Classes begin

Well, my classes have started. My first day at class was kind of weird, since here I was going back to school after around 10 years. Facing some of the same challenges that I faced in school, such as figuring out who should be sitting around me, making to the class in time, taking notes and concentrating on the lecture. all in all is a weird feeling of déjà vu.
With job, family and school, I have suddenly realized that there is only so much that I can do. As an example, I have started making some tangible changes in a couple of places. The biggest change is at work, I have reduced, or tried to reduce some of my responsibilities, that meant focus my work responsibilities a bit. I have also cut down on my gym ( read badminton) time. I guess, learning priorities is a big part of doing MBA. The first set of classes had Management, Accounting and Finance. The professors were absolutely fabulous. Completely dedicated and driven.

Students formed a broad mix, lots of disciplines represented different fields of engineering, accounting, finance, medicine/psychology(speech pathology?) and we also have a pilot amongst us!. All students try to participate in the class, some overdo it :-).

Will go through a typical class in more detail later. Have to run now :-)

Orientation

The student orientation (on Aug'25th) was a blast. I had half expected it to be a stodgy affair with lots of Q&As, introductions and academic dos and don’ts. Well, there was some of that, but most notably, they had these team building exercises that completely made my day.

The school had brought in leadership coaches who had us play those games whose purported function is to get us introduced to each other. The cohort was divided into smaller teams and given some papers, scissors, tape (resources); the first challenge was to build the tallest freestanding tower! Next the teams got reshuffled and we were given more resources (eggs & straws). We were asked to build a protective cage that will save the egg when dropped from a person’s height. Needless to say none of the paper towers stood for the required 30 secs in that windy afternoon and the eggs all went splat. But it was a lot of fun.

The final challenge involved the whole WAMBA cohort; the challenge was to deliver a small metallic ball from one point to another using a box full of weird stuff. This one we successfully accomplished, the whole group somehow seemed to deliver and I noticed some clear personality traits. E.g., there were a couple of leaders and some who were the facilitators, some followers and others who just feigned interest. In the end there was the customary debriefing and back to the orientation hall. They served a sumptuous lunch some classy wine and cheese, and I am already looking forward to starting my weekend MBA at SCU.