Orientation; Check! Week 1; Check!

Alright; so it has been a while, but all is well.

Jump Start:
Jump Start is the pre-orientation Finance/Accounting/Excel classes that are meant to help provide us with a 'jump start' before real classes start. While, that all may be true (and I did learn/relearn some good stuff), the real benefit is meeting everyone! It was a great time to get out there and get to know as many of my new classmates before classes meet and we are all too busy to do much. There was a social event every night hosted/planned for us by some of the 2nd year students and, oh yeah, there was class during the day. I highly recommend going to this if you're heading to Kelley (or the 'math camp' type of thing that almost every other top school has too). It's great fun and it really does give you a leg up (a jump start) once classes kick off.

Orientation:
Wow! I used to be a part of the orientation program at Purdue (Boiler Gold Rush!); which was a TON of fun and a TON of work and it lasted for about 5-6 days. The orientation for us b-schoolers was virtually 2-weeks long...I don't even want to know what all went into this. It started out with some diversity/cultural difference trainings; we've all been through it before (and will again), but it is what it is; nothing more and nothing less. Then we went off to Bradford woods for a half-day team building exercise. This was actually quite fun and culminated in building a car (made from a plastic cup; straws, lifesavers, and a paper cup). Wednesday began with some class-like discussion about a case we had to read ahead of time to understand how classes will be going forward and the start of our case competition. The case was about Timberland's attempt to valuate their Social Responsibility expenditures (donations/benefit hours/etc.) Quite fun, but due (partially) to some bad advice we didn't do as hot as we'd have liked. Live and learn I guess! So, next time it is on! After that we then had a lot of meetings about the various clubs and organizations and opportunities that we will have to be picking/running for in the coming weeks. There was a lot of talk about Ethics and the Kelley Code [of conduct] and that sort of thing. We were inducted into the MBA class with a nice reception that followed some fun speakers (an alumnus and the Dean). Lastly (and likely most importantly), we were given a LOT of homework near the end of orientation. We had about 200 pages of reading to do before the first days of class (or at least if felt that way). I had a lot of fun but am glad to be in class now.

Week #1:
As mentioned, there was a lot of reading for this first week. We had to prepare (read; run numbers; discuss; answer questions about) 5 different cases last week (3 for Econ alone!). I love this stuff! It's fun to get competing ideas out there about what's happening in a given situation for a given company or industry. We are also learning a lot about the various tools (that even I did know existed) in Excel. I'm glad the week is over, but I've got to get back to the books! I have another 50-75 pages to read for tomorrow and some pivot tables to play with!

Oh the joy of being in b-school!