Re-Entry's a Bitch

It's been almost a week since I returned from my trip to China with the class. Aside from the usual battles upon returning (re-acclimation to the time zone, food, and hectic pace of family life), I've been increasingly unsettled about things that, until this morning, had baffled me. It has to be more than sleep deprivation, I told myself, and this morning in the shower (where so many insights dwell), I finally received the clarity I had been seeking.

First off, it's lousy being back. Sure, I complained last week how much I wanted to get home, how tired I was of eating dim sum and not being able to drink the tap water, and how I was weary of living out of a suitcase. But it was still travel, and I am a traveler at heart. Now that I'm back home, the only thing I want to do is whisk my family back to all the great places I visited (OK, maybe not Guangzhou unless it's after the rainy season) and show them all the amazing things I saw. This feeling is made all the more intense by the fact that almost half my class is still in Asia on many exciting adventures, and every day I see their photos posted to Facebook and other sites, and I think to myself, "I should have extended too." Even though I'm sure that, had I done so, I would be complaining now about the heat or about having to lug 50 pounds of formalwear into the heart of China or Thailand. It's an odd feeling, this schism that has occurred in our class with half of us back home and already complaining about the routines of work life and with the other half of our class still posting pictures from paradise. Eventually they will come home, I keep telling myself, though their photos still look pretty darn spectacular. Another time.

Second, so much mental energy was invested in simply surviving until China-- for almost 20 months, this is what many of us have held up as the mile marker during the darkest times. "If I can just make it to China," many of us have told ourselves, "it will be worth it." Now not only have we made it to China, we've come back. What next? What are we supposed to use as motivation now?

This second point feeds into the third: this wild, crazy, maddening, mind-expanding, wonderful journey of graduate education is rapidly coming to an end. We have just one more class together, April 24, and even that isn't a typical class day because it will consist solely of team presentations. Sometimes I feel like this whole experience went from 100 miles per hour to zero in the space of a few days. Nobody told me it was going to decelerate so quickly. I've written here before about the nagging fears of not having the forced discipline of team projects or looming class deadlines to keep me focused; now I wonder if I've really changed enough of the dusty synapses in my brain to really sustain anything close to my current level of productivity. And what about all the people in class? Part of the magic of this program has been learning from the diverse experiences of so many smart people. In my daily business routine, I don't encounter anywhere close to this diversity of people (though I am fortunate to work with extremely smart people)-- what to do upon departing the company of so many new friends and classmates? We talk about reunions but time will tell how much of that actually transpires. Personally, I hope we do continue to meet at the Corner Bar or some similarly grand locale.

Lastly, I am haunted by all the opportunity I sensed two weeks ago and which I can even now sense fading into the routine of everyday work life. Many of my classmates enjoyed their visit to Asia, still others couldn't wait to get home, and I looked at everything there as a potential job opportunity. "I want to move my family to this country and live here-- how can I make that happen?" was my frame of reference for everything I saw and experienced. That's putting a lot of pressure on yourself, and now that I'm home and have told all my fantastic stories to my family, I think they are ready to move today. Back in the States, though, I'm struggling to keep up my connections and find the time to do new research (jobs, benefits, apartments, cities, expat options, etc.).

All of this will sort itself out, I know. Perhaps what I need to set about doing once I walk across that graduation stage is to attack the expat relocation opportunity with the same rigor as I gave to my studies. If I can do that, we may yet get to live out some of the dreams I saw as possibilities last week. The good thing, at least, is that I have all those places in my mind now as possibilities.

Think You Know China?

So you think you know China? Here are just some of the many amazing facts I've noted this week during our visit to Shanghai.


There are about one hundred country-level international technology parks in China. There are 1,000 additional technology parks in the Country that are at the provincial level.

China is the #1 snack and beverage market in the world.

China is the #3 blog market in the world.

China has 738 million mobile subscribers (55% country penetration), while the U.S has just 234 million.

China has 298 million Internet users, while the U.S. has just 225 million.

