Done. Or am I?
May 10th, 2009
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.
Forget about my HBS Essay Analysis or the books HBS students read, or my other best posts. In what promises to be the ultimate post of all times, here are…
First Snow
December 8th, 2008
Spring, School, Stuff
April 17th, 2008
Weather Update
After endlessly complaining in my last post about the foul weather here, we had a few amazing sunny days of more than 15 degrees and the forecast for the rest of the week is sunny, with temperatures well above 10 degrees. The trees finally start to go out of their naked cemetery mode and there are even birds here. And they’re chirping.
Conclusion? complaining works!
On the other hand, it’s Boston, so on the very same sunny day of >20 degrees, at around 4pm there was a crazy thunderstorm, complete with lightning, thunder and rain. However it was one of these lucky days when the storm started exactly 5 minutes after I returned home from walking around and taking photos:
Photopost
February 25th, 2008
The problem with Hell Week isn’t that it is hell (it wasn’t, except for the weather), but that it is not a week. I’m still in the midst of interviews – so I will update once the process is all over. Like I said, for some industries – like consulting or investment banking – the interviews process does last only a week and ends with offers (or not…), but for other industries, technology included, the process is a bit longer. Oh well.
And in the meanwhile, to compensate myself for the East Coast weather, I spent a weekend in California, with prime sun and prime company:
Hell Yeah
February 3rd, 2008
Formal Name: “Dedicated Interview Period”
Real Name: *** Hell Week! *** (muhaha)
What it is: a week and a bit in which we don’t study but instead wear suits and march on to interview for summer internships.
Hell Week got its lovely name because of the fact that for many people this week is indeed a stressful, tense and sometimes depressing experience. I think this is true mainly for people interviewing for consulting jobs – they might have 4 interviews in one day, in different locations in Boston, every day of the week. These interviews aren’t easy – in addition to ‘behavioral questions’ (”tell me about a time when you displayed leadership / teamwork / amazing sense of humor”) the interview also consists of a “Case”. The Case is a short business situation that the interviewee needs to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively, and suggest a possible course of action. My fellow classmates doing consulting interviews have been preparing for them for the past couple of weeks, so for them it’s more like “hell month” rather than just a week.
New Year, New Term and No Snow
January 14th, 2008
So I’m back from my fun transatlantic tour of Israel, California and now Boston. I have a long backlog of posts I plan to write, but since tomorrow I’m starting my second term at HBS I thought it’d be a good idea to write about the courses I’ll be studying this term. Just a quick sentence about the most fascinating thing that I experienced during the 3-weeks break – it happened today, when I came back to Boston and discovered all snow has melted! Hooray!
Unfortunately, it seems like it’s going to be back this week… so long for walking around in flip-flops (kidding).
So, second term courses:
Thanksgiving & Weather
November 25th, 2007
Living in a place with four real seasons (as opposed to Israel…) is definitely a change. Last week we had snow for the first time. It didn’t stay on the ground and was more ice than snow, but my cool weather gadget still had this icon for the very first time:
brrrr
October 30th, 2007
Executive Summary: after a few boring posts about micro finance and technology conferences, I come back with a juicy post about… the weather! and naked turkeys.
So yesterday was a sad day: I turned on the heating in my apartment for the first time and wore a scarf for the first time. However, today I sat outside in the sun again, so it looks like we have a few final days of bearable weather here. After that, I’ll be wearing the crazy sleeping bag coat I bought this weekend, along with my new furry hat… pictures to follow.
On the other hand, fall is indeed a beautiful season here. The trees really turn to orange and red (I used to read about it when I was in Israel, but never bought it), here’s a proof:
First week of school
September 17th, 2007
(unfortunately my titles aren’t very creative, I guess my creativity is elsewhere these days)
First week of classes ended, and it’s been a wild ride. Adjusting to waking up at 6:30 or 7am every day isn’t easy, but fortunately the day certainly improves after this start.
My classes are great. All First-Year students take the same 5 classes in the first term: Accounting, Finance 1, Marketing, Lead(ership) and Technology and Operations. You can read more about the content of the courses here. What I personally have found out, at least up until now, is that how much I enjoy a course almost entirely depends on the professor. So my current favorite is, perhaps surprisingly, accounting (my parents would be proud :)). That said, classes require a tremendous amount of work preparing for them, and class participation can be quite stressful.
A few highlights from this and last week:
