Wharton MBA for Executives

Yesterday was day 1!  It was a pretty interesting day because class 34 was officially kicked off!  Unlike some schools where orientation lasts for a week (or more), Wharton orientation is basically 1 day.  We started with a casual lunch, then introductions and presentations by the administration and staff, then we had some group activities, and we concluded with dinner.  Overall, the day was primarily focused on allowing everyone to get to know their groups and other students.  I would say that it was a pretty good first day.  I am very glad we didn’t start with classes right away because I think my brain would have blown up or something if I had to think about assets/liabilities or supply/demand curves yesterday.

A few points (in no particular order):

1) The class is pretty diverse…not just from industry and function but also in terms of hobbies and skills.  We have some martial arts black belts, a few poker players (one guy who was on TV twice and made the final table a few times), a Navy jet pilot, a military helicopter pilot, an MMA fighters (well, she trained in MMA under a Pride fighter until she kicked some butt in a bar and then decided to quit), guy who jumped out of an airplane in war torn territory, guy with 6 kids, etc.

2) Either everyone is lying or most people really didn’t do that much of the reading.  That’s nice to hear.  I didn’t do a whole lot of reading either (no, I didn’t actually finish all that stuff) and since the classes are graded on curves, I’ll hope I stay out of that bottom 10%.

3) We had 2 recent class 32 graduates to welcome us.  Chairman P was there and reminded us about the poker set at the hotel.  Don’t worry, we’ll put it to good use.

4) There have been a lot of babies born in the last month or so.  We had a baby born 8 days ago and a few more born in the last month.  I saw 3 babies yesterday at dinner which was nice to see.

5) We got some cool stuff…coolest by far is the metal Wharton usb key (1GB).  Other stuff included a binder and laptop bag.

6) It was nice to put some faces to the names.  I don’t necessarily want to be known as “The Blogger” so I’ll try to stay as low key as possible.  But that’s probably going to be tough as more and more people start reading this blog.  It looked like maybe 1/3 of the class already knew who I was from the blog.

7) In our assignment yesterday, the groups met up to discuss what makes a group project and dynamic successful.  It was nice talking to my new group and we came up with the same typical stuff like “common goal”, “cooperation”, “respect and open communication”, etc.

8) Our group assignment for Wednesday was handed out.  Our group figured we’ll meet on Tuesday but it looks like many groups met last night.   Maybe we’re the slacker group…

It’s the morning of day 2 now so I’m getting ready to go to math camp and the real classes start today.  oh joy…