To MBA or Not to MBA

What Should My New Domain Be??

2009-12-22T22:51:00.001-06:00

I keep purchasing domains, installing Wordpress and then changing my mind!

I'm driving myself crazy - any good domain ideas?

Epilogue

2009-11-19T23:41:00.004-06:00

So I did find a job. (And good thing I didn't post while hunting because it was not pretty!)

And I did return to IM. (Corporate work, what was I thinking? 6 weeks at a well funded "start-up" put things in perspective.)

And I love Seattle! (It's my people out here.)

So I do have unfortunately early hours but I get paid nicely to sit around and think on the top floor of a downtown skyscraper with a view of the sound. Not bad. I'll take it.

And I do think Booth helped me come into my own as an old school fundamental investor. I do see a difference from pre-MBA. So the regrets are subsiding.

The kids are awesome ... absolute joy of my life.

I hope you all are well ... if anyone's checking.

To bed with me. Happy Friday.

So what did I want?

2009-11-19T23:36:00.004-06:00

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others ... -W.E.B. Du Bois

During my time at Booth, in person and on this blog, I talked about the need for more resources and support for female student parents which sounds more burdensome than warranted. Really what I wanted and what I think many women in business want is normalization, which is simultaneously very simple and very challenging.

I unfortunately got off to a very bad start with the school because of my need to accommodate my newborn during LOE and as a result my first 48 hours at the school left me feeling unwanted, distrustful and not at all "normal". I did receive an apology but my sense of abnormality mounted as the school year progressed and the distaste for the childed among some classmates and staff became more apparent. (Consider my interview for a leadership position with CWiB in which I was asked whether I could handle the role given the fact that I had a child … oh, the irony.) Some students were lovely, others were oddly clueless (consider the first-year who asked me how long pregnancy lasted - 6 months, he ventured. I wish! I laughed. Then he went on to tell me about his 11 month old son … errr …) and some were downright mean. The worst came during my second year when I was pregnant. The incessant, often scathing comments about my girth were exhausting. On the one hand, it would have been strange to have no one comment on the fact that I was pregnant, on the other hand, that my entire existence revolved around my uterus was depressing. I just wanted to blend in.

Toward the end of my second year it occurred to me that this matter was not just about my experience as a student but also the experience of the future colleagues and employees of my more clueless or mean classmates. Why should a significant portion of the world's "future leaders" be so ignorant/disdainful of one of life's most fundamental experiences? And furthermore, as an employer itself, why wasn't Booth modelling better human resource practices? (That the school did not think to include a lactation room or provide childcare resources is understandable given the low number of female students with children but then I realized there were plenty of employees with children!)

It is a man's world. I say this without ill will - it has historically made sense to be so. But making it a human being's world requires more than just adding women to the mix and expecting men and childless women to understand the practical reality of birthing and bearing babies.

As I've said before, the only important difference between men and women is babies. All the other alleged differences are trivial. The baby factor affects all women, even if they never have children, as it weeds women out of the public realm. Accommodating women and their wayward uteruses (uteri?) is not about entering a new touchy feely world or lowering the bar, it's about finding clever ways to overcome the inescapable physical burden of motherhood. My pet theory is that women are more risk adverse than men because to possess a uterus is to live in a world of tremendous uncertainty. You have no idea when or if you will become pregnant, how the pregnancy will fare or how long it will last. You have no idea when labor will strike and how it will progress. Will breastfeeding come easily or become a nightmare? How will post-partum recovery evolve? How will your newborn take to the world? And god forbid you become pregnant unintentionally. Taking big career or financial risks is far more dangerous with these realities looming over your head.

I happened to run into a woman who had graduated from law school at BYU (yes, Mormons) and was in Chicago while her husband finished law school at the UoC. Consider these radical measures that BYU took to accommodate their female students. Women could bring a sleeping baby to class. They could request in advance videotapes of any class that would be missed or an audiotape of a class after the fact. If needed, they could come to campus and watch class live in a special family room while nursing or playing with their baby. These family rooms were study rooms with priority given to students (male or female) with children. Let's say you were in class with a sleeping baby which suddenly woke? Just leave class and head to the nearest family room and watch the class on t.v. Compare those attitudes to the experience of a female Booth student who received a lot of snide comments after her baby cried in the Winter Garden.

So what can/should business schools do?