There are 100 million online gamers in China, and 75% spend more than three hours per day online.

There are 350 million instant message users in China, almost none of which use Western IM services (China has its own service, called QQ).

Chinese issue 700 million Internet search queries per day, and the Chinese search market is growing at 70% CAGR.

350 million people come from single-child families (due to the country's one-child policy, introduced in 1978). These children have been raised with the best of everything and have typically had focused care from four adults (two parents and two grandparents). Soon these single children will be having their own single-child families. This is what makes the China market different from any market in the world.

Since they are single children, Chinese kids have made 50% of their friends online.

Even the smaller cities in China have populations of 3-5 million people each.

Best Buy China is able to have a new private-label product designed, manufactured, and on store shelves in just three weeks.

Local automakers in China are still growing at 14% annually, serving just the China market.

A site that was farmland five years ago now hosts a technology park with 4,000 companies and 12,000 employees. Space will open in 2012 for another sixty thousand employees.

70-80% of companies in Shanghai are now focused primarily on R&D and sales to the internal Chinese market, not on exports.

Last year, U.S. ports were not able to keep up with materials and goods being shipped from Shanghai. Goods often needed to be re-routed through Canada and then shipped by train or truck back into the U.S.

The Shanghai region, about the size of Montana, has 100 million residents (inclduing 2.5 million university students).

Ten years ago, China had just 10 MBA programs. Today there are over 100 MBA programs, and 20,000 MBA's graduate in China every year.

Most Chinese multinational companies now say their primary competition is internal Chinese start-up companies, not Western firms.

Welcome to the Future

Greetings from Shanghai, China. Hard to believe that all the classes, homework, and pressure has led up to this moment. I'm sitting in the St. Regis Hotel overlooking the city skyline (including the tallest building in the world), and we depart early tomorrow morning for the next leg on our journey: Guangzhou. We left Minneapolis five days ago and so much has changed in that time. I didn't bring a PC with me (hard to believe, I know) so I haven't been able to get much access to a decent computer until tonight (having borrowed the netbook of my classmate Michael), so this is likely to be a long post.

Where to begin? Let's start with sheer scope. There are 22 million people in this city-- that's almost 10% of the entire population of the U.S. So think about how to house, transport, feed, and entertain all those people-- that will give you some sense of the infrastructure that exists here. But it doesn't really scratch the surface in terms of what China means to the rest of the world. I came here with many preconceptions, formed in part from negative impressions from last year's Olympic Games and also from my more recent (and disappointing) work with my Chinese cohort as part of our virtual team project. So I didn't really expect to be blown away by this city in less than a day. Right away, very little was as I'd imagined. There is so much progress here, and the spirit of the people is very akin to the U.S. spirit of colonial or pioneer days. The people here simply believe that anything is possible, and more and more of them are able to see those types of changes in their everyday life. Buildings sprout up literally overnight, and it's obvious that the landscape of this city is changing by the day. They are working now to get ready for the Expo 2010 international event with a dizzying amount of road and other infrastructure construction. And because all of it is funded by the government, you just know it will happen and be ready to dazzle the world when the Expo opens next year. I have to laugh at this unabashed forward push when we are debating so much over marginal infrastructure investments in the U.S. It would take decades to accomplish what is already happening in Shanghai, and that has profound implications.

I came here believing China was the manufacturing center for the world, working harder and cheaper than anyone else to execute on American orders. In the company meetings we've had over the last few days, I now see that Chinese companies are exporting not only products, but also innovation, back to the U.S. (innovation that China owns and which is also being sent to countries other than the U.S.). I came here believing China was getting hit by the global economic downturn; I now see that orders are already ramping back up for many Chinese firms, due in no small part to the fact that the economy inside China is still growing. I came here believing China's core competency was exporting things to U.S. companies; this week I have seen companies growing by leaps and bounds just to meet internal Chinese market demand. Soon they won't even need U.S. orders to keep their businesses growing. I came here believing Chinese companies worked to help U.S. companies maintain their competitive edge; I have seen this week how Chinese companies now consider internal Chinese start-ups to be more of a threat to their business than multinationals. I came here believing the Chinese government made everything happen in Chinese industry, that Chinese industry in essence had no life apart from government support. This week I have heard stories about private ventures cropping up everywhere (solar-powered water heaters being one of them) as models that the Chinese government is now analyzing to see how to better execute in the future.

