focus. The complexities of figuring out a market place and how a company or a product should fit into it and then making it happen sounds much more interesting.  Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | FEBRUARY Learn about your online education options |
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