Drop the excuses - telling female students that you've never had to deal with the child thing before insulting and irrelevant. Well, now you are.
Get real feedback. Don't just listen to the women who tell you everything is going great and groovy. Find the women who are pissed.
Be radical! Be creative. Tell recruiters who give a pregnant student a hard time to go to hell. (Not, oh that's none of our business.) Tell staff who trivialize a new mom's needs to shape up or ship out. Tell women's groups who over politicize motherhood that they're no longer needed. Let women hear from all the women out there doing baby + work. Reassure women that their physical needs come before recruiters' needs or professors' needs or classmates needs'. Set up a proper mother's room already. Include families!! Help figure out childcare. Provide recordings of missed classes. Etcetera! (Do some brainstorming already.)
And don't trivialize this - it's not a Mommy MBA already.
Women have babies - it's normal. Now act like it is.

What everyone should know about breastfeeding

2009-11-19T23:31:00.004-06:00

Try the following experiment:

Set an alarm clock to ring every 2-4 hours around the clock.
If you are at home when your alarm clock rings, stop what you are doing and a sit down for 15-30 minutes, pretending to have a small human being attached to your bosom.
If you are not at home, find somewhere private where you can sit down for 15-30 minutes, pretending to have a whirring plastic contraption attached to your bosom (which you keep with you at all times outside of the house.)
Repeat for about a year or so …

Hanna Rosin's The Case Against Breastfeeding in last April's Atlantic raised a lot of hackles. I read it and cried.

As I've alluded to in prior posts, the biggest shock for me about motherhood was how much I HATED breastfeeding … and, most of all, pumping. And how long I stuck with it anyway. Formula seems like a paltry substitute (physically and emotionally) for the real thing, but I wish that someone had given me the heads up that if you are planning to leave the house before your child's first birthday - breastfeeding is an incredible pain in the ass. It just is. Rosin's article captured my mixed feelings perfectly.

So if you are ever planning to bear babies, work with someone who bears babies or marry someone who bears babies, here is what you should know:

Lactation consultants (yes, I too snickered at first), use them soon and use them often!
Mothers are not milk on tap. This means, sans baby, often milk will not come out when you want it to and milk will come out when you don't want it to.
Milk supply may plummet unexpectedly.
Lactating breasts do not sleep.
God forbid you leave the house and forget your breast pump. Do. Not. Let. This. Happen. … Ever.
Breastpads! Keep 'em handy but Kleenex can work in a pinch.
Milk is perishable and bulky. Your pump is bulky and may require electricity. Logistics matter!
(As someone who spent virtually all her pumping life standing around in bathroom stalls) "Mother's Rooms" are not a luxury, they are the humane way to treat employees!
Working and breastfeeding is easiest done by the organized and informed. You are now informed.

Happy Three Years!!

2009-07-28T20:41:00.002-05:00

So I thought I would pen my last post as MaybeMBA today to make an even three years of blogging. (Crazy, reading that first post all this time later.) But I have a few more things to say on the MBA front before moving to a new theme and it sure ain't happening tonight!

Y flies in around midnight tonight. Yay!! I am very ready to go back to dual-parenting. And very excited to get back to the west coast. And finish packing already!! Sheesh. And to think I thought moving cross country back when I was childless was rough. Ha. I had no idea.

Happy July, everyone! I don't think I'll have my wits together for blogging until August ...

My perfect MBA

2009-07-21T22:38:00.003-05:00

I'm having a lot of trouble summoning any interest to say anything about the MBA, which is just as well since my time is up. But for the sake of completion let's try the following thought experiment. What if anything would I change about my experience? What would make the "perfect MBA" for me?

Much of the Booth experience would remain. The flexible curriculum is non-negotiable for me. Emphasis on academics is important. Sharp student body a must. Gorgeous facilities would be sorely missed. But in addition

Primary emphasis on teaching. I wish every professor made those 3 hours in the classroom really count and held their responsibility as a teacher above all else.
Required well-taught class on ethics. Not in the hopes of reforming or deflecting the up and coming Skillings or Madoffs but because there is a lot of great emperically-based stuff out there to help us explore our responsibilities and rights and future "business leaders". It's not a side topic, it should be front and center of our education and can be approached through data and hard analysis rather than just a soft, feel-good conversation.
Requirement waivers. The curriculum would allow one to waive subjects in which a basic competency could be demonstrated through an exam (such as stats, econ, accounting). Yes, I am asking that the world's most flexible curriculum become even more flexible but a lady can dream!
Can't we all just be friends?? ;) It would have just been less competitive. My classmates behaved admirably but I felt like the system sort of ended up pitting us against one another, for employment, for grades, for scholarships, for recognition. It just felt tiring and unnecessary. It's amazing we all remained as supportive and kind to one another as we did given the circumstances.
Let's enjoy life! It just would have been more fun, more creative, more exploratory, more tasteful. In all honesty, it was a bit spirit crushing. Not too crushing but less uplifting than I was expecting.