I have seen entire cities where there was only farmland 15 years ago. I have gone to the top of the tallest building in the world, looked across the street and seen what was formerly the tallest building in the world, and looked the other way across the street and seen what will soon become the new tallest building in the world. I have ridden the fastest train in the world, a maglev train that covers 30km in under eight minutes. I have visited a corporate office park where 4,000 high-tech companies have set up shop-- and where farmland dominated just five years ago. I have toured phase 2 of this office park with its 12,000 resident employees, man-made lakes and parks, and beautiful condos. And I have seen plans for phase 3 of this development, which will add houses, offices, parks, schools, shops, and railroad lines for another sixty thousand people.

And while I have experienced firsthand Shanghai, a city of 22 million people, I have also listened to a lecture on how best to ramp up manufacturing capacity in a remote Western Chinese city-- a city that itself has one hundred millionresidents.

This is China: so much bigger than you can imagine. Growing so much faster than you can imagine. Dealing with (and solving) challenges on a scale you cannot imagine. So much more innovative and leading edge than you can imagine. So much more embracing of change and of the future than you can imagine (and, dare I say so much more than even my country). So well-equipped to meet the challenges of tomorrow. So enabled by its central government (which isn't anywhere as draconian as you think) to execute on any initiative worthy of development (did I mention the country is designing its own aircraft and plans to manufacture 2,500 of them-- one of the largest aircraft manufacturing assemblies in human history?). So ready to surprise everyone who lives elsewhere and thinks they know China.

I've told people back home that I truly feel I have traveled into the future by coming here. I am seeing things this week that I only dreamed about prior, and I am seeing them on a scale that I never could even conceive of. Most surprising? The Chinese, justifiably proud of their achievement, talk about all of these things with a sense of certainty and acceptance to make you think they are as common as the sun rising in the morning. I am simply blown away. Blown away, and also completely enticed.

Real-World

We leave for China in less than a week. While that's stressful in and of itself, I'm having an opportunity tonight to experience a fascinating real-world example of all we have been studying and discussing in our International Environment and virtual team project this semester. While the virtual team project was, in the end, a highly disappointing experience (more on that later), I'm learning tonight that I've cultivated quite a sensitivity to international team introductions.

As I type this entry, I'm sitting on a call with my sales colleagues from work based in the U.S. as they host their introductory conference call with our sales colleagues in China. These Chinese colleagues are responsible for the China side of the same customer the rest of us work with in the U.S. This call is our first meeting with them.

Perhaps not surprisingly, my U.S. colleagues began the call by launching right into a PowerPoint litany of the customer account as viewed from the U.S. side. They aren't even presenting any of the China-based information, nor have they given our Chinese counterparts the opportunity to even speak up on the call and share information about their side of the business.

As I'm learning, this is what Americans do. I include myself in this characterization by the way. In the spirit of education and partnership (and always with the best of intentions), we tend to speak first and ask questions later. The irony of this particular situation is that I will be on the ground in this very location in less than a week-- I'm already arranging face-to-face meetings with the colleagues on the other end of the conference bridge. It will be fascinating once I'm on the ground in Shanghai to get more perspective on their side of the discussion, and to see where we can take this partnership moving forward.

This is one of the clearest examples of classroom learning applied to real-world scenarios I've yet seen, and it's also great to realize that I have indeed learned quite a bit in this program. Soon, the chance to put it to use!

