YEEEOOOUCH!

I just dropped $574 on books and course packs for Autumn Quarter!!! Talk about sticker shock, especially on the non-resellable course packs. Also, I'm wondering...the estimated cost of attendance (AKA our official budget that is used to determine our financial aid award) assumes a book budget for the year of $1650. $574 only covers 3 out of 10 courses I'll be taking this year...do the math, that is going to be cutting it close, even taking textbook buyback into consideration. Guess it's a good thing I'm under what the budget allows for things like rent.

Many of the other GSB bloggers have covered the whole bidding process that played itself out last week, so I won't get into that other than to say I didn't spend a whole lot of time trying to game the system and I didn't bid too many points. I didn't get my first choice schedule, but I did get a schedule I like. Since we have LEAD during fall quarter, and I wanted to allow myself some time to get back my study habits, I decided to take 3 courses this quarter and 4 in winter quarter. I orginally thought I would get the three foundation courses out of the way this quarter (financial accounting, microeconomics, and statistics), but then I decided to put off accounting until winter quarter so I could mix in a case course with all the quant stuff. The first year herd seemed to be willing to spend a lot of points on Marketing Strategy, so I figured I'd go another route and try to get a less popular class and not spend any points (saving them for winter like a good little squirrel). I bid on a preferred schedule of turbo micro (with an alternate of baby micro), stats, and operations management (which counts toward a breadth requirement). I didn't get turbo micro (kinda bummed because the prof sounds awesome, but kinda relieved because it also sounds like a truckload of work...20+ hrs/wk!), and I didn't get the stats section I preferred.

Schedule looks something like:
Monday--no classes
Tuesday--Ops Mgmt 8:30-11:30 am, Career Essentials in the afternoon
Wednesday--Microeconomics 8:30-11:30 am
Thursday--LEAD 1:30-4:30 pm, Stats 6-9 pm, TNDC 9 pm til I pass out
Friday--no classes/recovery from TNDC/LPF

Even though I don't have classes Monday or Friday, I figure I'll be down in Hyde Park most of the day every day, but I like the flexibility it gives me if I need to go out of town for a weekend.

We are almost finished with CORE (AKA orientation) and I'm looking forward to starting classes. Tomorrow is the last day of CORE and it's Industry Immersion, a series of presentations and panel discussions to help us explore career options and begin the process of narrowing down target industries/functions/companies. Should be interesting, even though what I think I want to do doesn't really fit into any of the typical MBA career path buckets.

There's a lot of CORE that I'd like to recap, but I think I will do separate entries for the different modules as time allows this week (I should have some time since Wednesday & Friday are free days). This will likely include the diversity module (way better than expected), career services (not long enough), LEAD so far (better than expected).

I have to say, I've been having a great time so far. The GSB may have had a reputation as somewhat lacking in the fun department in the past, but the Class of 2007 does not fit that mold in the least. My classmates are always cooking up some kind of outing, adventure, night on the town, etc. I can tell that over the course of the next two years, balancing my social calendar and my academic calendar will be a challenge. Big time.