And that would make a more perfect MBA for me.

Baby Love (The Two Year Transformation)

2009-07-19T21:40:00.004-05:00

So interestingly, it appears that my "Working vs. Stay at Home Mom Myth" entry (written mid-way through my first year) is one of my more popular posts. And though I might come across as quite certain and resolute, these sort of posts are in a way a pep-talk to myself to counterbalance my uncertainty and lack of resoluteness. In fact, the recent flurry of "mom" posts are an attempt to acknowledge more of my internal struggle and relax some of the cheerleading I forced myself into over the past two years lest I discourage anyone from taking a similar path.

The last Bertrand study tidbit I'd like to share is the finding that women's workforce participation dropped off not immediately after childbirth but about two years later. Fascinating. In my experience it takes about two years for the denial to wear off. Initially, the memory of your childless self is fresh in your mind. You're just waiting to "get back to normal". And then month by month, as you forget what it's like to be able to leave the house on a whim, or lose yourself in a thought for five hours uninterrupted, the permanence of the new arrangement becomes undeniable. Maybe you begin to like parenting more or start to allow yourself to hate your job more or just feel resigned to a new existence. But what does a woman with a 9 month old know about working motherhood? Not much frankly. And while I found my summer internship schedule a complete relief compared to the 24 hour slog of being in school, getting a bad grade is not really comparable to being wrong on a big trade. So I understand the limitations of my perspective over the past two years.

Interestingly, I find that I am enjoying Baby X's new babyness much more than I did the first time around. She is an easier baby I think, but mostly I am just a better parent. Parenting is a skill and having some recent experience makes a huge difference in my state of mind. So that's lovely. The thought that this is my last baby ever is very sad for me. Although these days the thought of parenting more than two babes gives me hives.

And then there is the baby love. With Y's absence, Baby Y is turning the full force of his affections on me. In every moment that I am not breastfeeding or diapering #2, I am either consoling or applauding #1. Our neat and tidy 30 minute bedtime routine (usually performed by Y and followed by a 11 hour respite) has turned into a 2.5 hour soap opera, followed by an encore at about 1:00 a.m. and another at 5:30 a.m. It's exhausting but their adoration is undeniably endearing as well.

p.s. I randomly discovered Jonniker's blog who, in turn, sent me over to the following heartbreaking blogs (here and here) which remind me in my moments of feeling completely overwhelmed with packing and preparing to move 2,000 miles and job hunting and momming two babies sans hubby that I don't have much to complain about

EconomistMom

2009-07-17T01:00:00.005-05:00

Fiscal responsibility. Four babies!
I love it.
Mentioned in today's WSJ and on my Feed Demon now.
Felt like sharing for no good reason. I'm not very up on econo-blogs so this is probably old news to thoughtful readers.
No energy for the longer post I had been planning to pen tonight. Cannot wait to live with husband again.
Trying to figure out if I should keep blogging once I leave Chicago and what my theme will be post-MBA ...

Why I Like Hyde Park

2009-07-14T23:19:00.004-05:00

(My average posts per week seems to be positively correlated with my stress levels, strangely. Also, I'm feeling very lazy about linking these days. You'll have to Google it all yourself. Sorry.)

I know Hyde Park isn't a popular destination for my classmates, but I am very glad that I made my home down here these two years. Aside from the incomparable convenience, it's actually a nice place to live, despite all the scare stories you might hear. True, I am very careful about where I walk after dark, and avoid it if at all possible. And I did have my car broken into in broad daylight. But I am realizing much to my suprise that I'm going to miss the neighborhood! (Err, my husband, however, will not.) For the single, childless types it leaves a lot to be desired, but I highly recommend the place to incoming students with children. There is a great student parent community here which means your kids will get to hang out with the kids of super smart interesting people from all over the world. (If you're into that sort of thing, smart, interesting people, that is ;)

Food options have been slowly getting better. I will absolutely miss Hyde Park Produce and there is a Treasure Island if you're so inclined. Istria Cafe competes head to head with Stumptown. (Would avoid Third World though unfortunately.) Ragun Cajun has oddly decent Indian food. Calypso Cafe is definitely worth a try. (Dixie Kitchen RIP.) Chant is very passable as an enjoyable night out. And I very much like the Alice in Wonderland feel of Park 52. I've rediscovered Noodles Etc and Medici, of course, provides a solid meal and some good Hyde Park history. Giordano's is getting a remodel but that would be my favorite local pizza joint. Not as big a fan of Pizza Capri and Edwardo's Natural Pizza. We have a Home Made Pizza and the reliable Potbellies. I'm a huge fan of the lunch special at Cedars. And you can get some seriously fantastic bagels at Z&H. And don't forget the really great deli sandwiches in the back at University Market.