Wolves at the Door

It has been interesting, to say the least, to be in business school at the very time America's entire economy and financial industry have been collapsing. Last year the pundits (and even many very smart people in Washington and New York) said it wouldn't be that bad. Then, after it WAS that bad, they said it wouldn't get worse. Then it got worse. A lot worse. To the point where I have come to seriously doubt the judgment of even the smartest leaders watching over our economy. After being in an environment where we actually discuss intricacies of finance and can see the gaping holes in what should have been sound logic, I'm trying to stop myself from thinking this tailspin we're in right now won't have a bottom until every one of us loses our jobs and our homes. Now that'll keep a fella up at night!

Now come the mass layoffs. Last week alone in this country, our economy lost over 100,000 jobs. I don't believe many of them will come back, and that is a stunning problem I don't know if we are even prepared to deal with as a society. My personal belief is that we have been riding high for 20 years or more on free and easy credit, becoming more and more distanced from what we can actually afford. This has given rise to glittering suburbs, large vacation homes, huge SUV's, and a level of conspicuous consumption unseen in U.S. history. Now we're all starting to learn a lot more about what we can afford, and we're finding we can't afford all that much. MBA's and non-MBA's are losing their jobs, and paradoxically the only/best cure is to do the one thing few of us can afford anymore: shop 'till we drop. When 2/3 of your country's GDP is based on consumer spending, and when those consumers can no longer spend, you're in big trouble. I've always considered our country's dependence on its shoppers to be perhaps our biggest weakness-- many of my better-educated friends called me crazy and pointed to sound statistics and rising index funds. Now many of those statisticians are re-evaluating their formulas and many of those index fund managers are either out of a job, or they're in jail.

It's a pretty crazy environment in which to be getting an advanced degree in business. Every other week, we file into a well-appointed classroom and are treated to catered food and thought-provoking lectures. All around us, the economy is falling apart, and it's come to the point where I wonder how many of my classmates will lose their jobs before we graduate. Since 50% of the people in my class have their program paid for by their employers (I do not), they are even more vulnerable.

We're supposed to be the leaders of tomorrow, all taking this step to improve our prospects for future wealth and success. That doesn't mean we're all not still scared as hell, though.

What Makes a Student?

I've been thinking about what makes a student, or what makes an educational experience. Going into this program, I thought graduate school would be different from college in terms of how I felt about the experience or how I saw myself day-to-day. Lately, though, I find myself (and many of my classmates) reacting, acting, and behaving in much the same way I remember from college. This has come as a surprise to me, so I'm thinking about some of the circumstances that might have come together to create this situation.

Here's some of what I've come up with thus far:

1. School (in terms of a long-term program in which you're enrolled) is really a solitary endeavor, whether it be grad school or college, because at the end of the day it's really you vs. the learning objective. Friends and family can support you (indeed, you couldn't "do" school without their support) but it all comes down to YOU: your performance on exams, your reading and retention, your commitment and participation.
2. Whether grad school or college, it's still "you vs. the professor" and "you wrestling with the big ideas." It's been funny how my classmates in this program (in our 30s and 40s) still take on much of the same mannerisms and behavior as college students. We complain about workload, we commiserate about assignments, we debate the gritty details of each professor's approach to teaching, we complain about grades, we meet at the Corner Bar after class, and we're always really tired. Our clothes may be fancier than those we wore in college, and many of us may have since gotten married and have families of our own, but deep down we're still students.
3. The material is challenging. Learning should push us beyond our comfort zones, and anyone who attended a decent college (or who's attending a decent grad program such as ours) will find their horizons expanded. I've found that this is much more difficult to achieve in "everyday life" when working in the corporate environment.
4. The "cohort" structure of this program breeds much the same closeness and shared triumph over adversity as college did. Only recently have I realized that my MBA experience would be completely different (and much less memorable or cohesive) if I wasn't experiencing it in a cohort format. I fully expect to walk out of this program, as I walked out of college, with lifelong friends. I don't know if that would have happened in the full-time or part-time MBA program, and it has made this experience much more worthwhile.
5. The diversity of our class forces each of to see things from the perspective of another. This just doesn't happen much in the business world-- too often we end up surrounded by people who are too much like us. In college, as in this MBA program, that hasn't been a problem. Who knew I'd end up debating (and loving the dialogue) with a stock trader who refused to wear shoes to MBA class? I never would have met that person in my "normal" life, and looking back, I've learned a lot from many of my classmates (beyond what's in the syllabus).

