50% MBA

Well, well well, so the first year is officially over – I had my last exam yesterday followed by lots of partying and a good dinner with friends. Now everyone is departing Philly – someone is starting his/her pre-internship trip to Asia/China/LatAm, while someone is starting an internship next week. The first year has been extremely fast, I cannot believe it is over to be honest. Looking forward to my summer internship and my second-year at Wharton.

I am planning to go to LA – friend is getting married, travel in CA and AZ a little bit, and then flying to London in mid-june.

Global Strategic Management

I found to my surprise that I actually like my "strategic" classes. One of them is global strategic management this quarter. The class is ideal for case method, which we use every class. Most of the cases are very relevant to the current business affairs. For instance, one of the first cases was about Chinese electronics producer Haier trying to decide if it needs to continue its presence in US and if so – how to improve its strategy in this country. Another was about Swatch group famous for its aggressive advertisement and celebrity product endorsement.

Wharton - Grain of Salt

This is an article at Wharton Journal by one of my classmates about culture at Wharton. I find it somewhat true indeed.

full text and the link are below

Politically questionable
By: Monisha Saran (WG'09) Staff Writer
Posted: 3/24/08
I had heard stories about this side of Wharton - the side that isolates itself from the rest of the world, breaks into factions, and forms exclusive cliques - but I hadn't really witnessed it firsthand. That is, until Spring Break. And now I wonder if I somehow lucked out with my experience thus far or if I just spent my first three quarters in some sort of sleep-deprived, alcohol-induced hazy oblivion.

Part of the reason I went on a trek was to meet people I wouldn't ordinarily hang out with. Although the trek itself was an amazing experience, I was surprised to see how quickly the group dynamics shook out along the racial divide. While there were certainly plenty of couples, floaters, and individuals who did their own thing, three prominent groups emerged within the first 2 days: the Indian FOB mob, the East Asian wanderers, and the white elitists. Individually, most people seemed friendly. But when put together, people formed factions that generally seemed to operate as follows.

Indian FOB mob: Form a loud, raucous crowd. Constantly switch between Hindi and English. Organize events and try to gather as many Indians as possible... and anyone else who happens to be around.

East Asian wanderers: Set the group and wander off together. Don't tell anyone where you're going, but invite people if they happen to ask what you're doing.

White elitists: Stick with what you know. If someone outside of the clique tries to talk to you, avoid eye contact and end the conversation as quickly as possible.

As much as I'd like to tackle each group's psyche, I'm not sure I can. It's possible that people are shy (not arrogant), self-conscious (not self-centered), or ambivalent (not disdainful), but ultimately, it doesn't really matter, because the outward effects are all the same. Regardless of reason, the groups form an aura of exclusivity that automatically makes others feel excluded and unwelcome- which leads them to return to their comfort zones, which, in turn, perpetuates the cycle. Maybe it's intentional, maybe it's not. But given where we are, the people we hang out with turn into our personal networks, which then become our business networks. And if we aren't willing to break through these boundaries at school, how do we expect to do so once we're back at work?

There was one moment, however, when I noticed incredible intermingling. Late one night at a club in Lima, I saw a blur of color on the dance floor. Brown mixed with white, white chatted up locals. Apparently, with enough alcohol, anything can happen. If that's where it has to start, then bring on the liquor. But now that we're back on campus, I also wonder if we can try to do that again...sober.

When mixing races, add alcohol - Perspectives

Yokoso Japan!

I have just returned from my spring break in Japan. The whole trip was fantastic. First of all, it was organized by Wharton Japan club, which gets all the kudos for an excellent organization, superb efficiency and overall planning of the trip. I can only imagine how much work these guys did to plan a trip for 150 Wharton students… this is quite a commitment I have to say.

Our itinerary was Kyoto-Hiroshima-Nagoya-Hakone-Tokyo. Japan proved to be extremely different from every other country I have visited before. First of all I was amazed by the level of the infrastructure, especially in Tokyo. NYC is so behind this, I wasn't even aware of it.

Second, was the Japanese food. I realized I cannot eat any of it – raw meat, raw lobster or raw fish…. Just cannot. It's mostly psychological I guess. That was a real culture shock since once in a while I do enjoy sushi in Japanese restaurants here in Philly or in NYC.

Third – Toyota plant visit to see just-in-time and kanban principles we learn doing so many cases about Toyota here, at Wharton. I was amazed at how clean it was everywhere at the plant – even around the assembly line it was almost surgical clean. More than that, the workers looked so focused and so relaxed at the same time. I was like WOW. I guess this makes me an even prouder Lexus owner. )))

So.. I am back to school.. and it sort of sucks to be honest.. Looking forward to more trips.

Life After DIP

DIP=Dedicated interview period.

Indeed, there is life after DIP and I am trying to discover it. Yet, first about the DIP itself. The process was pretty much straightforward: companies come on campus to interview MBA students during 2-week period, during which Wharton has no classes from core curriculum. Those like me who have elective classes had to either skip them (booo-oo) or try to squeeze them into interview schedule (impossible). So, given number of places and trying to cast a wide net I ended up having some crazy schedule with 4-5 interviews/day for a couple of days (first and second rounds of interviews).

