2nd week is over...

And it's time for reflection about the MBA. Here it goes:

Courses

The courses are fine. The level of difficulty is not too high, at least not yet. Some professors are very good, others are not so good. But in all cases, the lectures are very interactive, with a lot of real-life cases, and mentions to applications in business life.

So far, I find most interesting my Strategy course. Not only the contents, analyzing different cases and trying to fit the managers' behaviour into some kind of framework. I really loved the materials used!! It's so great to be explained Porter's 5 forces through a video by Dr. Porter himself!! I already experienced this during our "UGM - Understanding General Management" course in the introduction term. We had a case about Apple, and were discussing what would we have done if we were John Scully, the CEO from 1986-1993. After bringing out many ideas, pointing out what Apple had done right and wrong, the professor just said "Ok, let's ask him in person!" and started playing a tape where Scully reflected in a Harvard classrom about his own mistakes, and the things that ickhe should have done differently!! Amazing...

About the other courses: Finance is also very interesting (applied and with lots of numbers, very engineery!). Accounting is a bit slow and boring, but I guess it will get more complicated as the weeks go. Ethics and Economics are necessary, but I must admit I need to gather motivation to attend both in a participative way.

Workload

This one is a tricky one. So far, it hasn't been very high. Only an all-nighter before the Stats assignment was due last Thursday. And I'm more or less keeping up with all the readings. This is a bit strange, because everybody was warning me that I wouldn't be able to do just everything. So I hope that the workload will go up in the future.

People

Most amazing part of the MBA. The classmates. From all possible backgrounds, countries, cultures, nationalities. Great class discussions! The professors, having worked in top universities, with top researchers. The alumni that I've met, working in top consultancies and banks, creating their own companies, managing non-profit projects. I've started believing the mantra that 'networking' is the most important part of your MBA.

Social activities

More than you can think of. We've had a few housewarming parties (hey, how did they get such huge apartments?), some class dinner outings (amazing food in London! last time to a great Turkish restaurant), of course all the sports (I've signed up for rugby and plan to join them on as many trips as possible). Some highlights: the Thames River Boat party last weekend, and Tattoo last night. The former, a night cruiso on the river with a bar full of beers and other drinks. The latter, a celebration of the London Business School's diversity. On campus party, free drinks, food from around the world, a samba batucada, an Indian dance festivall and much, much more. In two words: im-pressing!!