MBA Residency Facebook Status

Well, I just finished an incredible, week-long experience.  My MBA program kicked off with an intensive one-week residency…and by “intensive” I mean I started and completed three full, 800-level college courses in seven days.  I never never went to bed before 1am, and I never got more than five hours of sleep per night.  A typical day started with the alarm clock at 6am; up, shower, dress, leave the hotel, breakfast at 7 or 7:30am; class from 8am until 1pm; lunch; class from 2pm to 5pm; a half-hour of optimistically-named “open time,”; dinner; another class or event of some sort from 7pm to 9pm or so; studying for the next days tests, quizzes, presentations, briefs and/or papers until 1am or later.

In the midst of this madness, I found a minute here or there to jump on Facebook and send up a flare, mostly to let my wife know I was still alive.  some of them were at 1am, some were in the middle of class.  I think they point to the sleep-deprived, caffeine-laden, uber-stressed condition I found myself in.  Enjoy!

Nick Shadoff has to dumb it down again for work. Good-bye residency, hello reality.

25 seconds ago · Comment · Like / Unlike

Nick Shadoff doesn’t know what to do if there aren’t any more case briefs, quizzes or papers due. I hear rumors that there’s something else people do at night besides study!

Sat at 7:41pm · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (2)Hide Feedback (2)

Roberta Sterzik LaMont

Ummm… really??? What???

Sat at 7:58pm · Delete

Jeff Provost

I’m lost without a book in my hands now.

Sat at 9:09pm · Delete

Nick Shadoff — last test done…remaining: one case brief, watch presentations, eat lunch, 3-hour drive HOME!!!

Sat at 10:11am · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (1)Hide Feedback (1)

Laura Bishop Pavelko likes this.

Nick Shadoff — another Accounting exam down…I feel much better about this one.

Fri at 8:58am · Comment · Like / Unlike

Nick Shadoff found out why he bombed the last Accounting exam… I WAS STUDYING AN OUTDATED PRACTICE EXAM!! $&*#@!!!

August 13 at 11:54pm · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (1)Hide Feedback (1)

Chara ‘Mcclure’ Blaszkowski

Man, thats rough!

Fri at 8:12am · Delete

Nick Shadoff — wow, class was done at 5pm. All I have to do is write up a Supply Chain project, study for a Managerial quiz, read a Managerial case and prepare a problem statement, and study for my next Accounting exam! Will tonight be the night I’m in bed by midnight???

August 13 at 5:56pm · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (3)Hide Feedback (3)

Madison Anne Dusome

Yes. Because you are obviously super speedy!!!

August 13 at 6:21pm · Delete

Jeff Provost

That’s only about a half hours worth of work you described. No reason you can’t be done by 7:00

August 13 at 6:24pm · Delete

Madison Anne Dusome

Also, it’s not even five yet, so maybe this post just makes you INSANE, which probably means that you CAN finish by 7:00 for sure – or at least deceive yourself into believing you’ve finished…

August 13 at 6:27pm · Delete

Nick Shadoff — aagh…accounting….sleepy…must fight eyelids…must warn…others!

August 13 at 10:09am · Comment · Like / Unlike

Nick Shadoff just now, not more than 23 seconds ago, aced another Managerial Skills quiz. Yes!

August 12 at 2:08pm · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (4)Hide Feedback (4)

Laura Bishop Pavelko, Angel Abshire Shadoff and 2 others like this.

Nick Shadoff — was today only Tuesday? This week is lo-ong…yet…I’m actually having fun! And I haven’t turned on a TV since Saturday…

August 11 at 9:25pm · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (1)Hide Feedback (1)

Angel Abshire Shadoff likes this.

Nick Shadoff — Huge presentation done today. (sigh of relief)

August 10 at 8:32pm · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (2)Hide Feedback (2)

Lewis Shadoff and Roberta Sterzik LaMont like this.

Nick Shadoff — one down, six to go.

August 9 at 11:08pm · Comment · Like / Unlike

Nick Shadoff — my brain hurts.

August 9 at 4:41pm · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (1)Hide Feedback (1)

Roberta Sterzik LaMont

I sympathize.

August 9 at 5:42pm · Delete

WMBA Residency

Initial one-week residency for the WMBA program, Class of ‘11. Sort of a test event…

Host:Team State — Eli Broad WMBA, Class of ‘11

Time:9:00AM Sunday, August 9th

Head Down, Bulling Forward

Well, here I am at the end of July and the beginning of my MBA program — the real, honest-to-God, nuts-and-bolts, sitting-in-a-classroom work — is bearing down on me like an ocean liner towering over a canoe.  I last wrote at the start of June… and I have done virtually nothing since then but work during the day, and do homework at night.  I have waded through the majority of the pre-work that was assigned — 11 chapters of Accounting with associated questions has kept me up until 1:00 a.m. almost every night in July.  A Statistical Analysis on-line course kept me up late for most of June.  Fifteen chapters of Managerial Practices reading got squeezed into lunchtimes at work, and various late nights when I couldn’t take any more stats.  But I have, so far, done it.  I’m in the home stretch…but a home stretch that stops at the real beginning of my journey

This is Tuesday. (an hour from Wednesday, actually)  On Friday I will get in my 10-year-old Volvo at six in the morning and make the three-hour drive to Lansing for my official orientation.  From 9:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m., my Friday is tightly scheduled, and likewise my Saturday from 7:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m.  I will meet my study team, the four other people who will travel with me for the next two years; whose academic future is enwined with mine; who are destined to become my friends for life…and I haven’t even met them yet.  Orientation is an intensive team-building, bond-forming machine that looks to throw individuals into the hopper, and squeeze cohesive teams out of the nozzle.