Hopefully I'll have more to add to this list as time goes on, but there you have it for now.

Another Thing I'm Gonna Miss

Yeah, it looks like it's coming down to me starting to think about all the parts of this MBA program I'm going to miss. Class has been pretty slow lately, so what else do I have to think about?

It's 9:15pm on a Saturday night, and if you're an MBA student like me, that means you're somewhere alone in your house doing homework! Your spouse, friends, and family are either sleeping, watching a cool movie you're never gonna see, or out hanging with people you once saw more than annually or only on Facebook, and here you sit, pouring through some intractable HBR case or tweaking some swanky PowerPoint presentation. I'm doing the latter.

When this is all over, I know I'm going to go back to normal Saturday nights, like any sane person would. That means I won't be doing what I'm doing now, namely drinking coffee way too late in the evening and listening to The Jazz Image on Minnesota Public Radio. The Jazz Image has long been one of my favorite programs on the radio, but in my normal life I'm usually never alone or around to listen to it. Usually I have a life. There have been exceptions in the past, like when I'm traveling or when I'm up way late at night painting a room in the house or something, but for the last 15 months I've been able to catch more episodes of The Jazz Image than ever before because of all the homework.

I'm gonna miss you when this is all over, my lovely little radio program.

Thinking Differently

I've already begun thinking about what I'll miss most about being in this program. Going into it last year, I knew one of the things I'd enjoy most was being in a classroom environment and having the opportunity once again to focus strictly on intellectual pursuits. Those who know me know I love being verbose and also that I'm all about the intellectual argument, and my expectation was fully proven out as I eased back into class. Even in the most unbearable of classes, I've still enjoyed being in the classroom environment with stimulating discussions, challenging reading materials and projects, and smart classmates.

Now, in my second year, I'm realizing there's a second benefit that I didn't anticipate, and it's one of the things I'm going to miss most. One of my biggest challenges in my workaday world is fighting to remain strategic in my work. This is why I always enjoy attending conferences and why I even enjoy traveling-- doing so gives me "downtime" away from the challenges of work to reflect and recharge. I find I'm actually always thinking about work, so the ability to do so in an environment of reflection allows me to develop new strategic ideas.

In class, thanks to the wireless network and my laptop, I find I'm able to think about work and craft e-mails that are more strategic than my typical missives. Maybe it's the inspiration I draw from lectures or class discussion, but I find I'm better able to advance my concerns and drive key initiatives by "working" during breaks while in class.

So now I wonder how I'll be able to replicate that same unique combination of inspiration and productivity after this program is over. Sounds like a good new business venture....

Getting Old

Today in my Venture Capital class, it occurred to me that I am truly starting to get old. The realization hit me in an instant as the professor was making a reference to mainframe computers. He asked if we were old enough to remember working with mainframes in the pre-PC era (I was). I found myself taking pride in identifying with the generation who would remember mainframes. Then it hit me: that's something an older person would do. Young people probably would take pride in not identifying with the mainframe generation, but here I was doing just the opposite. I think that may be the divide (not just for mainframes but for lots of things)!

What I Need

So after yesterday's release of stress and (gasp!) two nights of decent sleep in a row, I'm starting to feel like a normal human being again. I've always been the kind of person who needs a lot of sleep-- I'd pick sleep over just about anything else if given the choice. And sleep is precisely what has been training off the most lately. Either there's homework to do, the baby's up at 4am, or I stay up way too late playing Halo or something crazy like that, but in the morning the result is the same: sheer exhaustion. Coffee helps but caffeine only goes so far-- quickly I find I'm back to my original low level of concentration and I'm not really productive. But give me one or even two nights of decent sleep and it's amazing how quickly the horizon opens up for me-- I have perspective today I literally couldn't summon earlier in the week, and it's all because of that glorious sleep. Good to know.