All the old trees and parks and buildings are lovely. The houses get especially fancy schmancy north of Hyde Park Boulevard around Woodlawn. (Obama's neck of the woods.)

But Elizabeth Fama (yes, of that Fama), who co-authors this Hyde Park Progress blog, can give you an even more expert opinion.

Female Machismo

2009-07-13T23:27:00.003-05:00

(Apparently there is no good feminine corollary for machismo, for better or worse.)

Three stories.

Story Number One:

When I was pregnant with Baby Y a supervisor, upon learning that I was a just say no to drugs in childbirth kind of lady remarked, You know, you don't have to prove anything. (His wife apparently had a similar idea with her #1 and then gratefully went for the epidural with #2 and #3.) Frankly, the side effects ("disadvantages") of an epidural scare me more than the contractions.

But then, once Baby Y was born, I had to be honest with myself. I wanted to prove something to myself! I like to think that very little in ordinary life can break me and wanted to put that theory to the test. (Life 0, MaybeMBA 2)

Story Number Two:

Typical conversation with stay-at-home moms (particularly the wives of classmates ... no offense to the lovely partners I have met).

Her: I don't know how you do it!
Me: Oh, I have lots of help. It's not too bad.
Her: I could never do that!
Me: ... [well, you could ...]

Story Number Three:

While searching online for a completely unrelated subject, I came across a BabyCenter forum thread venting about the smug superiority of women who birth "naturally". As if luck were just the differentiating factor ...

The Point:

Don't forget to distinguish between can and want. While I firmly believe that it is highly improbably that women will ever be fully represented in all portions of public life, this does not mean that you, dear blog reader, cannot achieve extraordinary things on the professional and personal front. Women will not be fully represented in public life because they do not want to. (My earlier post was to explain why this was quite reasonable.)

Bertand found (no, I'm not quite done with this study yet!) that the labor supply of women with higher earning spouses was more flexible in response to the birth of children than that of women with lower earning spouses. Intriguing ...*

You can "have it all" but you might not want to.
It's a choice.

Human beings are designed to prefer the path of least resistance. Almost every woman (there are genuine exceptions to the rule but they are a true minority) can give birth naturally, but most (in this country, at least) do not want to.** Same thing can be said of parental labor force participation.

*Her initial interpretation was that this indicated lack of discrimination as it seemed inconceivable that employers would be discriminating more against women based on spousal earnings. However, many of us were pleased to hear her acknowledge in a Becker lunch, that this could reflect the fact that women with higher earning spouses had more choice in response to discriminatory attitudes/practices and could more easily drop out of the labor force to get away from it.
**It's my understanding that epidurals are used quite rarely in most parts of the world, including countries which suffer no lack of babies being born ... and mothers surviving the experience.

Just to be clear

2009-07-11T11:07:00.003-05:00

I was reflecting on my last post and wanted to reiterate that my thoughts about women's opportunities in working life are from the perspective of attaining parity in the most prestigious, highest paid professions/positions. High levels of female workforce participation have already been reached and are here to stay, in the U.S. at least. But it is a well known fact (too lazy to cite, look it up yourself ;) that women make less money in less secure and prestigious positions. (Also, perhaps largely less challenging and interesting one might say.) In other words, they work for less money and recognition. That's fine for many but this conversation is for those who want more.

Just wanted to clarify.

I have about 3-4 more posts on this subject coming up.

So where are all the women??

2009-07-10T23:32:00.007-05:00

When I was a much younger woman (oh, 3 years ago), I would look around at my coworkers and think, "where the hell are all the women?" From the moment I decided (belatedly) to major in Economics in college, suddenly I was virtually the only woman in the room. It was perplexing. What were they doing??? (Although I did enjoy breezing by a long line of men outside the bathroom into the always vacant ladies room at conferences.)

Then I had a baby.

