The week from hell continues

Your second year is suppose to be much easier than your first. So far I have found this case to be mostly the case, with some exceptions. This current week has been on big exception.

Most second years take fewer than five classes and many classes do not give finals. This Mod not only am I taking five classes but I have a final in each and every class. So far this week I have had one take home (complex deal) due on Monday, an in class (customer relations management) yesterday, a second in class (fixed income) this afternoon, and two other take homes (advanced topics in accounting and mergers and acquisitions) due on Friday. The last time I had five final exams was Mod II of my first year.

The hardest of the five exams is clearly fixed income. As I was studying for it last night, I divided the class’ content into two halves, the half that I can remotely understand and the part that I do not stand a snowball’s chance in hell of figuring out. I spent most of my preparation time on the half that I knew better. This may sound counterintuitive, but it’s the equivalent to a politician campaigning in “friendly districts” rather than in neighborhoods more inclined to support the opponent. The goal in both cases is to identify the areas where you are strong and more likely to generate a larger marginal unit of outcome per effort exhausted.

 

As I was leaving the library at 2:30 this morning, I thought I had a good plan mapped out on how Iwas going to master the remainder of the material in time for the 1pm exam. That was until I got into my car and turned the ignition key. My car has had this problem with the battery not starting ever since last year when I bought a new battery from Sears (in case you are wondering, I made a conscious decision to name the company where I made the purchase and had the installation done).  While I knew exactly what the cause of this problem was, I had trouble understanding why it came back again after more than six months in remission. I ended up bringing the car to the garage, taking the P2P to as close to my apartment as possible (P2P can only pick up and dislodge students on university property), before walking into the front door of my apartment at 4am.

The complex, complex deal exam

My complex deal professor invited his students to an Easter egg hunt this past weekend. No it wasn’t the type where you have to dress up as a bunny and run around someone front or back yard looking for wrapped eggs. This was the type where you sit at a desk for hours, flip through page after page of financial documents, and find the one or two nuggets of information that will earn you a respectable number of points toward the final.

 

He gave out the final exam last week and we had until yesterday to hand it in. Someone told me that a student who graduated this past May described the professor’s exams as “an Easter egg hunt” and that’s exactly how I would describe this past weekend’s exercise. I spent hours pouring through pages of financial disclosures regarding the bankruptcy settlement of Loral Space and Communications. One question asked why the company’s long term liabilities declined so dramatically between one year and the next. After spending an eternity trying to come up with an answer supported by the many paragraphs of notes and footnotes, I was ready to throw in the towel when I noticed that the current liability (current being anything that expires within one year hence not considered long term) went up substantially during this period. I simply wrote down that many of the long term liability became current liability.

 

As I was doing the exam, I remember something my professor said one day while talking about his exams. In his unique, Bushman-esque style, he said “hey if I were going to make it simple, I’d name the class simple deal.”

End of mod follies and controversies

Mod I officially ended this past Friday. For me, it ended the day before because I don’t have Friday classes. The last session of every class is always an interesting spectacle to observe. The professor will almost always gives an end of class talk such as “okay everyone, it’s been fun, keep in touch” and the students proceed to generously showers him with applause.

 

My last class on Thursday was customers relations management and we spent the last twenty minutes playing this game the professor created called “Who Wants to be A CRM Millionaire?” The game is displayed on PowerPoint and is modeled after the game show that used to air on ABC. The professor even programmed the graphics and audio to look and sound just like the ones taken from the show. At the end of the game when the class won the million dollar question, someone sarcastically asked if she was going to give us a million dollars. She then reached underneath the desk, held up a bag of candy bars, and asked “would you all settle for 100 Grand?” We spontaneously laughed and applauded.

