TRANSitioning (Owen Student Blogger)

Right now I'm sitting here in the basement of Sage hall watching CNN and messing around on Facebook before I have to go to my Finance study group -> Student Association Elections -> Silicon Valley Trek Info session.  The reason that I write this post today is because when I was at the Reaching Out Conference about a month ago, I was sitting at the lunch table with some folks from HBS, Columbia, Owen, Johnson (a classmate) and some other schools.  Also around the table were some Google reps.

I remember vividly a question that someone from HBS asked - "Does anyone have anyone who is Trans at their schools?"  99% of us said no and then there was one person Dani - who said that he was transitioning from Male to Female.  I don't think the topic was out of the ordinary for anyone at the table, but I know that at least for me it was not.  What's more brave is that Dani is going through the process mentally & soon to be physically while IN business school.  What surprised me though was the fact that Dani is blogging through the process as an Owen (B-school @ Vanderbilt) blogger!  Naturally, as a fellow blogger I found this to be incredible!

Dani sent an email to the Class of 2012 (and I believe 2013) at Owen to let them know the transition that would be made.  Can you imagine what that must have been like?  As I'm writing this, Dani has made three posts thus far and you can feel the emotion as you read.

Well... If anyone wants to follow Dani's blog you can find it here:  Queering the MBA

Finance = Another Language

No really... it is really all Greek to me!  This is a formula that sums up (funny because it is really a summation) of my Finance quiz that I took this morning at 7:45am!

From the post-mortem I can tell you what this means.  Last night before the quiz I thought I had it under control.  Today on the quiz I made dumb mistakes.  Good thing about making a lot of mistakes on my quizzes is that I'm not aware of the mistakes for the final!  T-33 days until the core is OVER!

High-Tech Trek: Boston

I just wanted to tell you all about the week that I had last week!  We only had two days of classes but it was still one of the busiest weeks that I've had to date here at Johnson!  It's funny when you are a prospective and you hear "yeah we only have classes three days a week" and you immediately think "oh you must have a lot of free time then?"  Nope Nope... that's definitely NOT the case!  Because of the great timing of the Boston Trek, some of us decided to stay over another night and go to the Cyberposium being held at HBS on Saturday.  So my experience will contain information from that as well, but for all prospectives out there, just know that this was not part of the trek.

So here goes my week (I'll add pictures from the Boston Trek and Cyberposium when I aggregate them all from my classmates)

Monday - October 31st
7:50am - 8:20am - Strategy Quiz
8:40am - 9:55am - Statistics Class
10:10am - 11:25am - Finance Class
11:55am - 1:10pm - Strategy Class
2:00pm - 3:00pm - Met with a prospective student (blog reader) in the Atrium
4:00pm - 4:30pm - Met with some classmates who were participating in Battle of The Brands
6:00pm - 7:30pm - High-Tech Club Social at Statler Hotel
7:30pm - 9:00pm - Finance Review Session

Tuesday - November 1st

7:50am - 8:20am - Finance Quiz

8:40am - 9:55am - Statistics Class

10:10am - 11:25am - Finance Class

11:55am - 1:10pm - Strategy Class

3:15pm - 3:45pm - Meet with classmate to discuss Tech recruiting strategies

6:15pm - 7:45pm - Hewlett Packard Corporate Briefing

Wednesday - November 2nd - "Day Off"

10:30am - 11:00am - Career Discussion with the Career Management Center

11:00am - 12:00pm - Core Group Feedback Session

12:00pm - 12:30pm - Informational Call with a Coast Company

1:00pm - 3:00pm - Core group meeting to complete Statistics Assignment

6:00pm - 6:45pm - High-Tech Club Boston Trek prep meeting

7:30pm - 9:30pm - Student Council internal elections!  (I was voted to be Technology Chair)

10:30pm - 1:00am - Student Council celebration at Level B (Dance club in Ithaca)

Thursday - November 2nd - "Boston Trek" - Day 1

2:00am - 4:00am - Did laundry and packed for the High Tech Club Boston Trek

6:00am - 12:30pm - Drove to Boston with some classmates to visit the first company - EMC