After I return on Saturday evening, I get a week at home, then I will climb back into the Volvo early Sunday, August 9th, and return to Lansing, where I will stay for the next week.  The thought of completing three full college courses in seven days (instead of 16 weeks) isn’t actually so intimidating now — miraculously, a lot of the material I’ve been cramming into my head has actually stuck there.

What’s hard for me to believe, is that this is in 12 days.  Twelve days…it’s surreal to realize that I am down to days…not weeks, months, or “someday.”  I have been wanting, wishing, hoping to go back to school for what seems like forever — for most of the 14 years since I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, honestly.  All of my research is over.  All of my surfing of university websites, of graduate school advice forums, of school rankings, and program rankings, and compiling spreadsheet after spreadsheet of comparative advantages of different schools, classes, degrees…and so on, and so on, and so on…

Now, it almost seems like I snapped my fingers and “poof,” I’m standing at the door to a Big 10 university’s graduate school, class list in hand, laptop under my arm, thinking “wha’happened?”  All the research, the studying for the GMAT exam, the grey day in November when I drove two hours to take the exam despite gruesome intestinal goings-on, the information session in Grand Rapids, the applications, the forms, the waiting — it’s all kind of compressed into one composite memory.

And here I am.  In a little over 48 hours I will be at my Orientation.  In 12 days I will start my first classes.  In a little over a month I will be settled into my new routine of every-other-weekend classes, and the gruesome spectre of a one-week, 5.5 credit madness will just be a “yeah, we did it” memory.   I find that I’ve been focused on what happens after I finish this program more than on getting through the next two years of school, and I have an uneasy feeling that I’m about to have an abrupt awakening.

Yet, despite all of my forebodings and uneasinesses and trepidations…I’m wholeheartedly looking forward to the start of this thing; heck, I’m practically giddy with excitement.  I actually have two overwhelming thoughts….one is “I can do this,” and the other is “bring it on!”

Admitted Student

I’m excited.

I just attended the “Admitted Students Dinner” for my Weekend MBA program, and it has put a real and sudden feeling of reality into what I’m doing.  Up until now, I’ve been doing everything via the web and e-mail — my application, acceptance letter, financial aid preparations…everything has been cyber-this and virtual that.

But having dinner in a room at the Henry Center in Lansing with 160 of my future best friends is a very grounding experience.  Listening to a panel of alumni tell me just how much work they went through is a very grounding experience.  Listening to professors say how much they expect to be done before class even starts is a very grounding experience.  Getting a bag full of books, and a stack of syllabi and assignments due before my first class is a very grounding experience.

So to backtrack…I’m excited, with a large dash of terror-sauce.

In one 7-day residency session, I am going to complete three full college couses — 5.5 credit hours in seven days — and not fru-fru courses, no.  Financial Accounting, Managerial Principles and Supply Chain Principles.  I think I — right now — have a total of 26 chapters and nearly 50 questions/quizzes/exercises to complete in the next 2-1/2 months, not including the three on-line pre-courses in Statistics and Accounting.

Whew.  Excited, with a large dash of terror-sauce, topped with “what-the-hell-did-I-get-myself-into?”

But I can do this.  Other people have done this.  Other people have done this around marriages and childbirth, and I have to go through neither.  My wife is behind me on this, and says she’s excited for me…at least right now.  We’ll see how excited she is after a year of dad-who’s-no-help-with-the-kids and husband-who-does-no-housework.

This program will last until March 2011.  Two years; maybe a bit less.  I survived five years in Indiana.  I lived through six years of hellacious help desk duty.  I can do two years of school — especially if I keep my eyes on the prize at the end: an expected doubling of my salary and a hope for more than that.  Those other things — Indiana and help desk — had nothing at the end to look forward to other than just the cessation of hostilities.  No prize for completion…nothing.  “It’ll feel better when it stops hurting.”  You get the idea.

This program?  Two years of grueling school and 3-hour drives, and at the end of it I have an M.B.A. degree from a program ranked 18th among public universities and 40th overall?  A program rated #1 for return on investment?  A program with a career services department ranked #3 (IIRC) in the nation?  Well, hell!  I can do this!

I’m excited!

Em. Bee. Ay.

Yup, big changes coming down the pike.  I applied to business school.  I was ACCEPTED by said business school.  This July, I start the Weekend MBA Program at Michigan State University.  Nineteen months later, I’ll have an MBA, and hopefully a whole new job which will unlock untold riches for my family and me.

What has me at a loss, though, is wondering if getting into an MBA program — a decently good one, at least — is a bigger deal than I think it is.  I mean, getting into Harvard Business or U of Michigan is a big deal, no doubt.  I’m getting into a program that’s ranked somewhere between 37th and 50th, depending on who you ask — not top-notch, but not un-ranked like Baker College or Lawrence Institute of Technology.

So I spent a couple of months on my application — getting transcripts, resume, recommendations; writing essays; taking the GMAT exam.  Then, five days after I submitted my application, boom, I was accepted.  No interview or anything.  I had prepared for a 3-10 week wait, as cautioned by an e-mail from the program.  Nope.  Five days.

It’s burnin’ me up…is that a big deal?  My reaction was, “oh, cool!”  Then we went out to Chili’s to celebrate.  Should my reaction have been more along the lines of, “Oh. My. God.” (sit down in chair and fan face) “Honey, give me a blow-job right fucking now, because I. Am. The. Shiz-nit!”

See, I don’t know.  I’m assuming it’s good, but I don’t want to go around crowing about it, if this is actually relatively normal.  At the same time, if this kind of thing never happens, I’d like to know about it so I can be appropriately proud.

Well, regardless, I got into a decent MBA program; one with a GREAT career services department, and I should be poised to break into a good-paying management job in March of 2011, and I’m damn happy about that.