Fall A - if you are not overwhelmed you are totally missing the point

I guess so far you get the impression that I do not study too much.

At the beginning of September my first term - Fall A - has started.

Since then I have more studying to do, then I could ever accomplish.

I thought I would know already, what a ridiculous workload looks like. This is a whole different ballgame, as they like to say here.

After I successfully passed the Accounting Exam before the start of classes, I have three mandatory courses left: Strategy, Economics, and Statistics.

Additionally I take one elective in "Management Presentations".

Up to now I have a lot of fun, the classes are interesting and the professors and classmates are great. Did I mention how much work this is already?

The most memorable experience so far, was my first strategy class.

After two minutes our professor calls me:

"Andreas, is the airline industry a good industry?"

For the next minutes I only heard "What else, ..."

What came in handy, was that I had some basic understanding of Porter's five forces.

So yes, Padde, I am really reading all these books. Padde once questioned whether I would really read all these books, or whether I would be running a book retailer.

Back to my strategy class. After a few minutes I got interrupted by a classmate. While I was thankful for the interruption, my professor did not like it and made sure it was understood that he was not happy about it. The next thing I hear: "Andreas, apologies for the interruption, please continue!"

A few more minutes later, he was finally decided to ask somebody else about what Ryanair was successful. However, that did not stop him from coming back to me every time he had a question on the industry structure.

The good news: I did pretty well, and (EVEN BETTER) I will most probably not be cold called again in Strategy this term.

The other classes are more relaxed. Management Presentations is extremely helpful and by fare the best public speaking course I ever had. Economics is great, because frequently I have to think: "Ah, this is why ... "

The scary thing about all this:

It is over in less than 3 weeks.

Oh, I guess this means that I have final exams in less then 3 weeks and I should get back to my books!

But before doing this I share a quote from my professor about the MBA experience:

"If you are not overwhelmed you are totally missing the point!"

If this is the standard, I totally get this MBA thing! :-)

Football - Hail to the Victors in the Big House

So what do I do on Saturdays? I watch College Football.

Is Football big in Ann Arbor?

No it is huge!

The Michigan Stadium, called the Big House, is the second biggest stadium in the US with a capacity of approximately 107,000. Since 1975 the attendance of every home game exceeded 100,000.

(btw Ann Arbor has 115,000 citizens)

On game days, the city is crowded from the early morning, with pre-game parties.

So how is the season going so far?

GREAT - after a bad season last year the team is 4-0 until now.

Especially exiting: A last second victory against Notre Dame two weeks ago.

So me and my classmates are having a lot of fun and plenty of opportunities to sing the Michigan fight song: Hail to the victors!

Next Saturday is the big game against Michigan State University (the local arch rival).

GO BLUE!!!

MBA Games - the downside of diversity

Briefly after the M-treks our never tired MBA2s organized the next great event for us: The MBA Games.

A collection of Sport Events like Soccer, Football, Softball, Volleyball etc. in which the different sections of the MBA program competed against each other.

Unfortunately my section finished last (by a mile :-().
We only managed to win the 4x400m race.

I personally failed miserably in Kickball (sort of Baseball but you kick a ball instead of hitting a baseball) where my section lost the very first game.
For the rest of the day I played Volleyball with five friends from my section. That was a lot of fun and we managed to reach the final.

In the final I realized the downside of diversity! Was ist really necessary to admit a player from the Israel National Volleyball team to the MBA program? Couldn't we have taken another overweight, uncoordinated Consultant or I-banker? ;-)

Well, at least over 100m I did not have to compete with the sprinter from the US national team who is in my class.


Another great day and fun event! THANKS again to the MBA2s for organizing!
The MBA2s also managed to convince several companies to sponsor that event a.o. Proctor & Gamble, IBM and Accenture. Embarrassingly Accenture did not even show up.

