Tulane University Freeman School BLOG

Here they are, for your select all/copy/paste/save as “BSchoolGold.doc” pleasure!

#10: Internships/Jobs are your responsibility.

Every bschool has a Career Management Center (CMC) which works with students to help them find jobs. Some CMC’s are more hands on than others. At Tulane, a good portion of my classmates got internships independent of our CMC. Some students used their personal network, some used Craigslist, some applied directly on company web sites or used the eRecruiting web site that the CMC swears by. Irrespective, by hook or by crook almost everyone in our class has an internship for the summer.

Our CMC is more laid back than at other schools; if you don’t go to them requesting help looking for an internship or job, they’re not going to come to you. Sure they setup company visits and the MBA’s have an opportunity to go to New York and Houston for CMC-organized networking events, but the bottom line is you have to get your own job. This isn’t kindergarten, or even college. YOU made the decision to return to school, YOU now have the onus of getting a job. If you want to involve the CMC, great, do so. If not, that’s ok too. But don’t whine at the end of the first year that you don’t have an internship and it’s someone else’s fault. Some students started looking for summer gigs even before school started in August!

#9: Laptops are key

Hey, teachers who don’t allow laptops in their class, you suck! If I’m playing on my laptop, surfing, IM’ing, what do you care? Are you that much of a megalomaniac that you demand 100% attention 100% of the time? And don’t give me that crap about your class not needing laptops for learning. How am I supposed to take notes, on paper? Then what, I save my chicken-scratch for the next 40 years, because it’s not as if I have time to transcribe my notes into my laptop, I’m off to my next class/group meeting/internship/etc.

The classes I got the least out of were the ones where I wasn’t allowed to take notes on a laptop. Sure perhaps I interacted more (just a little more) in class, but in terms of knowledge banked, my needle sits at zero as I try and think back to your class. I’m a big boy now, Professor. Let me figure out how I learn best and do that.

Switching topics slightly, a mastery of MS Excel is also an awesome thing to have. You’re going to do a lot of regressions, Monte Carlo simulations and a little VBA your first year. I thought I knew a lot about Excel coming into the MBA. I categorize myself as beginner-intermediate as far as the finance world is concerned. Eat your heart out, Google Spreadsheet. Excel is king.

#8: There are good classes and bad classes

An MBA is a general degree. Sure, here at Tulane we offer concentrations in Finance, Strategy/Entrepreneurship and Marketing, but for the most part the core classes are pretty general. Which means you’re going to like/hate some more than others. Fact of life. Some teachers are going to suck (in your opinion) more than others. I can go around and ask everyone who their most/least favorite professor is and I won’t have a majority either way. I guess you could spin this, to some degree, as part of the MBA experience (although not designed as such). In the real world, you’re gonna have good and bad bosses. You have to learn how to work with both kinds or your employability is going to suffer.

In general (and this is just me speaking on behalf of me) I’ve found the more interesting classes to be the elective ones and the less interesting classes to be the core ones. I guess this makes sense: I’m choosing classes that are interesting to me! Sometimes, though, the school will go and do something dumb like schedule a core/required class (consulting) that overlaps a much more interesting class (business law) which prevents you (me) from taking it. Are you listening, scheduling people?

#7: Pay attention (even in the bad classes)

At the beginning of the year, when no one knew each other and everyone wanted to out-do the other, everyone paid rapt attention to the Professor, regardless of the subject. By the time the first 7 weeks were over you could count on a quarter of every class religiously ignoring the professor and checking email/IM’ing/buying shoes/etc. Dumb.

Look, even in the classes I detested the most, I’d still pay attention. No I’m not some total dork who’s trying to suck up to the professor, but I am paying $1100+ to listen to some academic drone on, I might as well pay attention and try to glean at least a small amount out of the class. I took good notes in every class on my laptop, and will have those notes forever. This, for me, is the real value of the MBA: I have a record of every class that I can pull from later in life, when the rest of my peers were too busy checking out espn.com to care. It’s an MBA. YOU wanted to be here, YOU showed up to class, don’t mitigate that by surfing your salary away.

#6: You will love your group, and hate them.

Oh group work, how I don’t miss thee. Unlike law school, learning to work in a group, to collaborate, share ideas and generally get stuff done is an integral part of bschool. At Tulane groups are assigned based on a weighting of the class’ attributes. For example, pretty much every group in my class had one JD/MBA, one 5-year, someone who scored highly on their GMAT (not me) and someone who’s GMAT score placed them equally likely for bschool or burger school (I make up for this with my blindingly attractive personality).

So the groups here are pretty equally weighted and that’s a good thing. People learn how to work with people they normally wouldn’t choose by default, just like in the real world. Each member develops their own strengths and weaknesses to the point where I can now look at a paper or financial statement and know who in my group wrote it, just by their diction or how they color their cells. In the beginning, everyone in the group wants everything to be perfect. I remember on one early assignment we turned in a group member changed something without discussing it with the rest of us, and I was pissed. Skip to the end of the year when we’re so busy with so many different projects that half the group does accounting and the other half does global leadership. And no one really checks the other. The group develops trust, understanding, responsibility, even-keeledness and a greater understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses. It’s like a varsity team that everyone has to play and do well at, and we all help each other succeed. In year two there’s much less group work due to only 4 core classes spread across two semesters.

#5: Your classmates are your network.

I know of at least two of my classmates who got jobs because of other classmates. After we graduate, I don’t expect this to change too much. It’s not what you know, but who. Use your class. Get to know everyone. You never know who’s going to be in a position to help you in the future.
Don’t have a, “go it alone” attitude. In bschool you work in groups for a reason. Every week the Freeman school has a Thursday Night Social event where a good portion of the class meets up at a local bar to network. When we went to Mexico for our Global Leadership class, one of the biggest things I got out of it was the chance to network/interact with members of my class that I didn’t see that much back in New Orleans. You have two short years to let everyone what kind of person you are, how hard you work, if you slack in your group, etc. In 10 years, when you’re asking for that 7-figure salary, these same people are going to be in the best position to help you. Don’t forget that.