Oh.

I see.

As Bertrand's study points out there are two types of working people in the world. There are men (with and without children) + women without children. And there are women with children. This began to dawn on me once I had my own baby but until I read her study it was hard not to feel (particularly given people's reactions to this idea) that perhaps I was just biased by my recent descent into motherhood.

Pre-baby I thought it was just a matter of finding good childcare and presto, I'd be back to my old self again. What I didn't realize was that many of the challenges/changes would not just be mental and logistical, but would be physical. (In other words, much harder to transcend.)

Even if you have the healthiest of pregnancies, odds are you will feel like retching or crawling under a desk to nap for much of 9 months. You will spend countless hours in waiting rooms at the mercy of your ob/gyn/midwife. You will doze through the requisite birthing class to which you frantically race to after work each Tuesday for a couple of months. If you do not have the healthiest of pregnancies ... well, let's just say making your quarterly numbers isn't going to be top of your priorities. (And that's assuming you get pregnant easily and don't have to go through the hell of fertility treatment.)

And then there is birth. Let's just say you won't be racing around the office 24 hours post-partum. (And those myths about Super Biz Woman rocking her 40 hour newborn to sleep under her desk while she catches up on emails ... people, after you push a honeydew sized human being from your nether regions, you're going to need a long nap!)

And then there is breastfeeding which may leave you unable to leave the house for a couple of months. But more on that later.

And then there is the moment when it dawns on the babe that you're walking out the door. And they don't like it one bit. And they've got the lungs to show it.

Point being, I now know that getting "back to work" isn't just about attitude and egalitarian marriage or a good nanny. And much as I hate to play pessimist here - having a baby changes women's physical reality in a way that makes in impossible to resume life as normal for a long time, if ever. By my calculation, at the very least each baby wipes out a good year in a woman's working life, if not several years, no matter how involved her partner is.

When it comes to just a good, solid working life, working motherhood is completely doable. But if your goal is to be truly extraordinary, then it's going to be a rough road. Excellence requires extraordinary time and selfishness, neither of which accrue in abundance to women who birth humans. Not to mention, getting "to the top" at the expense of this gorgeous little person you created becomes increasingly unappealing.

So, while some radical changes in working life might help mitigate some of these inevitable challenges (and I have some ideas on that front too), as long as women bear, birth and breastfeed babies we are never going to see parity at the top. Never.

It's not just a matter of time. It's not just about discrimination or bad husbands or lack of female role models or fear of math (ha ;). It's just a hard a load to bear for a human being. And the human beings bearing the load happen to be women.

What I Would Have Done Differently

2009-07-08T23:34:00.004-05:00

Blogging on here feels so odd now that I am definitely no longer "Maybe"MBA. But it's taking me longer than expected to wrap up my last MBA thoughts. Life!

I've pondered this post for some time as my answer changes day to day. For some time this spring I felt that I should have applied to more programs, especially some on the west coast. However, now that I find myself gravitating back toward my original career plan, that seems less important. At moments I have felt that I should never applied to an MBA program at all! But those moments are quite rare these days. So, with that, what would I have done differently for an MBA at Booth?

Academics:

Taken only 1 finance and 1 accounting class. I foolishly ended up with a concentration in finance and accounting, for various reasons including course availability. Given my background, this was not a particularly good way to spend my money. I would have taken Weiss's Taxes course and Pastor's Portfolio Management course and maybe Rajan's Int'l Corp Fin class and skipped all the others (30116, 30117, 30130, 35100, 35200). (Although I would have considered 30117 with Sapra.)
Steered clear of Commercializing Innovation and taken PE Finance with Kaplan or Morse.
Taken basic Stats or Regression instead of Time Series. Back when I was young and foolish and took "challenge everything" seriously I thought it would be silly to repeat what I already knew. I should have just gone for the easy A.
Econ requirement. For those of you with good Econ backgrounds there really is no good solution to the Micro requirement. I went with 33501 as a substitute which was definitely an easy A but left me feeling a little hollow.
Taken Negotiations and maybe Eply's Managerial class (forgot official name and too lazy to look it up, one of those 38001 courses or something) and more "soft" courses.
Taken Competitive Strategy with Bertrand.