RLI - Foundation Session

So after we all came back to Ann Arbor after our wonderful M-Treks all over the world, the first mandatory event of the MBA Program took place:
The Ross Leadership Initiative (RLI) Foundation Session (I don't think it would have been humanly possible to come up with a longer name ;-))

So for six days we discussed about leadership topics like responsibility, integrity, diversity, creativity, and innovation. We practiced improvisation skills with a comedy group from Chicago (Second City). Moreover we listened to the wisdom of Ricardo Salinas, an entrepreneur from Mexico, and of our faculties.
But most fun were team building events like cooking a meal for 100 people.
At least most of these events were fun. Since the cooking took place outside in the pouring rain, I ended up being sick for the better part of the coming week.

But by far most impressive for the speech of Eleanor Josaitis!
The last day of the RLI Foundation Session was dedicated to Corporate Social Responsibility. So we all went to Detroit and got involved in different projects.
One of these projects was overseen by Eleanor, who is one of the founders of "Focus: HOPE" a civil and human rights organization in Detroit.
At the closure of the event she gave a wonderful speech about her work, overcoming obstacles and giving back to others. Many of us (certainly me) had to fight back their tears.

So a great start to my academic life at Ross and a week which certainly gave me a lot to think about!

M-Trek: GuateBelize - Part 2: Belize

After a wonderful time in Guatemala we went on to go to Belize - finally some beach time! :-)

Soon after we departed from our lodge in the jungle in Tikal our bus needed to stop at a construction site. The joke from on of our Trek-Leaders '... they are paving the road as we go ...' was totally accurate as we would find out later.

After standing there for about an hour the queue of vehicles (or rather the driver to be precise) decided to not take this construction that serious after all and continue driving although there was no paved road.

Nevertheless we safely arrived at the border to Belize and did not even lose any luggage that was put on the roof of the bus.

At the border we needed to leave the bus and walk across.

Unfortunately our bus was not allowed to pass since the Belizian authorities figured that they rather have taxis from Belize earn our money as opposed to a bus from Guatemala.

So we got onto Taxis in Belize (I would guess these cars failed any western TUV inspection several decades ago). Interestingly our driver tried to convince us that an air conditioning would be less effective then just opening the windows. As it turned out he was absolutely right. However the fact that his a/c was broken played some part in this.

What I loved about our time in Belize in general: There are hardly any roads. So wherever you go, you take the boat!

So the majority of our time in Belize we spend on the beach, on boats or in the water.

We went snorkeling twice - I loved it! I never really snorkeled before. It was great to swim with a wide variety of fish, with sea turtles and smaller sharks.

I was so distracted by all these animals that my knees experienced how sharp coral reaves really are. Fortunately my blood did not attract any more dangerous animals! ;-)

Almost all of us got really bad sun burn on their backs.

So here is a business opportunity: I used sun screen with factor 80 and reapplied it about every 2 hours. I still got burned.

So if you figure out a way to make factor 800 sun screen: There are certainly some customers for you in Belize!

Besides the sun I also had a hard time getting used to the sheer heat in Belize.

One night a trek leader and I decided t go for a run the next morning. What we did not expect was that running at 9 am meant running at ~40 degrees.

Stubborn as we were we did stick to our 'stupid' idea of going for a run.

We asked one of the locals whether there would be a road we could run on. Latest the following answer explained why we took the boat all the time.

The guy would explain us how the beach would be in better condition, with less holes and more even.

After about a 45 min run, we tried to spend the rest of the day in air conditioned rooms! ;-)

On our second to last day we took the water taxi one final time to Belize City.

From Belize City we would fly back to Detroit the following day.

Since Belize City is a small but very dangerous city we spend the entire evening in the hotel.

I once again tried to prove that I can win money in a casino.

Well, I guess sometimes history repeats itself. I won quite some money early on, but I was not willing to call it a night that early. I guess you can image how it ended.

Fortunately I was disciplined enough to only play with my remaining Belizian Dollars. :-)

Put since pictures say more then a thousand words, I stop writing now!

Some more pictures from Belize:

Well, one think I still need to mention.

A big THANK YOU to our Trek Leaders how put this together during their internships, after the trip to Honduras was cancelled. Thanks for this first highlight of my MBA!