Late night Managing Processes thoughts

You are awake.

And so you write.

You have just completed one of the hardest midterms you’ve had so far at MBS. The class was called Managing Processes; basically it’s an operations class. You’ve never studied operations, and to be honest, you never thought you’d enjoy it. It seemed so… mundane. The whole class is about improving efficiency. How interesting could that be?

As it turns out, very. The teacher is ridiculously good. The class has learned stuff, and it is all interesting. The class has learned so much stuff, in fact, that rumor has it last year’s midterm had an average score of above a 90%. So this test’s difficulty was rather unexpected.

It bears repeating. This test… was hard. :-)

You like hard tests, they make you think, and you like thinking. You absolutely loved this one; so much so that you were giddy as you arrived home, when you skyped a friend in Japan, she immediate knew you were high on something. In fact, it was a combination of the test, and Red Bull. To be perfectly honest, you are still somewhat giddy as you type this.

Most of the questions were very well designed; even the stereotypical bread and butter had to be addressed using a completely different method because the basic objectives had changed. Moreover, previously unrelated concepts were suddenly thrust together during the multiple choice; you made the connections on the fly, and you had fun doing it.

You were pumped enough that you desperately felt like a run; but it is your day off, so you had a walk in the chilly weather instead. It feels strange, sitting, typing this entry, when every fiber of your body wants to push itself and spend some energy going around in circles, returning to the point you started from after having spent 30-45 minutes going absolutely nowhere. But it is your rest day, so keep yourself stationary. As strange as this sounds, it is quite hard to do.

You are not sure your body has ever felt this way before; perhaps this is because it’s the first time you have ever consistently run 5 times a week. Even in your fitter days, you generally only ran three times a week, not five… so the days where you did run were the exception, as opposed to now, when the days you do NOT run are the strange ones. And since Sunday’s long run was only a short distance, it might make some sense that your body is chomping at the bit go faster and longer following the midterm exam. But no, it does not make sense. In fact, it defies logic completely.

Congratulations! You have done it! You are now comfortable embracing your inner insanity. It has taken quite a while.

In the meantime, in the time this blog post was written, you have crashed. The strangest thing about this new life you lead is that you either have way too much energy, or none at all. Negative energy. Your nose has grown cold; you are threatening to drop below absolute zero.

It suddenly has become too late to read, to write… your fingers are getting blurry as you type. One of these days, you might stay awake long enough to post, and one of these days, you might be able to brush your teeth without fear of falling on the floor in exhaustion… but you doubt it. In the meantime, late night blogging has its benefits, and one of those benefits is incoherence.

But maybe you will look back on this post after the MBA and you will remember that this lack of coherence is what has so far characterized your MBA – and that might be the most telling and accurate revelation of them all.

^_^

Runner's High... and News!

This was the first Friday in a long time that you stayed in. You had work to do, and you had the foresight and strength to do it to the best of your ability. The Managerial Economics site is now completely updated; there is an entire weekend for your students to peruse the blog if they have last minute conceptual questions. You have done your job to the best of your ability, and that is something you are happy about. The product itself is worth seeing, and you encourage those interested to click on the link at the top of the page.

You ran again today; this was the first day you were really looking forward to it. You are happy now, probably because you are starting to get addicted to endorphins, much as you were addicted to chocolate during your 9 month cruise to the Persian Gulf and the coast of Mogadishu. You have not thought about your cruise in some time. It feels like it happened to someone else.

In the real world, the Managerial Economics midterm is Tuesday; it’s the new intake’s first ever midterm. What a start to MBS; Managerial Economics is traditionally a class that has extremely low test scores; you think your class scored an average of around 60% for that first midterm. This would not be a huge confidence boost for new students.

It would, however, show the beauty of Melbourne Business School’s mean-based scoring, which you still believe is eminently fair. It goes like this – MBS’ average grade is a 75, no matter what the scores are. For Economics, people’s grades will likely be scaled up, for Data and Decisions, they will likely be scaled down. But either way, variations will be smoothed, high and low test scores will be corrected for.

And! You have some news.

Graduate Degree just came out with their 100 Best B-school blogs, and your blog is on it. The one-sentence summary?

"This ex-military man is earning his MBA in Australia and blogs about his experiences of school and life down under."

You are not sure if the list appears in rank order, but if it does, your blog is listed as the 4th best ‘MBA [blog] outside America.’ This is actually how they are segmented; US blogs versus those non-American ones. As an American, you are an outsider. But at least you are thought of an ex-military man. Maybe blogging has made you into this person; maybe you are more manly because you are spending your Friday night not only working, but writing about it. That would be good news.

You are not sure how you feel about your blog’s ranking. Of course it too is good news… but you have been busy these days, living your life and neglecting your blog. If your blog was your pet, it would have run away this last month; if it were a child, well, it would be with social services by now.