Working Below the Line

For several weeks now (ever since school began looming large on my horizon at the tail end of summer) I've been on a downward spiral: more and more tired every day as I returned to my late-night homework schedule combined with the early-morning routine that comes from having a baby at home in addition to three very active school-age children.

"How did I do this last year?" I asked myself, unable to focus my eyes to read much beyond 11pm.

I think I've finally crossed the line, dipping below "zero" on the Cumulative Sleep Index, and that's a good thing. I'm remembering now that things really start picking up once I've exhausted all my stored-up energy and I begin, in a sense, running on fumes.

Once I reach terminal tiredness, tiredness itself falls away. I'm operating on just five hours' sleep last night and I'm feeling great. During the summer, any less than eight hours a night would leave me groggy the next day. Clearly I'm into a new zone right now. This is where I thrived in college, where I lived on something close to 3-4 hours of sleep a night with fantastic results.

Of course, I could just be delirious, like the man walking toward the oasis in the desert anticipating a long, tall drink of water.

It Gets Harder

I always wondered whether I was crazy to attempt this program at my particular stage in life (three kids including a baby, busy sales job, working spouse), but decided this was one of those "there's never a perfect time" kinds of things (putting it in the same classification as starting a relationship, falling in love, and having a baby). And I've always known that I'm the type of person who performs better the more he has to do (left to my own devices, I would easily squander days, weeks, months).

Overall, my hypotheses have been proven out: I have been more productive than at any other time in my life, and somehow I've managed to keep the other parts of my life together as well (no pets have died from neglect, laundry and dishes always get done, food on the table, etc.).

But now that the reality of the middle of the semester is setting in (on a timeline where midterms come just two weeks into the semester!), I'm struggling with a new challenge. Last week I learned that, due to a reorganization at my company, the number of accounts I cover has doubled. I was so good about my planning this year, I thought I had everything planned out and under control to a degree that would allow me to have a challenging but attainable year (remember, as a sales rep I get paid on my attainment). Now my account list has doubled, and these aren't small accounts either! So it's back to the planning table and I need to assess how my risk profile has been irreversibly altered with the past week's changes.

As I face two looming deadlines for midterms and the meeting invitations continue piling up in my inbox, I'm trying to keep the old maxim in mind: God doesn't give you more than you can handle. Or at least He's not supposed to! :-)

Emerging

I'm consistently amazed at how much more quickly everything moves when you're in a program like ours. We make friends faster, exams come up much faster, and time passes much much faster-- just about the only thing that doesn't move faster is the actual time spent in class.

I just got home from class and realized I've spent eight of the last eleven days in all-day sessions (that's 10-12 hours/day for those of you keeping track). Throw in a trip to Florida for work this week, a ton of reading, and two group projects already done, and it's amazing none of us have committed ourselves to the nearest padded cell.

One other thing I'm also remembering about this experience is how quickly we regain that stamina I spoke about last week (was it really just last week?). I was happy get most of my reading mojo back this week (hopefully along with some of the retention), and as long as the coffee holds up, I seem to at least be able to stay awake in class.

Nonetheless, it's pretty amazing that we already are getting our midterm exams and that we're almost halfway through our first round of two classes. Before we know it, finals will have passed, the semester will be over, and we'll be catapulted into our last semester together.

That was a good reminder to me today as I sat talking with classmates at lunch: although you can't imagine it now, this time will be over before we know it, so amidst the chaos, at least make an effort to savor the relationships, laughs, and even the humiliations (thank you, Advanced Financial Management!) that are part of this quick, strange, wonderful journey.

Know Thyself

How well do most people really know themselves? There are the typical personality or strengths tests to take, but I'm talking about knowing what kind of work will really produce a life of meaning.

