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JUNE 2003 MBA JOURNAL: HOME STRETCH Travis Robins: Second Year Winds Down "It will be quite a shock to wake up one day with school over and many of my friends scattered across the country, but it's time for all of us to start new adventures." All that said, I'm ready to get back into the real world. My wife tells me I have until June 1 to find a job, at which time my status will officially change from "student" to "bum." So, let's hope something works out between now and then. I am more than ready to stop the hemorrhaging in our checking account. Through my own networking I've been able to keep up a slow but steady trickle of informational interviews, mostly in the financial services sector. I have a strong rapport with three different firms right now, and am hopeful that an opportunity will come up with at least one of them soon. It's really a matter of them having an opening, or at least that's what I keep telling myself. For the most part, the firms I'm talking to aren't typical MBA employers, which makes it hard for us to feel each other out. That's true both for expectations about job responsibilities and about compensation. Since the ideal opportunities haven't materialized, I'm mostly concerned now with getting onboard with a company that will provide a lot of opportunity and flexibility going forward. As far as school itself goes, I haven't slacked off on my courses, but that's a personal decision. Kenan-Flagler operates on "Mods", or half-semesters, meaning that I started a new set of classes after spring break. I only need two more classes to graduate, but have found myself roped into taking four. I had intended to drop out of the Investment Management course I've been in for the past year, but the professor took me to lunch to convince me to stay in one last Mod. His appeal that I should look at the last seven weeks as a chance to leave my mark upon the class and improve it for the incoming students must have worked, because I was I'm still in class. Maybe it was the free turkey sandwich. Equity Valuation is a financial-modeling-intensive course that tackles different approaches to valuation, from highly sophisticated residual income models to behavioral finance. Small Business Management is taught by Colin Wahl, an adjunct professor who is founder and Vice-Chairman of InvestorForce, a software firm for the investment management industry. Most of this course revolves around case studies, group projects, and excellent guest speakers. Associate Dean Bob Adler teaches Negotiation, which covers some negotiation theory but is heavy on practice. We negotiate one-on-one and in groups against our classmates and also against a group of ringers brought in from outside the school. I'm also finishing up Applied Investment Management, the course I've been enrolled in since the Spring of last year. We've had great success this Spring with several of our stock picks, including Wal-Mart (WMT), Beazer Homes (BZH) and Marvel Comics (MVL). We now look to finish the year just a few percentage points below break even, while our benchmark, the S&P 500, is down 15% over the same time period. On April 30, we will turn the funds over to 1st year students who will run it for the next year. A few folks seem burnt out on school and ready to take the shortest route to graduation. Not long ago, for instance, a classmate mentioned that he really wanted to take a certain class to learn the material, but he didn't actually want to do the work and he didn't need the credits to graduate. But not everyone feels that way. I still think that since we choose the elective classes we're taking we don't have much of an excuse for not giving our best effort. I don't want to be accused of preaching to anyone about our work ethic, so I'll leave it at that. The workload is certainly lighter in the second year, at least if you take advantage of the elective offerings available in the spring of your first year. I actually finished my first year with 43 of the required 63.5 credit hours. I think that is the most possible for the first year. The required first year load is 35.5 hours. My course load has been flexible enough to allow me to partake of the strong speaker series at Kenan-Flagler. Just in the past two months I've attended talks by Tom Friedman, columnist for the New York Times; Sallie Krawcheck, Chairman and CEO of Smith Barney (part of Citigroup); and Wyche Fowler, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Most recently, Ken Thompson, Chairman and CEO of Wachovia, spoke on campus. Kenan-Flagler also has a range of international opportunities, with second-year students traveling as far away as Australia and South Africa on seven or ten week exchange programs. We have courses known as "Global Immersion" electives, which are elective classes studying a certain region of the world, followed by a ten day trip to that region, either at the end of the academic year or during Spring Break. Southeast Asia and South America are two of the more popular choices, while other trips have gone to various regions of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, located adjacent to the business school, also operates an office in Thailand which has sponsored several summer internships in Asia. The Kenan Institute founded the MBA Enterprise Core, which sends fresh MBAs from around the country to developing countries to work with local managers. The current focus is Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. I think we all feel graduation looming only a few weeks away. Everywhere people are making plans for travel or for "beach week", making arrangements to stay in touch after graduation, and finalizing a lot of moving plans. It will be quite a shock to wake up one day with school over and many of my friends scattered across the country, but it's time for all of us to start new adventures. This adventure has definitely been a good one. 
BW MALL
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