 

This past weekend was graduation for the students in the Executive MBA program. An email went out to the entire school on Saturday announcing that the students in the graduating class had picked two professors to receive this year’s distinguished teaching award. One of the two professors is someone who left Kenan-Flagler to work on Wall Street only to come back and become one of the more popular professors in the department. The other is …. tsk …. how should I put this politely … one of the least liked professor in the school. I am not sure how the heck she was voted to receive the distinguished teaching award. Upon reading the email, my first instinct was to hit “reply to all” and ask “is there a different (name of professor) who teaches the Executive MBA program?” but my better sense of judgment prevailed. I am guessing that either the older students in the Executive MBA program find her style to be more appealing or that this distinguished teaching award isa bit like tenure, that if you stay at Kenan-Flagler long enough, you will get one.

Escape from the poison gas cloud

From the time I got back from the “end of Mod” party at the Library (that’s the name of a bar on Franklin Street) at 1 this morning to when I woke up eight hours later, all the local TV stations have been airing wall-to-wall news coverage of the chemical factory fire at the nearby town of Apex. The fire created a toxic cloud that resulted in the evacuation of approximately 15,000 residents. This was the top story on the “Today Show” this morning.

 

Wouldn’t it be sweet if next Wednesday there is another toxic cloud and this time the wind blows in the opposite direction forcing the town of Chapel Hill and the university to evacuate and our fixed income final exam gets postponed.

Exclusive: Buckyhoo foils airport security with suntan lotion

I thought we’re not allowed to bring lotions of any kind onto the airplane in the wake of the recent foiled terrorist attack. But the Transportation Security Administration’s security screeners at Raleigh Durham International and Hatfield Airports must not have gotten the internal memo because this past Friday I was able to successfully bring a bottle of suntan lotion with me on the plane both flying down to Atlanta in the morning and coming back at night.

When I fly out to Cincinnati in three weeks for the National Society of Hispanic MBA job fair (NSHMBA, pronounced “Nar-shim-BAR,” for short), I think I will up the ante a bit and bring with me a box cutter.

An MBA will prevent a woman from earning an MRS

Anyone remember that song that goes “if you want to be happy for the rest of your life .. blah blah blah something … take my personal point of view … get an ugly woman to marry you?” A dear friend of mine and faithful reader of this blog sent me this a while back. A writer for Forbes Magazine came up with a variation of the adage and wrote an article that career women should be avoided when it comes to choosing a spouse.

 

The advice is based on research indicating that women who work (defined as women who have a college or higher education, work more than 35 hours a week, and earn more than $30,000 a year) are more likely to have unhappy marriages, practice adultery, and have less children compared to their counterparts who stay home. This article first came out about a month ago and the ensuing controversy has caused its disappearance from the magazine’s web site. But I heard the author interviewed on Alan Colmes’ radio show where he defended his arguments and the research behind his claims.

 

Needless to say, the next time there is a Carolina Women In Business meeting, I am going to make sure I don’t walk into at McColl unless I have my running shoes on.

Shot down

I was feeling pretty good all weekend from the reception I got from the two companies this past Friday at the National Black MBA job fair. Then today I learned that I did not make the closed interview list for the world’s largest software company.

 

While I am a bit disappointed, I have come to realize that much of this job search will involve me taking two steps forward followed by one (and sometimes more than one) step backward. Not making the closed interview list is not the end of the world. When I had my phone interview with this company back in March, I did not get that interview via the Kenan-Flagler recruiting process. As my complex deal professor said when I asked him at the end of class one time about how he calculated a number that was on the board, “there is more than one way to skin the cat.” At this point I am entertaining a couple of options on how to further proceed with this company but will refrain from discussing them on this blog. The most obvious option is to use my bid points for the few open slots that are on the schedule.

 

In other news, after the Kenan-Flagler reception on Friday, me and my classmate ended up taking the last flight back to Raleigh from Atlanta. The dean and the assistant dean, who both spoke at the reception, were on the plane withus. I am happy to report that both gentlemen flew coach just like most ordinary folks. And this is very appropriate because after all, UNC is “the people’s university.”