Events Leading Up to Now.

Our first day of class was on Tuesday. After a week of orientation, I was looking forward to seeing what classes would be like at Ross. Because all of our classes are on a 7-week cycle, things have been moving pretty fast. By the end of this week, some of us already feel a little in over our heads in Econ, Accounting, Strategy and Stat.
<-- Accounting

From what I hear the hardest thing about being an MBA1 is managing your time between academics, career interests such as clubs/recruiting events/etc. and socializing. Some describe the experience similar to trying to drink water from a firehose.

Our first week of classes were punctuated by 2 events: on Thursday we had a "Shout-Off" competition among the 6 sections where where we had to come up with a 2 minute chant extolling the virtues of our section, "The Deuce," i.e. Section 2, over the other 5 sections. Things invariably get pretty wild when you're inhibitions are dulled by a pre-shout-off keg party at one of our section-mates backyard. The result was ear-piercing and laryngitis-inducing shouts of "DEUCE THERE IT IS" and "WHO LET THE DEUCE OUT?" as we marched through the middle of UMich's campus. Although we didn't win the $700 cash prize, I think the the judges/sponsors from SC Johnson and Deloitte were suficiently impressed with our performance.

Yesterday we participated in "MBA Games"- where we competed against the different sections in events like ultimate frisbee, volleyball, and football - a total of 13 games. I volunteered to organize the teams for my section, and I guess that as the pseudo-CEO of Section 2, I have to take full blame for our Section coming in dead last... Traditionally this means that next year's class of Section 2 MBA1s will have to wear the "pink shirts" for their own MBA games, but apparently Ross has decided to discontinue the tradition because of the possible offensive nature of associating pink with stereotypical qualities of feminine passiveness. I guess that even here you can't run away from political correctness. Section 1 took home the Ross Cup, and also get to take home various sundries from this year's corporate sponsors such as Campbell's, Ford, and Quaker-Gatorade.

After a tiring day of runnng around outside, true to an MBAs character of not letting anything get in the way of more fun (economically-speaking, our demand curve is probably the only demand curve out there that's upwards-sloping), we got together to party it up on Main street in downtown Ann Arbor (AA). "Rush Street" looks to be one of the nicer "New York-like" bars in AA. Although the place was ridiculously crowded, we nevertheless had a blast dancing it up to the beats of a DJ that apparently knew our collective formative years occurred during the 90's, with songs like "Poison," tracks from Skee-Lo and Prince, and more .

Today Michigan played Central Michigan in the second home game of the year. I decided to stay in and attempt to catch up on some work (unfortuantely this blog has gotten in the way). The football games here are absolutely ridiculous. Last week's Michigan vs. Vanderbilt game had over 109,000 fans packed into the Big House, a far cry from the Penn football games I saw in my undergrad days. Football is like religion here. On game day everyone in town whips out their Michigan paraphernalia, camp out / tailgate, and the MBAs are in the center of it all in our very own section within the stadium. After each game, the UM Business Student's Association throws a big tailgate party with food and drinks for all MBAers. Since I stayed in, today I missed the Southern style buffet that was on today's menu. I'm sure my friends back in NYC are cursing me for such a stupid move.