A brother may not be a friend, but a friend will always be a brother – Ben Franklin.

#4: Grades don’t matter

I’ve written about this before: grade inflation/deflation is so rampant at bschools that no matter how hard you try (or don’t), you’re going to get anywhere from an A to a B-, rarely a C+. In the Freeman school handbook it is spelled out for students and teachers alike how teachers will make the curve in their classes.

For core classes the average is a B+, non-core is an A- (I think). I’ve received grades in classes I didn’t deserve, and I’ve received grades I didn’t deserve. In other words, I received a B in a marketing class when I should’ve gotten an A (thanks a lot, GB), and I received an A in communications when I should’ve gotten…something less. I secretly believe that in addition to the class curve the school has an overall curve for our two year tenure that we’re all going to fit into. This is frustrating, as it makes me feel like my hard work is for naught.

But then I have to consider the point of bschool: am I here for grades or the network? Are employers going to hire me based on my GPA? Not where I’m going to apply. An A in bschool is great; it shows you showed up most days and paid attention enough to score higher than most of your peers. A recruiter isn’t going to care much about that, rather he/she will be more interested in how you can apply the knowledge you’ve picked up over two years to problems like:

A man needs to go through a train tunnel. He starts through the tunnel and when he gets 1/4 the way through the tunnel, he hears the train whistle behind him. You don’t know how far away the train is, or how fast it is going, (or how fast he is going). All you know is that
1. If the man turns around and runs back the way he came, he will just barely make it out of the tunnel alive before the train hits him.
2. If the man keeps running through the tunnel, he will also just barely make it out of the tunnel alive before the train hits him.
Assume the man runs the same speed whether he goes back to the start or continues on through the tunnel. Also assume that he accelerates to his top speed instantaneously. Assume the train misses him by an infinitesimal amount and all those other reasonable assumptions that go along with puzzles like this so that someone doesn’t say the problem isn’t well defined.

How fast is the train going compared to the man?

Bottom line: show up, work hard(er) than most of your class (no Snood), and forget about what your report card says.

#3: Speak out in class. Question the Professor. Raise your hand.

I can’t believe how timid most of my class is. That’s right class, I just called most of you timid. It’s sometimes best to be the dumbest person in class. Why?
Because then you have the most to learn from everyone else. Yeah, this is rarely the case in all classes but I found myself consistently challenging the professors, my classmates and my own reasoning in class. Lots of times I was wrong and looked like an idiot. Hey, I’m ok with that. This is school, I’d rather screw up here than in the real world. Have enough self-confidence in yourself to ask questions regardless of how people perceive you, and you will earn the respect of your peers and professors.

If I’m a professor and I talk for 90 minutes straight and no one asks a question, what can I reasonably surmise? That everyone understood what knowledge I was imparting. If tons of people ask questions I may want to review how I’m presenting the material.

#2: I have a lot more learning to do, and only a little time to do it in.

Man the first year went by SO FAST! I learned a ton, but more importantly learned that I have a lot more to learn and only one more year to do it in. My internship starts May 21st and goes through July 24th, I fly to Vienna on the 25th for summer school, finishing on the 17th. I fly on the 18th back to New Orleans, getting in at 12am. School starts on the 20th. I last saw my parents in March and won’t see them again till December. I. Am. Busy!

Take advantage of all the things that a 2 year hiatus from the working world offers you. Load up on courses that aren’t in your field, go abroad, get an internship in New Orleans, join the Consulting or Entrepreneurship clubs, participate in a case competition, go to Freeman Days New York/ Houston, start a blog (yay!), enroll in Burkenroad, do an independent study with a favorite professor or just hang out at the bschool on your days off – you never know what you might learn.

The #1 Thing I Learned At My First Year Of Business School is

Have Fun!

That’s right, enjoy yourself. This is the last time till you’re 65 that you’re going to have this much freedom. Don’t stress if your group “only” got a B on a project, grades don’t matter remember? Don’t go get an internship in the field you previously worked in – try something new! Argue with your professor, maybe you can teach them something. Don’t eat lunch by yourself, insert yourself into the life of a classmate who’s totally different than you are. Take a Professor to lunch. Heck, the Freeman School is small enough, take the Dean to lunch! He’ll even pay!

And let’s not forget you’re going to school in New Orleans – go out and party! Beers are cheap, drinks are cheaper! There are no rules against dating an undergrad (ok, no freshman), and you’re probably hundreds of miles away from your close friends who will make fun of you for drinking something called “Purple Haze.”

Time and again I read that employers these days aren’t looking for candidates who are qualified just to do the work. They’re looking for people who can mesh with the rest of your team. Don’t spend your life at bschool with your head in your books. Work hard, apply yourself, and the grades will come, and the jobs will follow. I am not the smartest person in my class. I am not the hardest worker in my class. I am not the hardest partier in my class.

I am having about as much fun as you can possibly have, and have no regrets about the experience. I am confident I will do just fine come graduation and for the rest of my life.

Whew! 10! Done! I truly believe in each and every one of these Top 10 things that I’ve learned over the past year. It’s been an amazing experience so far and I’m so much the better for having taken the risk and chosen bschool over another job.

I’ll be updating the blog periodically over the summer, but be sure and check back in the fall for all the Year2 extravaganza! If you have any questions – about anything – between now and then, drop me a line. joel@tulanemba.org

Take Care.

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