CS @ HBS

Last Tuesday I uploaded my last exam (yes, we’re very high tech at HBS) and thus concluded my two years of HBS MBA. My exams still need to be checked and graduation is still a month from now, but for all intents and purposes I’m done.

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Wow, it is almost the second birthday of the blog. I don’t remember doing anything voluntarily for such a long time (well, perhaps sticking with the same guy).

I got a nice birthday present: “2008-9 Best of Blogging” nomination from ClearAdmit. ClearAdmit is an admissions consulting company that runs an MBA blog which is an excellent resource for MBA applicants (I used to read it when I was applying). So the nomination, as they say at HBS, is an honor, a privilege and a humbling experience. I also got a cool icon:

The birthday and the nomination motivated me to update many parts of the blog – the pages that appear at the header (best posts, blogroll) have been updated, as well as other things.

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After my last post created some interesting controversy, this time I want to share with you the other side of the coin. It’s not just fun and games (and travel) that we do here at HBS. In short, it’s also a lot of hard work and and doing good.

Here’s what I mean:

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These are very turbulent times we’re living in – one of the world’s deepest recessions, elections in Israel, etc. But this time, I want to write about something much more important.

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Life Update

First semester ended and we had our winter break. I went to NYC for a week:

Then I came home to Israel for the rest of the break. Spent some quality time in Eilat with my family, some time with friends in Tel Aviv (though as always, I left feeling I didn’t do that enough) and also tagged along with the HBS Israel Immersion.

The immersion was awesome – a group of ~40 HBS students, led by Prof. Dan Isenberg, came to Israel for a week titled “The Israeli Entrepreneurship Miracle and High Tech Industry” (or something like that). They visited Israeli start ups, met successful entrepreneurs, VCs, multinationals like Google and Microsoft and of course did the required touristy things – Jerusalem, Masada and the Dead Sea. You can read about the immersion in this beautiful Harbus article.

The immersion took place at the same time of the mess in Gaza strip. I’m so happy the school decided not to cancel it, and only 5 (out of 49) students canceled their participation. Since the immersion took place around Tel Aviv, participants had a safe experience and I’m so glad they got to see the Real Israel firsthand.

Some photos from Eilat are here.

Me pedaling in Timna Park near Eilat

Job Update

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Yes, I’ve been bad. Here’s what I’ve been up to recently:

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HBS is full of euphemisms and politically correctness. So this time, when HBSers say X, they actually mean Y:

Recruiting

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I originally planned to write this post about “Ahead of the Curve”, the new “Sensational” book about HBS. But considering the last week’s events, it felt more appropriate to start with that. More than anything, I think this week meant a lot of confusion and insecurity among HBS students. HBS administration did send us an email saying that recruiters (including in finance) are still recruiting MBA graduates and do not plan to decrease recruiting levels (or at least not at HBS) – not sure how much it helped to reduce stress levels. Networking events on campus this week held an impressive number of companies from all sectors – though I don’t know how this number compared to last year.

Many students at HBS are stressed and waiting to see how things unfold. I think that in our narrow world of MBAs, we still need to wait and see, but no doubt everyone acknowledges that this crisis will have a profound impact on Wall Street in particular and the US economy in general. In this context, the title of the book – and the post – seems quite ironic now.

But anyway, to the book…

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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:

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Yes, I know, I disappeared for a while. By now my internship is almost over (this week is my last one) – I still need to do my final presentation to the SVP but that’s about it. The summer has been great – I became friends with some of the other interns (even though they weren’t all from HBS :)) and we went on trips exploring Seattle and the area, as well as Seattle’s restaurants and bars (with a strong preference to sushi). Work was good, too.

What they say about Seattle is true – in the summer, it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever lived in. The weather is a perfect sunny 25 degrees almost every day, and within less than 100km from downtown there are lakes, waterfalls, glaciers and mountains (and good sushi restaurants). Too bad it’s like that only for the summer… You can skip to the end of the post to see some pictures.

We start second year at HBS after labor day weekend (first week of September). I’m excited about the second year, it’s supposed to be much better – at least easier – than the first one. Here are some of the differences between them:

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