Career:

Job-wise, at one point I thought I perhaps should have skipped the IM internship altogether but I'm currently very glad that I didn't. (See, too fickle am I.) And it has crossed my mind that I wish I had just recruited for a corporate finance job last fall but I think I would be quite depressed at this point had I made that compromise. I do wish that I had been a little more mentally and intellectually prepared for recruiting in my first year. With the pregnancy and the career detour while I figured out my life and applied to bschool pre-MBA, I was pretty scattered and unprepared for internship recruiting. I am damn lucky I got a position. And then with the second pregnancy etc I wasn't in much better shape for full-time. I do wish I had never bothered to pitch a stock just for the sake of having one to pitch and that I had not been pregnant in my second year.*

Personal:

It would have been much better for my husband if he had stayed in Seattle and I had relocated with Baby Y but that would have been hell on all of us, so I'm not sure whether I would have done that differently. I would not have changed being pretty selective about my socializing and putting my family first but I do occasionally wish I had had more freedom on that front while I was here.

So for what it's worth, that's that.

*Only because I didn't have a job offer, otherwise, it would have been perfect. In fact I really wish I had applied to bschool a couple years earlier than I did and had my first baby in my 2nd year with a job offer in hand. Not that you can really plan these things, of course!

Motherhood: The bane of thoughtful women?

2009-07-02T22:17:00.003-05:00

In college, I never expected to get married, let alone have children.* As it happened, I got married about a year after graduating and, on my 27th birthday, became bent on having children ... IMMEDIATELY.

I am not what one would call a "kid person". That is, I harbor no special love for human beings based on their having lived a relatively short time on earth. I prefer people with an opinion on the trade deficit, an appreciation of artisan breads and the ability to sit quietly through the full duration of the most recent Coen brother movie. If you meet this criteria and are under 12. Fine. I have never once babysat and had never held an infant until Baby Y was placed in my arms.

Pre-baby I was put off by the way in which female parenthood seemed to obscure all else from a woman's identity to those around her and perhaps even to herself.

One thought (realized post-baby) is that it is partly due to the way that biological parenthood engulfs women. From the moment of conception, willingly or not, I was at my body's mercy. Pregnancy, birth, post-partum - nothing in my life has been so mammalian. So physical. So utterly devoid of intellect.

The other thought is that it is partly due to the insipid, cutsification that women cast upon the mother role. The endless pink (in moderation, a perfectly fine color) and other mild shades. The obsession with little beyond the minutia of familial life. The insistence that life as you knew it will cease to exist once children make their appearance. I was determined to avoid such a fate. (And think I have.)

And as I penned posts for this blog and talked to other women about my experience, I swung between two ideas.

The first being that this whole thing, babies + life-as-usual, was eminently doable. Piece. Of. Cake. Nevermind that I spent my first year on the verge of a nervous breakdown and year two chronically depressed. I was determined to tear on as though life had not changed a bit.

The second being that I had just erected a permanent hurdle to professional success. Competing as a childless woman was hard enough, throw in life encompassing experience of baby making = doom. Never mind that I did just fine in most of my classes and got a great internship. (Though I am currently unemployed ... hmmm)

Point being, I am very sympathetic to childless women who are not very inspired by the realities of the child making route. It's not easy. It does change you. For me, old age without grandchildren (Baby Y and X, are you listening??) was not palatable. But if it were,and I thought it might be for a long time, it would have been much easier.

Honestly yours,
M

*Though, paradoxically, I expected that if I did have children that I would be a stay at home parent until they went to kindergarten. Ha.

Kill your laptop

2009-06-30T23:13:00.003-05:00

After guests and going out of town and Baby Y being very ill, I realize I've hardly turned on my computer over the past week. It's fantastic. I've been reading.

Ironically, one of the the things I've been reading (finally) is Lowenstein's book on Buffett who was certainly not tethered to a computer ... Excel ... Bloomberg ... Facebook. On that note ... good night! (And turn off your computer already :)

So. Is it worth it?

2009-06-24T09:40:00.003-05:00

Unfortunately for the empirically minded there is no satisfactory answer to this. There is no parallel me running around without an MBA to make a comparison against.

As the twelve months of gloom lifted and finals came and went and I enjoyed graduation, I was increasingly inclined to say that it was unequivocally worthwhile. However, I was also past the point of return. There was no point in regretting anything.

The friends I've made at Booth are phenomenal. I feel glad I have Chicago Booth at the top of my resume during this terrible job hunt. It's relieving to have alumni to reach out to and career services to hold my hand when needed. I did have some fantastic professors. And I even learned something in my worst classes. And most of the learning in MBA land really happens outside of the classroom I now believe.