But if your blog is currently the 4th best in the non-US world, imagine what it would be if you dedicated yourself to it! And so you are confused. If you can make the fourth best worldwide B-school blog after months of neglect, maybe you should be a blog writer instead of a business school student… you could even play Guitar Hero for money, as long as you stay away from the guitar and stick to the drums.

Anyway.

The list is here, you recommend your readers take a look if they are currently thinking about getting an MBA. As it just so happens, every single one of your favorite B-school blogs made the top 100. Pretty neat.

^_^

P.S. Good luck on the econ midterm!

marathon training

Among other things, you are currently training for a marathon.

This is misleading, perhaps. These ‘other things’ you are referring to threaten to swallow up your life; this TA thing and this internship thing and this Business school thing; all things are individually major enough that they should require your full attention, but instead, they are all getting the short end of the straw.

There are many short ends of the straw, these days. There is simply too much to do and not enough time. But that is the way of things, and it will be this way for the rest of your life, or so you hope. Busy-ness is, after all, the natural state, even if it is, well, busy.

In the meantime, you decided to train for the Melbourne marathon, which takes place in October. October 11, to be exact. Just over 6 months away.

6 months seemed like such a long way away. Long enough that any training program would start slowly… maybe by the second or third month, you’d start running distances that might make your body ache. But that first month… that first month was supposed to be a time for mental respite, a time to get your mind into shape without really pushing your body.

How wrong you were. Or maybe you were right; by the time you started your training, you were already a month behind. Those insane enough to spend six months training for a marathon are outnumbered by those insane enough to spend seven months training for a marathon, and that is who the schedules are built for. And the schedules themselves are no walks in the park; yesterday you ran 9.8K, which is about the longest run you do with some regularity. In just three weeks, this 10K run will feel extremely short.

Because, this is just the beginning. Your Sunday runs will get longer… and longer… and longer. For the next six months.

There are advantages to this. For one thing, you have more energy. It is paradoxical; after running and running and running, common sense would tell you that all of your energy should be gone. But perhaps running is like managerial economics; in some cases, common sense must be rewritten to fit the rules of the game.

The disadvantage, so far, is that you are sleeping much harder than you have ever slept before. To say you are a log would not really be true; to say you are awake as you type this would not really be true either. The thoughts flowing through your fingers and into the keyboard are sluggish; the molasses of the day is making your eyes sticky.

Before you sleep, you rewrite common sense.

You think you spend more energy during the day because your body is actually keeping more in ready reserve. After all, at any time, without warning, water, or food, your body might be called on for a 60 minute run. As a result, the intensity of your waking hours has gone up considerably, but when those intense periods are gone, then… then you get sleepy.

And you sleep. Hard.

^_^

Working

You have been busy. Very busy. And as so often happens, the busier you are, the less time you spend reflecting. It is a sad commentary that this is the way of things; when life is at its most hectic, it is the most interesting, and this is precisely when you do not write. Not only do you not write, you also do not take the time to realize how fortunate you are that your life is exciting. In truth, you are starting to burn out again, and in truth, that is not an excuse. There is always time to step back and reminisce about the Big Picture.

You have not watched The Hour recently. You had an hour of free time a few days ago… but for some reason The Hour’s full episodes are no longer available on the internet. This is making you sad. In response to this, you pulled out your guitar and started teaching yourself Dare You to Move (Switchfoot) and this has made you happy, at least for a time. The song is not actually that difficult to play; at least, it is one of those songs that looks and sounds much harder to play than it actually is.

Strangely enough, some of the unique chords in that song are the same ones you wrote in your first ever original song, back in 2003, when you had just finished your undergrad. This is somewhat shocking, and implies a few things that may or may not actually be true. Namely, did you actually have enough talent to be an internationally-known rock star, or at least, an internationally-known songwriter?

You will never know. But if you took the time to find out, you may have never found out if you would succeed in Business School and beyond. This not knowing is threatening to drive you crazy.

You do know a few things, though. According to Guitar Hero, you are a flawless singer, a drummer who is 85% of perfection, and so bad at guitar that you do not have the right to finish even the most basic song. Perhaps Guitar Hero is right, and you should have been playing drums all this time. But you do not believe this. You believe Guitar Hero is wrong, wrong, wrong, it does not know anything. You are not sure of your own knowledge… but after much deliberation, you know at least one thing, with a certainty you did not have two weeks ago.

You know what you would like to do for the summer. Winter, rather. The three month period between May and August. What you would like to do will enable you to complete your personal and professional goals.

Of course there is some uncertainty in your chosen career path. But in land of MBA careers, of interviews and deadlines and every single job application and interview potentially changing the course of your entire life… in this world, you know in what direction you would like to go. And you know how to maximize your chances of getting there.

You have chosen your path. Now it is time to do your best and see if it is enough to get you to your chosen destination.

^_^