I have to admit that this year's DIP was pretty tough: job market in banking/PE/HF industry is sort of like a patient in a coma on whose recovery there is still no final diagnose. Given anecdotical evidence, banks cut their offers for summer internship by 20-30% at Wharton. (I am going to put here a big disclaimer and say this is from what I heard from my classmates and my own conversations with bankers)

As for my internship, I will be happily returning to banking industry. Destination: London.

Needless to say, having an offer for summer internship makes it easier to enjoy MBA life here, at Wharton. This, I hope, will be topic of my future posts.

Penguin Chronicles 2

As I mentioned before, the biggest part of the Antarctica Leadership challenge was ambiguity. To be honest, going there I did not have any idea of what exactly we will be doing, where we will be going and how all this is going to work out. One would think that paying close to $10K for the whole trip will enable one to get to know as many details as possible before the trip, but I really had only a vague idea of what I got myself into. Knowing myself I decided to limit details as much as I could: I usually do much better in ambiguous situation rather than clearly structured one, plus knowing details might gave the expectations too high/low for the trip.

As for ambiguity, it was really the word for the whole trip because I as mentioned your team was supposed to figure out how to go from A to B, who is responsible for cooking/setting up tents/boiling water/etc. SO…. this creates the whole bunch of opportunities to tune your leadership and team working skills. I am personally usually a big opponent of all this "teamwork" talk, but this was real, hands-on experience – whether you and 5 more people make it work and the whole team goes from A to B having fun in the meantime, or….everyone feels wet, cold and miserable. )))) I mean you cannot pretend to be somebody else, somebody you're not under this conditions, so all this challenge really makes your true self come out.

thanks god, we had such a good team and had so much fun, I don't remember when I laughed so much last time: be it pulling extra heavy sled up the hill, or trying to boil the water under the wind of 40 mph. After my high altitude adventure trekking in Nepal and Tibet, I wouldn't say this trip was extremely challenging physically. I think it was more demanding morally and in terms of team work/leadership than physically. A team chose "a leader of the day" who coordinated team's efforts throughout the day. Apart from this, we had people responsible for GPS/navigation and GPS; people who got a short training in setting up the tents and climbing the glaciar.

So, apart from enjoying awesome nature views and wildlife, I learned several teamwork/leadership lessons:

• Don't wait to be assigned a leader of the day role: true leaders are not assigned ones
  
• Leadership is not about making critical decisions under critical conditions. Leadership is about taking care of small things, making sure small things go as smooth as possible so that the whole team feels happy and energized.
  
• Reaching ANY goal is possible, it's the matter of time, perseverance and taking one step at a time.
  
• Having a positive attitude is crucial
  
• Some decisions don't need to be discussed with the whole team. A leader needs to make a call and take responsibility for a decision.

Penguin Chronicles, or Wharton Leadership Venture to Antarctica, part 1

Wet feet during the last 5 days: check

Trying to boil water under heavy rain and wind for several hours (unsuccessfully): Check

Drinking raw water from the stream after giving up on boiling water: Check

Blowing gas canisters while trying to cook: Check

Having 5 other people to eat from the same bowl because it's too cold/windy/rainy to clean so many plates afterwards: Check

Sleeping in the tent in Antarctica, several meters from penguins and sea lions: Check

Summiting a glacier during a complete white out during snow blizzard: Check

Trekking with heavy backpack every day: Check

Having fantastic time with your teammates and people on other teams: Check

 

So-oooooo. I am finally back from my fantastic, super-, uber-, mega- trip to Antarctica as part of Wharton Leadership Venture program. Following my tradition of blogging in parts on my travel adventures, I will split my story in several parts this time as well.

Anyhow, the trip has started with a challenge: It took me over 24 hours to get from Philly to Punta Arenas, Chile. It was a summer there: around 15C, strong wind and about 2-3 hours of dusk instead of a real night. Next was we had team formation: 29 venture participants have been split into several groups of 6 (one team had 5) teammates. The formation was quite chaotic, exchange of glances, waiting to be tapped on the shoulder and stuff like that. Indeed, it proved to be crucial whom you would be on the team with as you spend the whole trip with this team. Anyhow, finally, I was successfully recruited by the team of 5 people whom I barely knew at that point. I would hate to flash-forward, but I was really lucky to be on the same team with guys and girls we had as we had so much fun during this venture you cannot even imagine.

Next early morning: having put the gear in the bus we advanced to the airport. There was a lot of heavy silence hanging in the air on that bus: I was not the only one who was not sure/hesitant of what it is we got ourselves into and how it will turn out. 1.5 hrs on the plane and we were landing on a bare ground air strip of Chilean base on King George Island, Antarctica – our final destination. Tada! We are in Antarctica!

The weather was rather windy (usual for this time of the year), but pretty warm (around 5C). Having snapped first pictures of the surroundings (Chilean base, and nearby Russian base with Russian Orthodox Christian Church), we headed to set up our first camp site. Setting up tents in the wind was a lot of challenge, but by the end of the trip we really mastered this one as well.

We have been provided with: food for the duration of the whole venture, GPS, radio, map, coordinates for future camp sites, and …. poop bags: in order to preserve the nature, we had to do it in the bag, after which all the bags had to be carried down back to the base/mainland. Yes, yes, you're laughing already, but try to do it in the wind/cold around the snow and you will be LOL, really. )))))

Having all the provisions, each team had to decide how/what they eat and cook and how they are going from point A to point B. More on this in the next part.