However, the worth of something cannot be judged properly without considering the price paid. And this will vary dramatically across applicants - both the tangible price such as tuition and the intangibles such as living away from family. As you listen to graduates hold forth on the value of their MBA, keep this in mind. We all pay different prices and obtain different rewards.Having now finished, I see how naive it was to assume that someone else's MBA story would be my own. (And the irony is that anyone who is going to get into a top MBA program is probably going to do pretty well on their own. )

But in all honesty, I think it would be quite short sighted of me to say that I regretted it.

Full-time vs. Part-time MBA

2009-06-22T21:24:00.003-05:00

Here's an easy MBA post in response to a question I got from a reader last week, written mainly from the Booth perspective.

If I had lived in or near to a city with a top program I probably would have done a part-time program. I also considered executive programs. But it definitely is a very different experience from a full-time program and I have to say I am glad that I went full-time.

At Booth, there is no academic difference between the part-time and full-time programs. It's the exact same faculty and you can take class at either campus (with some restrictions). Both programs also have a considerable amount of flexibility in how quickly or slowly they complete their studies. Both programs participate in the same graduation ceremony and get to participate in on campus recruiting. (Ask career services for the fine print on part-time participation though.) (I think they have a different admissions team?? Anyone know this for sure?)

The big difference comes in the way of the student experience. There is definitely a different feel in the Gleacher classes. Virtually all part-time students are working jobs which gives them much less time to devote to study groups and social events. (The guy who hired me for my internship came out of the part-time program and called us full-timers a bunch of slackers ... and he's right :) They are real adults with, you know, jobs and families. The part-time program has a separate set of student groups. (Some cross-registration is allowed but mostly the two programs stick to themselves on this one.) And to the extent that networking and social stuff is a huge piece of the MBA value - then it seems like they miss out. One only has so many hours in the day.

In sum, if you want the full student experience and aren't up for the work/school/life grind, I would do the full-time program. If your employer will foot the bill for a part-time program only/you can't bear to part with your paycheck/you are worried you might graduate unemployed in the worst recession in recent history/you just want the degree and some classes, then I would do the part-time program. But, at least at Booth, the line between the programs is a bit blurry, so keep that in mind.

That's my two cents.

Hot damn, it's hot around these parts. Chicago was not meant to be lived in sans A/C. By the way, just discovered the best bagels ever ... in Hyde Park! Wish I could take them with.

Life these days

2009-06-22T00:26:00.003-05:00

Was about to pen one of my uber serious posts but don't have the brain power (lucky for you). Really, I should definitely be sleeping.

I am now a "single mom" (when my mom isn't here, that is). The good news is that Y has a job (with a real pay check and a not crazy boss). The bad news is that he doesn't live in Chicago any more.

Happy Father's Day!!

I am very much looking for a job. But also trying to enjoy the kids and summer. And the last month of Hyde Park. But really, it has become really impossible to imagine that I will ever be employed again. Sigh.

Baby Y's bday is upcoming and I just made a gorgeous double chocolate layer cake that I am planning on bedecking with June strawberries tomorrow morning. That and some delicious crustless quiches, one with and one without mushrooms, fresh fruit salad and bagels etcetera will be make for a lovely Monday. Can you believe he's almost two years old?? He's as old as my MBA ;)

Baby X is the most amazing sleeper ever but I think we deserve a good sleeper after what we went through with the first!

Happy Summer Solstice!!

Yeah. It was worth it.

2009-06-17T23:12:00.000-05:00

More on that later.

(And no, I don't have a job yet.)

Congratulations Class of 2009

2009-06-16T17:21:00.002-05:00

Graduation was on Sunday. I'm very glad my mom asked me to walk - I had a great time and it was a nice way to end things. I will really really miss a number of amazing people I had the good fortune to spend the last 2 years with. :(

Women are people too

2009-06-12T10:53:00.003-05:00

Obviously. But maybe not.

I think of myself as a human being who happens to be a woman. One would think that this is rather obvious but our every day language suggests otherwise.

If women (especially women with children) are just people then why do we not have daddy bloggers or dadpreneurs or daddy MBAs? Why is there no 50 Most Powerful Men in Business or the Gentlemen's Professional Golf Association or "men's issues"?*

Ok - so these are rhetorical question - I understand why but the fact that we are so used to this language pattern is very meaningful.

There are two reactions to this state of affairs. The first (and more common among my childless peers) reaction is to avoid any special labels or preferential treatment by gender. This would include eschewing women's organizations, decrying gender based merit scholarships, and doing everything to reiterate the idea that men and women have few meaningful differences.

