CS @ HBS

Good things about going back to school:

• Seeing everyone again and hearing about their summer.
• Choosing my courses! My courses so far look really good – will write a separate post about it a bit later. But so far even studying from 8:30 to 13:00 with almost no break isn’t that bad because I have some really good professors.
• Being in my apartment again. Seattle was awesome, but my Boston apartment just rocks. Not to mention two of my best friends here just moved to my building on campus.

Bad things about going back to school:

• Not seeing any deposits in my bank account (yes, getting paid over the summer was a refreshing change).
• Answering the following questions 237 times:

1. Where were you this summer? (in Georgia, interning for the Russian army)
2. Did you like it? (yeah, but the food wasn’t very good)
3. Are you going back? (no, the UN doesn’t like it)
4. What courses are you taking? (knitting, hunting, pilates and global strategic entrepreneurial financial operations. Oh, and Authentic Leadership)
5. Are you happy to be back? (yes, except that I hate answering the same questions 237 times)

• The crazy weather here. it’s above 30 degrees right now and we’re expected to get some remnants of one hurricane or the other next week (don’t worry mom! it only means we’ll have some heavy rain)
• Cases. Yes, these are courses I chose and everything, but still the prospect of reading several hundred cases is not a very attractive one. At least I know all the secrets of skimming (don’t tell!). To be completely honest, some of the cases are really interesting, but the ones that are not are just painful.
• Not being in Hawaii anymore. for detailed information, see my photos here: http://computersexy.com/gallery/v/Hawaii-Maui_082008/

HBS Students Internships Experience

Like I said before, I do constantly repeat the stories of my summer internship. In return, I get to hear my classmates’ stories, which are actually really interesting to hear. My take on summer internships here is as follows:

• Consulting: people worked like dogs (12 hours a day is pretty much the norm – from Russia to San Francisco), mainly revising PowerPoint slides. However, they did get a very good training (of PowerPoint, I presume), and learned a lot about the consulting world – usually that it’s not for them. Surprisingly enough, despite the weak economy and everything, everyone in consulting got a full-time offer. It sounded like the only thing you needed to do in order to get it was to be able to read and write. Even getting to the office wasn’t mandatory according to the stories of some of my friends.
• Finance: they worked even more than consultants (white nights and all), and some didn’t even get paid. But it sounds like most of them also got offers, which is good for them. Let’s just hope their bank doesn’t collapse before the end of the year.
• “Industry”: (side note – I dislike this term. It’s business schools’ way to throw all possible businesses that are not consulting and finance into one big trashcan – from a chemicals company to Unilever to Google to the Red Cross). There’s a broad range of things people did over the summer, so stories are very varied. Some people did really cool things while others, well, sold air fresheners.

OK, so that was a bit tongue in cheek – seems like most people had a fun summer and a good experience. Many still don’t know what they want to do after school and they’re going to do some recruiting this year, but that’s only natural – why not checking all options before committing to your first post-MBA job.

(and as always, everything here is only my non-representative, non-affiliated opinion, based on an unscientific sample of 237 HBS students)

And check this out for the latest addition to the list of HBS academic immersion destinations: http://www.hbs.edu/mba/academics/immersionexperiences.html

And to finish on an optimistic note, a few photos from Maui. More here.