Going into this program, I dreaded the thought of classes like Statistics and Accounting. OK, Accounting was pretty hellish, but the classes I enjoyed most from first year were Managerial Accounting and, yes, Statistics. That fact still surprises me. We had a full roster of more "touchy-feely" classes last year: classes like Organizational Behavior, Strategy, and Marketing, and while those were enjoyable, what stands out for me are the more analytical classes.

If you know me, you know that's pretty much the opposite of how I view myself. I'm an English major by training, though I'm also a bundle of contradictions. Growing up, I loved electronics and taking things apart to see how they worked; throw a computer into the mix and I was in heaven. I'm pretty sure my path to dot-com greatness was first averted by a spate of math teachers in high school sent by Satan himself; this is when I gravitated to the school newspaper (later to become managing editor) and it's also when I first read a work of literature (my parents had books, but it would be a stretch to say there was much reading going on in our house growing up).

All of this led to a liberal arts degree, though I was almost a joint English and Environmental Science major. And looking back to my college experience, I think I enjoyed my junior year class in Geology more than any other class. Again, totally out of the realm of what I assumed to be my "style". The professor even approached me and asked if I'd consider changing my major to Geology, so there may also be a lost opportunity of Geologic Greatness in my past as well.

And here we are, circa 2008. I work in sales which is a lot more about art than science, I've managed magazine publishing endeavors, worked in nonprofit fundraising, and explored the higher education market as well.

More and more, I'm wondering how much opportunity I'm not noticing in both my personal and professional life because of my self-notion as someone who doesn't (or shouldn't) be drawn to topics like Statistics. Yet I am. Could there be a little patch of untapped Statistical Greatness in my future?

For the rest of this academic year, I'm going to try viewing my tastes and attractions in a slightly different light.

Finance, anyone? Coming from an Engligh major, that's pretty radical talk.

Learning

As we return to class and as the familiar old anxiety starts to return (Did I read everything? Am I behind? Did the other group complete their case yet?), I realized something today about how I learn.

Learning, for me at least, only (or best) seems to take place when I can suspend the nay-saying voices in my head that shout out, "Who do you think you are, taking a finance class? You're an English major, pal!"

As I learned last year, it takes conscious effort for me to keep those voices at bay, but when I can, what arises in the space between "what I know" and "what I'm being exposed to" can indeed be called learning.

My Tired Self

Oh, have I gotten sloppy over the summer. I had suspicions all along, but they have only been confirmed over the last few days as I've been up nights working until 12am or 1. This is the start of our fiscal year at work, and the planning work is taking up so much more time than expected-- it feels like I'm back in class, but class hasn't even begun! Maybe this is my "on deck" moment for class, getting me sufficiently tired and conditioned for the months of solitary late-night endeavor that surely lie ahead. Regardless, I can tell it's time to start brewing a second pot of coffee each morning!

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Has it really been almost two months since I posted to this blog? Isn't that how most blogs go? ("omigod has that much time really passed?")

In fact it has been a whirlwind summer, most of it spent blissfully unaware of things like weighted average cost of capital, the "four P's", and balance sheets. We just returned from a weeklong trip with the kids to Wisconsin and Illinois, and we've had fun events, kids camps, sleepovers, movie nights, and all the other fun things that make a summer a summer.

At the same time, as I think I hinted at in my last post, I have really been missing the rigor, intellectual engagement, and quite honestly the sheer insanity of being in school while also juggling (or at least trying to) all these other aspects of my life. So sitting here at my computer, perched on the edge of summer, I can also say I am ready and eager to resume the madness. Does that make me somehow mad myself? Very likely so.

One of my most vivid memories of last year was at the September 2007 residency, at an executive center just outside Minneapolis, where we all had gathered after two weeks in class to really dig in. We were still getting to know each other then, and I remember looking upon the second year students with a kind of awe and reverence. They were learned. They were experienced. They had survived. What would it feel like to be in their shoes? I wondered.

