Sixth Week..

Sixth week has been the toughest so far and the most funniest. We are done with Economics mid-term yesterday and I feel that I did well. Anyway, feel and think does not matter in exams and only results matter.

The week started off with finance concepts in beta and portfolio performance. Its really great and intuitive. We completed the finance assignment due for next week. We have planned a lot in last week and we are able to complete ahead of the planned schedules. Add to that the good news from Accounting professor that there is no assignment for Accounting and its mistakenly given in the schedule. Finance and Accounting can be heaven if one gets the intuition and not just look the numbers as numbers. Numbers always tell a story. I am trying to look at the story and its been amazing. I am loving these two subjects a lot. On the other hand, if one looks at them only as numbers the subjects can be nightmarish.

The Data Analysis classes got into really good stuff. Decision Trees. I like them a lot. We really did not use them in my previous experience in Business Intelligence but I know that concept and that interest me a lot. We simulated simple decision trees for an airline company, an option pricing problem. Also, we started off with the Assignment for Data Analysis that is due next weekend. We progressed comfortably on that too.

I did not tell about marketing previously. But, it’s the most energetic session that we come across. The professor has got lots of experience in various business schools and he is simply superb. I observed that most of the marketing sessions are last in the schedule. We have to attend those after two grueling 1:15 minute sessions in the morning. But, Boy! No one feels weak in that class. Professor runs all around and makes sure that everyone in the class participates. I love that. He emphasizes one point always. CUSTOMER IS KING.

One of my friends went to NSHMBA Conference. He doesn’t want to miss the classes and so we swapped the classes. It means that I will get a full day off on one day and have to attend full day of classes on the next day. I did attend the full day of classes on Thursday from 8 A.M to 5 P.M. I could not grab lunch in between the sessions as the half an hour I got from 12:30 PM to 1:00 PM as I had an appointment with a second year to discuss some things.

Guess what. The afternoon 4.5 hours on Thursday we have strategy and operations case together. That is both the Strategy professor and Operations professor take the class along together. That has been amazing. Though I felt a little weak for the lack of sleep last night and lunch in the noon, my interest in operations helped to move me forward. I made meaningful contributions in Operations and not that much in Strategy. But, I am able to discern the problems in the company’s strategy clearly. I spoke to the strategy professor at the end of the class regarding the fall of the company we discussed in the case. She told. “Boy! The fall of ABC”. That sound like a title for a good book. We had some humor and then I headed home.

Fortunately, on Wednesday I have completed 5 chapters out of the 6 for Economics exam. After heading home I realized that I forgot my Laptop charger at school. I can not do anything with out my lappy and so have to rush back to school. I lost one hour in the process of getting the charger. Then I got into Economics immediately and glanced through the last chapter and then through some of the previous quizzes and the midterm. As I told earlier, I think I did well in the exam.

Its not the end of the story. DELOITTE guys are on campus to give us a taste of case interview and we had a case workshop. They gave some insightful comments into how they evaluate people in case interviews and the main dos and don’ts.

I have spent two 16 hour days in school in this week while we were doing the assignments that I have mentioned earlier. I could not sleep for 6 hours a day and sometimes I woke up after 5 hours and could not sleep. I like that. May be I got accustomed to 5 hour sleep. :-).