First Day of School

So I know it seems like I've had 3 first days of school, but I think today was the official first day. Then again, maybe Monday will be, since that's the first day of actual classes. It's all very confusing. We've had a lot of "Welcome Receptions" too, with lots of juice and snacks. Very strange. We're having yet another one tomorrow night, in fact!

Anyway, today we all had to wear full-on business attire to school. And tomorrow we have to do it again! I think they wanted us to act (and look) professional for a change, and we also had to take photos today for the school yearbook and the online recruiting service thing. So this morning got off to an awesome start as I hiked the 6 long uphill blocks to the bus stop in my heels and business suit. Fortunately I had stashed some sneakers in my bag, and I put those babies on while I was riding the bus. It made the 2nd hike (from the bus stop to the school) slightly more bearable and all the other girls who didn't plan ahead were jealous.

We started off in the auditorium at 10am (though they told us to arrive at 9:30 - awesome) with a welcome from one of the professors. Then we had a talk from another professor, Paddy Miller, about "The Problem of Management." Paddy Miller is hilarious and I wish he could talk to us about the problem of management every morning. After that, we had a presentation from the Associate Dean of the MBA Program, who told us we were going to have to study, study, study, and that the next 19 months will fly by. After that, another presentation, this time from the Associate Exec Director of the MBA Program, who told us similar stuff, but with some extra info about Student Affairs and how cool we are as a class. (That's what I got out of it, anyway.)

Then it was finally time for lunch, and our first meeting with our teams. Within each section (I'm in A, and there are 2 other sections), we are again divided into teams of 8 to 10 people. I'm in team A-6, and I am in one of very few teams with more than one female. I knew almost all of my team members already (one is my neighbor, another is in my Spanish group) but it was nice to sit down and chat with the people I'll be seeing every morning (and then some) every day of my first year. I will be meeting my team every morning at 8:15 to discuss the case studies we read the previous night to prepare for the upcoming day of classes. Tomorrow morning is our first official meeting. Each team also has a faculty advisor, but ours is unfortunately teaching in Madrid this week, so we had a stand-in and we'll meet our actual advisor next week.

After lunch, we had two more sessions. One hour regarding the administrative and academic policies of IESE, and the other giving background on the Case Study Method, which is how we will be doing all of our learning. At 4:30, the photographs started. As a person whose last name starts with 'S,' it seems I'll often get the Shaft in many regards. For instance, today I was in the last group to be photographed, so I had to wait until 6pm. I spent the time beforehand in the library preparing our first case, about a company deciding where to open a new manufacturing plant in the Midwest. These are exciting times.

Now I'm finally home and I have to finish preparing the case for tomorrow and also review some accounting and math stuff to prepare for next week. There is a BOW event tonight, but it starts at midnight so I'm currently not planning to go. We have a very long day ahead of us tomorrow.

To top everything off, Casey went back to New York today. In fact, he's on the plane to JFK as I write this. It's too bad he couldn't stay through the weekend as planned, because we were hoping to go to Menorca and enjoy my last weekend of freedom, but fortunately he has already booked his return ticket for the end of October, when we have a long holiday weekend. It was so nice to have him here, but I felt badly that I was in school most of the time and didn't get to see him as much as I would've liked. That's life at business school, I guess.