2nd Year MBA Student Cullen Kasunic describes “a day in the life” at the Lally School. Follow Cullen around campus as he meets with a classmate project team, does some library research, attends classes and then relaxes at the weekly Graduate Management Student Association Pub Night.
Wake Up - 9 am:
Class today doesn’t start until 2pm, but there is a lot to do. I grab my readings for today’s classes from my bedside and pack up my laptop as I get ready for the day. Today, Tuesday, is big also because I have two of my five classes for the week. I quickly go over my schedule in my head. I have a 10 am meeting scheduled with my group to work on the major project for our class “Creating and Managing the Enterprise” (CME). We hope to break by 11:30, when I’ve got to run up to the library to talk to the business librarian about gathering data for a nanotech industry value-chain analysis I need to do for another class “Business Implications of Emerging Technology” (BIET). After that, I will grab lunch at Stacks Café there in the library as I finish my reading for the day then head to class.
Meeting – 10 am:
My four other teammates and I sit down and start to go over the latest steps in our CME project. Since our professor has a history in the publishing industry, he has given us a special task - learn about changes that have been going on in book publishing regarding digital content and E-books, then take on the role of a startup or an established player, and come up with a way to capitalize on these trends. So far we have profiled the major industry players, catalogued some of their leading edge technology initiatives, understood market drivers, and considered “pain points” that exist regarding the use of standard books, and their digital cousins. Today we get to do the fun part: we have decided to choose a company and brainstorm some product ideas that they could implement to lead the e-book transition. As good as the ideas may be today, we still will need to understand what it will take to implement them, so we assign ourselves each one application to be scoped out and described by our next weekly meeting. Tonight in class we will have a guest speaker from the publishing industry come in to give us some background on current problems.
Library – 11:30 am:
Somehow we manage to end the meeting on time, and I climb the hill to the library. Colette Holmes, the Business Librarian helps me gather some hard to find data about the number of companies and revenues in different segments of the nanotechnology industry, from initial nanomaterials fabrication to final use in composites, coatings, and other applications. This information will help me in my learning loop process, where my team is working with a small startup to understand where their technology fits, and how best to commercialize it. It has reduced one market uncertainty, but I’ve still got to call some prospective customers tomorrow to see how they would react to the company’s technology.
Lunchtime – 12:30 pm:
I sit down, catch my breath, and listen to the rockin’ music playing at the Stacks Library Café – somehow the sound doesn’t get out into the rest of the library at all – they have such great engineers around here. I pull out my papers on real options and start to read them for Finance class, which is coming up at 2pm. We have a case coming up soon where we will have to place a value on portfolios of movie sequel rights, and I think the answer is going to involve options. I run into a fellow classmate who is talking with a friend of mine in the computer science department that I met at an entrepreneurship event. I had no idea they knew each other. We sit together and start talking about what’s going on with the latest local startups, and what big companies are coming to campus to hire people. Before long, it’s 1:45 pm and I’ve got to jet back down the hill to class.
Finance Class – 2 pm
I get to class a couple minutes early and find my favorite seat along the side of classroom. The teacher comes in, asks if we have any questions then starts on the lesson of the day, our last class on standard capital budgeting procedures. As he goes through how to lay out the problem, how to choose the right discount rate percentage, and how to factor for taxes, I take detailed notes. This professor asks a lot from us, but I like it. I came here with dreams of meeting people and starting a company, something that is coming along well, but in the meantime, I discovered that I have a knack for finance. Unlike many of my other classmates, some who are finance focused and still learning a lot, I am not very analytical in nature, but I have found that I really enjoy the subject too. Noting some relevance, halfway through one of the professor’s points, a classmate stops him and turns the discussion to our upcoming business case analysis. His response indicates that real options, which we will cover next class, might have something to do with it. I was right!
Break – 4:50 pm
During the break between classes, I head down to the basement to sit on the couch, check my email, and browse the internet on my laptop. I see someone in my BIET group and I tell them about what I found out about the value chain. She fires back that she thinks there is only one place in the market where the company’s technology can be successful, but we then agree that we have to talk to the customers. We agree that we will each set up times and make some calls. As she leaves an interesting article catches my eye regarding the future of GM, something we were talking about in Economics, so I email it out to the class.
Creating and Managing an Enterprise Class – 6:30 pm
CME is a class that blends together lots of management disciples in a logical way. The first half of today’s class is about Organizational Behavior, and the professor gives us an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal, which talks about giving and getting feedback in a work situation. The first 10 minutes are nearly silent as everyone reads, but as people begin to finish, a heated discussion erupts, moderated by the professor. Some people argue that there is such a thing as too much feedback, others disagree, stating that it’s so hard to get the managers to tell you how you’re doing often enough. This debate transitions into a discussion of ways to give feedback, and how to effectively communicate in work settings to see that things get done, both managing up and down the hierarchy.
After Class (at the pub) - 10 pm
On Tuesdays, the Graduate Management Student Association holds a pizza get-together at the pub in the student union. A bunch of classmates and I head up to that and spend some time eating the pizza, drinking a beer, and catching up with the other MBA students. A nice bit of relaxation after a long day.