Switching gears

As Mod IV continues, me and many of my classmates are becoming more aware that the end of our business school days are near. Yesterday I added a gadget onto my Live.com customized web page showing me how many days, hours, right down to how many minutes, until graduation. The mindset of many of my classmates is also changing. Classes and academics are beginning to take a backseat. It seems like every time I walk into the Career Management Center Library, I end up participating in a conversation about the latest episode of Lost or 24. I overheard a second year student tell someone yesterday that all he wanted were “sleep, alcohol, and girls.” I assume the conversation was about his priorities at this point in his life.

 

I too have been taking stock about what my priorities should be. On Tuesday I mentioned to a classmate that I was taking four classes and she reacted with a bit of shock. Even though four classes may be a lot for a second year in Mod IV (three is the minimum), the four that I am taking do not require an overabundance of efforts. With global supply chain management having met for the last time on Saturday, there are now only three classes that I have to regularly attend and I will have every Thursday and Friday off from now on. This has gotten me into thinking about how I can best use this new chunk of time to fulfill the priorities that are in my life and what these new priorities should be.

 

There are a couple of things I would like to accomplish between now and whenever I find and start my new job. These include areas of personal, spiritual, and professional development. On the personal front, I would like to there like to get my act together and find a ranch or a farm nearby to start taking horseback riding lessons. Yea that’s right, I want to learn to ride a horse. A lot of my classmates are really into playing golf but golf has never interested me. Riding a horse, on the other hand, is something interesting that I want to learn and to talk to other people about. Equestrian is also the only sport that involves the participation of another animal. On the spiritual front, I really need to start getting back into the habit of regularly praying and having discussions with God about the various issues in my life. During first year, I was praying and reading the Word more, much more, than I am now and God has used that opportunity to reveal a couple of things to me that are pretty profound. I have not been doing that nearly as diligently this year, and that secularization is reflected on this blog, where I don’t write about my faith and its impact on my decisions and reactions as much as I did before. This is one of the more important priorities that I wish to fulfill before I move onto the next stage of my life. On the professional front, there are a couple of what I call non-MBA MBA skills that I wish to acquire. I use that term because these are things that MBA students should know but aren’t taught in the classroom. I noticed on a couple of internet job postings that the company wants “an ideal candidate” to know Microsoft Visio and Microsoft Project. I have since added them onto my mental shopping cart of things I wish to learn in the future. But perhaps the most ambitious endeavor of all is to learn mandarin Chinese. I have blogged before that the best advice I have ever received came from a Kenan-Flagler alum who said that people make certain assumptions about the skill set of MBA graduates and you need to be aware of what these assumptions are and tailor your education to fulfill these expectations. This has led me to take classes in areas I did not consider taking such as marketing (which I ended up liking) and supply chain management. I have ever explicitly disclosed this on the blog but I am an American of Chinese descent and the assumption many people make upon meeting me is that I speak Chinese. Having a halfway descent command of conversational mandarin Chinese will not only preclude me from disappointing them but combining that with my excellent command of the English language will give me a rare skill set that will give me an edge in the employment market.

 

So these are the areas I have outlined where I want to focus my time, efforts, and energy over the next months. They may not be as exciting as “sleep, alcohol, and girls” but I am hopeful that their rewards are longer lasting and more eternal. At the very least there is no risk of waking up the next morning trying to make awkward conversations while nursing a hangover.