The Carroll School of Management

I’ll use Army time to give you an example of a typical BC MBA day…it’s a little like boot camp the first seven weeks anyway

6:30 - 7:30: Wake-up, brush the teeth, drink the coffee, have some breakfast and do some morning Yoga (I had to put this in since my girlfriend is a bit of a Yoga nut)

7:30 - 8:00: Read a bit of the Wall Street Journal - I spent way too much money on this subscription for it to just lay outside my Brighton apartment, so I skim at least the first few pages.

8:00: Get in my car (Subaru, by the way - I figured I would buy something practical for the snow up in Boston - as I write this, it’s 80 degrees and we’re in October - Al Gore, you’re too late) and drive to campus about 3.5 minutes away. I could walk, but there’s ample parking at BC and…well…I need to conserve my energy.

8:30 - 10:30: Accounting. Pete Wilson (see earlier blog entry) is a fantastic Professor. But he also gets up every morning around 3:30 (that’s not PM) and gets to campus probably around 6:00. He’s in the lobby….waiting. And he has a stack of papers that could only be the results of the Midterm. I did alright - considering I’ve never taken an Accounting class in my life. It’s one of the more challenging 7-week courses you’ll ever experience…but you’ll also be happy you did it.

10:30 - 11:00: Break in between classes. Time to quickly find out what you forgot to do for the next class by asking Section 2 friends what happened. Quickly get a second coffee (or anything else with caffeine) and move on to the room across the hall for…

11:00 - 13:00: MP&O or Managing People & Organizations. Probably one of the more useful classes in your first year. The soft skills are usually missing from the MBA curriculum and BC does a great job of infusing the soft skills with the hard skills. Professor Radin combines lectures, class discussions and guest speakers to create a lively class - sometimes too lively - debate can get heated - but what do you expect with 50 smart people in a room? Guest speakers have included the President of Boston Duck Tours, former CEO of Molecular, former CEO of Brooks Automation…just to name a few.

13:00 - 14:00: Lunch. A lot of people bring their bagged lunch to save a few bucks - most of us are taking out these things called “educational loans” - they’re a lot of fun. But BC has a lot of options for a small school - there’s even a Farmer’s Market every Thursday where you can buy fruits and veggies from local growers. Lunch for one hour? Probably not - I’m just trying to be generous.

14:00 - 15:00: Group Meeting. During our first semester, 1st Years (as we’re affectionately called) take part in a Business Simulation project called Foundation. It’s a small competition that allows us to practice team building skills while trying to beat the snot out of the other teams in our section. This year’s Simulation has us running a Sensor company. It’s a prelude for our next semester, when we will be broken up into consulting teams and asked to advise an ACTUAL Boston-based company.

15:00 - 16:00: Information Session with GE. It’s early to start looking for a summer internship and most of the Fall semester information sessions are more for 2nd Years who are ready to nail down their post-graduate job. GE came to speak about their ECLP (Commercial Leadership Program), which is a 2-year rotational program post-MBA. It’s always good to understand what is out there - it’s better to plan ahead with recruiting instead of having to react quickly to submit applications, etc. I never thought about working for a mammoth company like GE, but after the Info Session was held by two BC MBA alums, I started to take a closer look. The alums seemed excited about their rotations and had only good things to say.

16:00 - 18:00: Reading for Strategic Analysis and Leadership, two other courses that meet later in the week. I just finished a paper on the “Cola Wars” for the Strategic Analysis class and a “Reflected Best-Self” paper for the Leadership course. If you thought business school was just about numbers and calculations, you’re dead wrong. I have a number of papers to write before the end of the semester…from a Core Values statement that every 1st Year writes to a Group Presentation for our Business Simulation class.

18:00 - 20:00: There’s a meeting for the Consulting Club. The Consulting Club is a student-run initiative that brings BC MBAers in touch with different aspects of the consulting industry. Last year there was a huge turn-out for a Consulting Club event and we’re looking to repeat the success this year. BC alum from Accenture, Deloitte, Huron Consulting, just to name a few, joined aspiring MBA consultants. It’s a great way to keep the alumni involved and to give students the edge in making contact with potential future employers.

20:00 - midnight: Going home to read a bit more - it’s always important to get ahead of Accounting since the Final is coming. Watch a little bit of the baseball Playoffs - since the Yankees lost last night, it’s probably going to free up quite a bit of time. I was actually nervous that they were going to continue - I would have easily failed all my final exams. I’m going to cook some dinner and enjoy some time with my lovely girlfriend - who finished med school a few years ago so she can appreciate the amount of time I have to spend at school. At least she says she appreciates it…but that’s another blog entry at another time!

People - this is just a snapshot. There are football games, speaker engagements, other team meetings, meetings with Professors - you can easily schedule every minute of the day. And you should - because this is the time to do it. Grad school should be treated as a time to explore.