12:30pm - 2:30pm - EMC company visit

3:15pm - 5:30pm - Red Hat company visit

7:30pm - 12:00am - Networking dinner with Johnson alums and classmates

Friday - November 3rd - "Boston Trek" - Day 2

9:30am - 10:30am - Microsoft company visit

11:00am - 12:00pm - Liberty Mutual company visit with Johnson alumni Panel

12:00pm - 2:00pm - Lunch

3:00pm - 5:30pm - HubSpot company visit

________________Official End of Boston Trek___________________

5:30pm - 6:30pm - Walk around aimlessly in Cambridge looking for our parking garage

7:00 pm - Check into new hotel

7:00pm - 7:30pm - Work on resume in hotel

7:30pm - 8:15pm - Prepare for dinner at Legal Seafood with a friend I met at the Reaching Out Conference who goes to HBS.

8:15pm - 8:30pm - hop in cab and go to Legal Seafoods

8:30pm - 8:45pm - Realized that we were at Legal Seafoods in Kendall Park? and not Copley Place

8:45pm - 9:00pm - took a cab from Legal Seafoods to the other one in Copley Place, but ended up at the one by the Prudential Center

9:00pm - 9:05pm - Walked to the correct Legal Seafoods

9:05pm - 11:00pm - Had dinner with my two classmates and my friend from HBS and his partner

11:00pm - 12:00am - Had some Wine at their apartment

12:00am - 2:00am - Found a bar "Lolita" in some neighborhood with my two classmates.

Saturday - November 4rd - Harvard Business School Cyberposium

9:00am - 10:00am - Eat Breakfast

10:00am - 11:00am - Find parking at HBS

11:15am -11:30am - Stand in the back of the eCommerce panel at the Cyberposium

11:30am - 11:40am - email another friend who goes to HBS to let him know that I saw him in the previous session.  We shared the same GMAT tutor and had met in the city at a happy hour earlier this year.

11:40am 11:45am - Turns out that friend that I emailed, sat right behind me for the next Keynote session so we caught up for 5 minutes.

11:45am - 12:35pm - Keynote speech by Katie Mitic - Director, Platform and Mobile at Facebook

12:45pm - 1:30pm - Lunch, which was fun because my GMAT Tutor brethren ate with my classmates and I.  On the way to walking to lunch I saw my OTHER friend from HBS.  She's a fellow MLT alum and was incredibly surprised to see me.  I didn't really tell any of my HBS friends that I would be at their campus.

Here is where I'd like to make a shout out to my new friend who goes to Tuck.  He recognized me from my blog and came up to me to speak.  I never really know what to say when people come up to me and tell me that they've read my blog, but it's always nice!  We talked a couple times throughout the day and hopefully our paths will cross again.  I'm sure they will.

1:30pm - 2:25pm - Future of Online Advertising Panel

2:40pm - 3:30pm - Mobile Advertising Panel

3:40pm - 4:30pm - CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Keynote Speech

4:30pm - 5:00pm - Networking reception.  I ran in to some another person I met at Destination Business School, who now goes to Wharton, which was held by Kaplan last year in NYC.  Here is the blog post I made last year about it - Destination Business School

6:00pm - 12:am - Drive back to Ithaca!

So needless to say - I had an incredibly busy week!

Johnson Student on CNBC

So there's a CNBC Portfolio challenge, that one can learn more about here:  


MBA students from Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgetown, Ohio State, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Notre Dame & University of Texas Austin to compete for prizes and bragging rights in a nine-week, fantasy stock and currency trading competition


Yesterday, I was sitting in Sage Hall taking another nap downstairs by the TV and a crowd started forming around me.  I knew that CNBC was here at Sage filming something, but I didn't know that I would be in the middle of it.  As it turns out (Thankfully), the commotion was just my classmates - 1st and 2nd years, crowding around the TV to see one of the 2nd years being interviewed.  If you want to see the interview then simply click below:

CNBC’s “MILLION DOLLAR PORTFOLIO CHALLENGE MBA FACE-OFF”

I then saw Oscar outside when he was walking back and showed him the pictures that I took.  Don't ask me why I didn't simply take a video but I didn't think that fast.  I tried to get each of the quotes that were being posted about our school at the bottom of the TV screen.  

In any event, I need to go finish writing my speech!  I made Student Council and now tonight, I'm running for Technology Chair.  Wish me luck!