Zero to MBA in 1 year

First and foremost, I cannot believe that the Giants have made the World Series without me being home. Giants baseball is truly torture sometimes. I mean, the last several years we could never make it out of regular season play, and now that I am gone, they put together an amazingly lovable team and seem to be going the distance (knock on wood). I bet SF and the Bay Area are going nuts right now. Go Giants!

So it has been just about 2 months since my plane touched down in Italy. I know its cheesey, but it is amazing how fast time can fly when you are having fun/busy. In the past two months I've had tons of classes, homework, group assignments, and events, but I am enjoying myself. And as if I wasn't busy enough, I became the Vice President of the MBA Ski team. Our mission is to organize a multi day ski competition between 5 international MBA programs in St. Moritz. It is a huge task because we have to coordinate the lodging, transport, ski passes, ski rentals, gala dinners, night time festivities, and everything else that goes into such an event. And of course, since we are an Italian MBA and we are doing this in the name of our school, we have to ensure it is the most amazing trip ever! In addition to this, we have to plan several other weekend ski trips and tons of fundraisers to raise money for this awesome st. moritz trip. So far we have thought of maybe having a Thanksgiving dinner for people and charge maybe 30euros to cover the food and raise some funds for the trip.

(St. Moritz)

Now on to some other things. Group projects have been dominating my life. The main one being a consultancy challenge for AT Kearny. The project was completely voluntary, and while I don't really want to be a consultant, it was a great experience. On Wednesday we submitted our project and are now waiting for results. AT Kearny will select three teams (out of eight) to present their ideas to the partners of the office, and the winner of those three will get an all expenses paid trip to London to compete other european business schools. We'll see how that goes.

Finally, last Friday we had a go karting event and conference with Pagani Zonda (http://www.paganiautomobili.it/english.htm). It was amazing to hear him speak. He basically came from Argentina with nothing but a passion to mix high design and science. This passion, of course, brought him to the high performance Italian car industry. He worked for Lamborghini for a few years before deciding to create his own cars, which he now sells for more than $1 Million each. His speech was in Italian, but it was cool. I understood every word! The speech was confirmation that my comprehension is increasing, now I just need more time speaking. Speaking Italian is oddly enough, very difficult to do here at Bocconi because everyone is trying to perfect their english. All well. I am off to do some homework and then enjoy my three day weekend!

Ciao.

Days are long, but the year will be short...

The first week of school was kindergarden compared to these past two weeks. My blackberry is in constant use as I schedule meetings, lunches, times to do homework, exercise, apereativos, more homework, and several group projects. The schedule never stays put though. Everyday new activities are added, some cancelled, and some have hours changed. The life of an MBA student is in perpetual motion. I know the course work presented in school is very important in developing our core business strengths, but I am pretty damn confident that close to 80% of the MBA's value comes from learning to manage 10 things at once and being able to deal with the unknown.

I am not sure if it is because I am at an Italian university or because the school has carefully crafted this as a teaching lesson, but I am in the dark of most important school activities until 1 day before it is to take place. It is a problem because of all the other things we are expected to do as an MBA.

I cannot complain now because I like the challenge. This is the ultimate crash course in organization. Filtering through all the details thrown at me to find the one or two important things has almost become second nature. It is amazing how quickly you can mature in an MBA program. All of us here are in a delicate balance. We are the future business leaders, so we must maintain some professionalism, but at the same time, we are young and need to have fun. We need to network. And we need to learn to accept others as they are. It is a big job, and I will continually learn from this experience. Next time I will include some pics of events including the CEO of Vodaphone's presentation, go karting with Pagani Zonda, wine tasting, Soccer in the Italian country side, and some other less cool pics...

It’s not all fun and games (kinda sorta)

As much as I would love to believe the contrary, these past 5 weeks spent in Milan have been passed in the most leisurely way possible. I took advantage of every opportunity to spend money and waste time (sorry Dad). Want to spend a night out at the Cavalli club? Sure. Another apperativo? Count me in! A weekend excursion to Munich for the 200th anniversary of Oktoberfest? Why not! Everyday I would wake up when I pleased, and as long as I made it to my single class at an extremely convenient 4:30pm, I was ok. But this week was different.
There was something in the air that I have only experienced a couple times in my life. During my first day at Santa Clara University I felt it. I felt it again during my first day as gainfully employed adult at Deloitte. And for the third time in my life I felt the excitement of something completely new and foreign, it was the first day as an official MBA candidate at SDA Bocconi. New faces filled the hallways in our home for the next year, Via Balilla 18, and I loved it. Meeting people is an incredible feeling. I think I met 200 people this week, and although our class size is 110, I am sure I did (sorry for those of you that I met “for the first time” more than once).
Classes were about what I expected. We are split into 2 groups, Blue and Yellow (shout out to the blue class!), and we are concurrently enrolled in the same 5 classes. I really enjoyed our Marketing, Quantitative Methods, and The Firm and It’s Behavior (kind of) classes. I seriously disliked our Financial Markets class and I am sure I will have equal feelings towards the Financial Reporting class. The classes that I do hate (I know hate is a strong word, but trust me on this) aren’t that bad, but I come from a financial/accounting background and that is a sector that I have absolutely no interest in going back to. I think the concepts that are being presented are fairly basic and I spent four years in my undergraduate studies learning them, but I am not saying that others are not getting anything from them.
Besides my general disdain for two of the classes, I am enjoying my time. I am already overloaded with class, homework, social events, and professional development events. This month is particularly crazy as the previous MBA class is departing for the work world and we begin to fill their shoes. This month alone I have a lecture by the CEO of Vodaphone, a tour of the Martini Factory and networking event in their office, a social event and lecture hosted by CEO and Founder of Pagani Zonda Motors (look it up, seriously cool company), a wine tasting and lecture by owner of Tenuta La Tenaglia winery, and then a private tour of a winery in a Barola based winery hosted by the owner. Besides those events I have homework and other social functions that I “must” attend. I know I am busy, but I couldn’t be happier. I can tell every event I attend and every class I sit through is preparing me for the future.
Well that has been the experience of my first week. Be sure to check back as I sit through the good classes, anguish through the bad, create millions of memories, and catapult myself into the best year of my life.