MBA Holiday Party 2007

Yesterday we had our school's Holiday party, and it was lots of fun. First of all, the party took place in the evening of our last class for this term, needless to mention, the students were mighty relieved and in the mood for some celebration. Secondly, the party was organized just right.
Now I know the ingredients of a great MBA party:
· Superb house wines
· Nice spread of hors d'oeuvres
· Students & faculty with their families
· Semi formal dress.
· A violin & a cello player
· Kids in a separate play pen
It was a great opportunity to socialize, unwind and get set for the holidays!

Did I mention unwind? Well, the past couple of months were a Hectic (with a capital H) period of time for me. We covered three subjects: Management, Micro Economics and Accounting, and by all accounts these were a lot to take in, in such a short period of time. Its too early to tell, how much of all this I will be able to apply in my day to day life (or work), but I am pretty sure that the foundations for some heavyweight stuff (like Finance) have been set. What else did I learn in these first months of my MBA apart from the subjects taught in class? The importance of prioritization (work /school), the value of a new class-network and what great help a supporting spouse can be. (I have pretty much delegated out the tasks of day to day running of a home to my wife: starting from grocery shopping to staying on top of bills to be paid.)
So if I can summarize in a couple of lines the stuff I learned in class in my first 3 months of MBA:
The Management class taught by Prof. Caldwell, taught me a lot about organization design, leadership and all the softer aspects of running an organization.
After Managerial & Financial Accounting class, taught by Prof. Hosseini, I can make some sense of how you can size up a company by looking at its balance sheet and the different rations. In addition what are the various kinds of ‘costs’ that one needs to know to successfully run a company
Economics, taught by Prof Shin, gave me a big picture of the environment in which a company operates. Terms such as supply/demand/price ceilings/subsidy/monopoly …and so on have started making more sense now. The pièce de résistance has to be the ‘game theory’ classes, most intriguing and at the same time a very difficult subject to understand. Well, I think I understand a bit (just a small bit!) of Nash Equilibrium now
Well, now I have to start preparing for the finals in Jan and a couple of papers to submit. So long then…happy holidays!