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JANUARY 2004 MBA JOURNAL: MID TERM REPORT Cintra Pollack: The First Six Weeks of B-School "I'm on campus most days from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., but between 20 hours a week of classes, studying, team meetings, and extracurricular meetings, I'm often at school much more than that." This morning I curse Ali Tarhouni, my microeconomics professor. Lest you assume I don't like Ali, I like him fine. Correction: I adore him. After all, how many professors look at your befuddled face and pledge they'll explain microeconomics to you if it's the "last thing [they] do before [they] die"? (Let's just say I am not a micro natural, but it's getting better). Curse him anyway! I blame Ali for spoiling my ability to passively and joyfully watch the people come in and out of the coffee shop. Now when I look up at the line of people ordering at the counter I see swoops of supply and demand curves hanging in the air. Wylie, the owner of Joe Bar, recently expanded this shop and added crepes to the menu (it used to be just pastries and coffee). Next week he furthers his menu expansion to include wine and beer. I wonder what happened to the demand curve for scones when Wylie added crepes. Did he have the forethought to order fewer pastries from his suppliers? The man ordering a latte: what does his indifference curve between lattes and drip coffee look like? What will Wylie's profit margin on a beer be, and how much of that is economic profit as opposed to accounting profit? This is how I engage the world now. I'm ruined. I'm thankful my friends outside school still talk to me. Besides the fact I probably bore them to tears with my B-school tales, the MBA program is a huge consumer of time. I couldn't hold a part-time job if I tried. I'm on campus most days from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., but between 20 hours a week of classes, studying, team meetings, and extracurricular meetings, I'm often at school much more than that. Most nights are spent at home preparing cases or problem sets. In my meager free time I squeeze in exercise, seeing select friends, and the occasional trip to the grocery store. I promised myself I would maintain a balanced life when I entered my MBA program and for the most part I have, but doing so requires deft maneuvering between life's tasks and school obligations. Thus far, I am enjoying the balancing act. I'm surprised by how enjoyable I am finding my first quarter core classes, comprised of statistics, microeconomics, financial accounting, competitive strategy, and organizational management. Classes are balanced between lecture and case discussions, and I like and am active in both. Judging by midterms, I'm not doing very well academically. Then again, I am for the most part keeping up in classes that afore-to-now were Greek to me. Honestly, I'd probably do better taking Greek. As long as I don't fall very far behind my classmates, I'll be ok. And I doubt my classmates will let me fall too far behind. One really nice thing about the UW program is the extent to which we all help each other, how collaboration and supportiveness are the culture. People in my program are genuinely helpful and kind. We're in this thing together. Everyone takes exactly the same core classes all year from the same professors, save a couple of electives this spring. No one seems concerned or boastful about being at the top of the class. In fact, we are far more likely to pronounce our failures to a crowd than our successes. Then we all laugh about it. We're a very congenial, cooperative group of 114; the UW program is sculpted to enhance this. In the classroom, professors are animated and approachable. Students speak freely and tend not to clip at what someone else said. When we disagree, it's very civil and usually results in an after-class debate, not an in-class confrontation. Participation in every class is mandated, but the professors don't have to work too hard to encourage it. As the quarter wears on, professors cold-call from time to time, but it seems an effort to pull insightful comments from the quiet, not a chance to put people on the spot or to scare them into doing the reading (which most do anyway). Even the loudmouths in the class (of which I am sometimes one) have made an orchestrated effort to hold their opinions at times to give those who've been taciturn all quarter a chance to speak up (and a chance to boost their participation grades). Speaking of grades, mine are going to suffer if I don't get back to studying. In sum, these first weeks have opened my eyes to a lot of new ways of looking at things: I've learned that examining a firm's financial statements involves much more than just taking the B/S at face value; "The Five Forces," despite sounding like some weird sisters of Greek mythology, is a model for dissecting a firm's strategic advantage; organizational structures are tricky, and similar to sonnets and villanelles, these forms should follow function; one needn't feel nihilistic despair at the notion of living life at the five percent significance level; and finally, in economics, much as in life, when you operate in the long-run, everything is variable.  
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