Rested, tanned, and ready

Al Gore in 2008! Oh wait, wrong blog.

After blowing my fall break on career treks to two cities and one weekend at Ocean Isle with the folks from church, I am back at Chapel Hill and ready to take on the new quarter. Or at least I am as ready as I am ever going to be.

               

Mod II will be the most challenging quarter of my two years. The core classes consist of marketing, operations, strategery, macroeconomics, and finance. Marketing and strategery require case readings and the case methodology. Macroeconomics is taught by the same beloved professor who taught the finance course over the summer. Finance is a continuation of the class from last quarter, but will be taught by a different professor. This particular professor received his PhD from Wharton very recently and is only a few years older than I am. I did pretty well in finance last quarter but unfortunately I can’t take credit for it because most of the material is review from what I took at UVA. Come to think of it, much of the material from Mod I (finance, accounting, microeconomics) is material I have already had in college. I am amazed at how well UVA has prepared me for business school.

 

When I visited Kenan-Flagler in January, my student host told me that classes (time in class as well as time preparing for it) take up only a small portion your timein business school. I am beginning to see his point. For Mod II, I have already committed to a case competition and a trip to Omaha with the finance club. This is not including the work I have to do to figure out exactly what type of career I want with my MBA and to find my summer internship. On the first day of class during Mod I, my economics professor said, “you will find that with every passing day, there is less time than the day before.”

                         

Part of the challenge this coming quarter will be spiritual as well as physical. When I started the MBA application process by taking the GMAT a year ago this month, I had some expectations of what I would get out of two years in any MBA program. These expectations are a combination of things ranging from financial rewards, the formation of lifelong friendships, to successful romantic endeavors. Soon after Mod I began, I realized that while these were good expectations to have, God has never said that they were to be my expectations. Furthermore, I was reminded that God calls for us to be faithful, and not necessarily to be successful. I cannot begin to tell you how my outlook has changed since I have been relieved of my expectations.

 

When I was driving back from Charlotte last week, I began to feel an increased sense of peace about my job search, my situation at Kenan-Flagler, and my life in general. I am not sure if God was asking me to trust Him or if I was hallucinating. It also could have been caused by the relief over the end of Mod I and even possibly the alcohol from the party earlier in the week but I am curious to see how long this sense of peace lasts.