Well, now I am in their shoes. Somewhere out there are 60-75 nervous adults like me, all with at least seven years' work experience, getting ready to head into a classroom environment that scares the hell out of them, even if they are already experienced and even if they already have their PhD. Because no matter how old or experienced you are, no matter how many times you've rounded the ol' academic bend, walking into a new program still makes you a little sick to your stomach.

In just under four weeks' time, we (the now-proud second years) will greet these scared newbies, and they will wonder what it feels like to be in our shoes. I can tell you it feels nice to know (or at least to believe) that the worst of it is behind us, that second year won't be as difficult as the first. And I can say at least it feels good to know something about what the bone-crushing rhythm of it all will be like-- if you know the process will crush your bones, at least you can put on shoulder pads, right?

All in all, I am very excited to see my classmates (indeed, my friends) again, to pick up the books and fire up the financial calculator, to gather at obscene hours in the morning every other Friday and Saturday, eat little sandwiches and drink Coke Zero, and be pushed beyond my limits.

Because, truth be told, that's really the only place it's any fun to hang out anyway.

Don't Mind Me, I'm Just Insane

Here I am, almost two months into our 4-month hiatus from MBA class, and clearly I'm starting to come off the rails. How do I know this? Let me share just two examples.

First, I've been reading (and thoroughly enjoying) Alan Greenspan's book, The Age of Turbulence. Who knew economic history could be so eminently readable? So two of the people Greenspan respects most (as he describes in the book) are John Maynard Keynes and Adam Smith. As I'm wrapping up Greenspan's book, I ordered both The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money and The Wealth of Nations and have those lined up to read next. The Wealth of Nations (all 1,200 pages) as light summer reading? That's just crazy.

Second, I caught myself feeling something akin to "missing school" earlier this week. The feeling caught me by surprise: why in the world would anyone in their right mind miss something as demanding and crazy as MBA class? I realized that my overall productivity (in life) was so much higher when I was running on the caffeine-and-stress-infused pressure of class, and that's what I had started to miss. On an average day lately, I can get my work done and also fit in some pleasure reading, but it's nowhere as productive as I experienced at the peak of the MBA madness earlier in the year. While I'm not yet ready to return to class, I will say that I do miss the intensity and the overall beneficial effects it had on other areas of my life.

So there you have it, I'm spending my summer in a questionable mental state. How's things with you?

Oh, So THAT'S What Personal Reading Is Like

With all my free time in the evenings this summer, I've begun reading a stack of books-- books I picked because they looked interesting. Many have been sitting on shelves for months while I toiled away at classwork-- being able to dive into them now on my own time seems like a gift.

I'm reading Alan Greenspan's book, The Age of Turbulence, and really enjoying it. Mostly, I'm amazed at my ability to devour whole chapters without my mind wandering-- normally I find it difficult to remain focused on reading no matter the subject. After digesting two Accounting textbooks and one Statistics textbook, maybe Greenspan seems like a sweet dessert, though I do also have to wonder about my sanity when I find books on economics and finance to be this compelling (clearly, my MBA work has already altered my consciousness).

Sleeping Efficiently

I just saw an article in WIRED magazine today that discussed how you could train your mind to maximize your awake time and alertness and get just two hours' sleep each day. How? By training your mind to quickly go into REM sleep and take one 20-minute nap every four hours. People who have done this report better quality sleep than those of us who take the normal path, and they get 22 hours of awake time every day on top of it.

Why mention this here? One of the things I noticed while in the thick of first semester was that I was developing (or re-developing) the ability to catnap. This was one of the things that saved me in college and allowed me to operate on about 3-4 hours per day (night) of sleep-- something that seems totally unimaginable today. Looking back, though, I took naps almost every day (during breaks from class) and I got very good at napping. During the semester just passed, I'd started taking a quick 20-30 minute nap after dinner and after putting the kids to bed, and found that I started dreaming almost as soon as I closed my eyes. REM sleep? Maybe. But it sure made a difference. Now I'm curious-- I'll have to experiment a bit more with this during second semester and see if I can hone my sleeping skills even further.