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Things are getting more and more intense
Blogs Maria Boicova - 10-31-09
... I would have to spend a lot of hours studying, practicing and trying to force my humanitarian brains to understand stochastic models, deductive modeling, inferential modeling, constrained optimization models,…
It has been quite a while since my last post here. Sorry for that. Things are getting more and more intense. Last week I readily realized that I have chosen a very good strategy of doing things in advance. Many of my classmates last week were obviously nervous, ‘cos the deadline for submitting the reflective paper in Leadership course was sparkling maliciously in front of their eyes – October 30, 9:00 a.m. – but some hadn’t even started. I have completed my paper about a month ago, couple of days after we received this task. No, I am not always doing things in advance, sometimes I am lazy (well, most of the times I am lazy, but I managed to learn how to force myself) and postpone everything until the very last moment, but in general… You see, when you put more effort in the beginning and do everything in advance, first, you don’t have to worry about it anymore; second, you are free to choose when to take your break, if you wish so (or you are free to practice linear programming… and a sad smile goes here).
The “cry” in brackets refers to our new course – Decision Sciences. Ouch! Now here I would have to spend a lot of hours studying, practicing and trying to force my humanitarian brains to understand stochastic models, deductive modeling, inferential modeling, constrained optimization models,… I can go on and on with those scary terms which are absolutely new to me! I would prefer to write 20 papers in Leadership or learn Chinese instead of creating models of how to optimize this or that. Don’t get me wrong: course is very interesting, our professor is marvelous, even our book (another “tiny slim” book of 700 pages) is more or less understandable (LOL) if you go through that thoroughly; it is just very hard for me subjectively.
Another issue that requires a lot of thinking and which is basically the main issue this year is our future career. By the end of October and beginning of November (so, as one might see from the calendar – NOW!) those who would like to start working right after they graduate, already have to have more or less clear view of what they want and what they can offer, and have to start looking and applying… At the time one files an application to the B-school, the future seems so clear! I knew my answers to all the questions like “where you want to be in 5 years?”, “what you want to do after graduation?”, “what do you plan to do in 10, 20, 30, 50,… years?”. Clear goals, clear plan. Personal revelation: it is not that simple. Not that I am absolutely lost, but I have had several significant adjustments to my plans and I wonder whether after a year on MBA my plans will remain at least somewhat resembling those of “pre-MBA me”. But this is already another subject for discussion, which to I will come back in my next post.
Maria Boicova is a Full-time MBA student at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School (Leuven, Belgium). She is a Patent and Trademark Attorney from Latvia with a background in law and management.