I am highly sympathetic to this approach but there are two problems. First, is that it verges on reinforcing the idea that male = normal and non-male = aberration. This would be the panelist at a women's conference who exclaimed "Men don't sit around discussing 'work-life balance'!" (Who cares! I'm discussing it! And btw men like to have lives outside of work too. But again, who cares what "men" are allegedly not discussing???) This woman then went on to encourage us to read Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office (or was it Play Like a Woman, Win Like a Man ... or similar obnoxious title?) Perhaps these books have a more interesting and nuanced message inside but I can not get past the loaded titles. This would also be the fellow female student who in a round table discussion on the meaning of CWiB (our student women's group here at Booth) declared somewhat randomly "I'm not on the mommy track!" (Am I on the "mommy track". What the hell is the "mommy track" anyway?)

But there is a second more important problem with this approach: sans babies gender is a completely useless distinction.** But when it comes to babies gender is makes a huge difference and trying to pretend that you are just like everyone else as a woman with children is a great way to drive yourself to despair. (As I have slowly realized.)

Last year I attended a talk by a very well-known woman (former executive at now collapsing enormo-bank) who responded to a question about family/career issues by first saying "Men cover your ears" and then went on to imply that men would not be interested in this side conversation.

But these are not "women's issues". These are "human issues". Motherhood is a fundamental human experience. I think you can simultaneously stand up for the idea that men and women are mostly similar but also incredibly different without undermining social progress.

This was all a preface to say that I'm finally going to post a series of thoughts on gender and babies over the next week or so that have been rattling around in my head for 2+ years. But don't for a moment think that they are a side conversation! If you are a women, have known a woman (or have never known a woman ;) They are for you.

*A search for "daddy blogger" returns about 4 million hits compared to 20.6 million for "mommy blogger", similar story for the other terms.
**I take the somewhat radical position that there is just as much intra-gender as there is inter-gender variation therefore one cannot make meaningful predictions about intelligence, behavior and career prospects based on gender alone. Do men and women have real biological differences that impact behavior? Yes. But in a civilized society where intelligence is more critical than brute force for professional success, I'm not convinced that it matters.

Two Year Academic Wrap Up

2009-06-10T15:50:00.005-05:00

For better or worse, here is how I used the flexible curriculum for two years. (FYI - I remember all of my courses by the course number not the name so am not using the official name for all of them.)

1st Year - Fall
30116 Footnote Accounting w/Skinner*
35200 Corporate Finance w/Seru*
33501 International Commercial Policy w/Levchenko**

1st Year - Winter
37000 Marketing Strategy w/Dhar
30118 M&A Accounting w/Bens
33032 Managing the Workplace w/Kole

1st Year - Spring
34106 Commercializing Innovation w/Meadow
35120 Portfolio Management w/Pastor*** (requires Matlab)
42001 Competitive Strategy w/Knez
41202 Time Series w/Tsay (requires R)
(not a schedule I would recommend to anyone let alone with someone with a 9 month old who just finished a grueling 6 month recruiting season)

2nd Year - Fall
35100 Financial Instruments w/Nosal*
30117 Taxes w/Weiss
30130 FSA w/Smith*

2nd Year - Winter
38114 Business Ethics w/Fogel
35210 International Corporate Finance w/Rajan***
38002 Managerial Decision Making w/Wu
42115 Building Innovation Strategy and Capability w/Tennant
40000 Operations w/Debo

2nd Year - Spring
40110 Managing Service Operations w/Eisenstein
34102 New Venture Strategy w/the one and only Schrager

*much will be review for someone with the CFA designation or prior accounting/finance experience but can be worth taking especially if you get a good professor but if you want skip to concentrate on other areas, you'll be fine.
**review for anyone with solid undergraduate Econ background that includes international trade coursework
***Pastor and Rajan are brilliant - course worth it just for the value that they add but much of the technical stuff is not new news if you have a finance background. I don't regret taking these courses though and it still was plenty of work.

Re Discovering My Self

2009-06-09T21:02:00.002-05:00

(major post backlog is losing to major life to do list backlog. finals week. graduation this sunday which i am attending solely for my mom's benefit. opting for less ponderous post in the interest of expediency)

The hardest thing about the past 12 months I've realized is not knowing what it is that I wanted.

For the first half of my internship last summer I was thrilled. Except for the less than ideal (but acceptable) geographic location, the position and firm were perfect and the perfect capstone to many, many years of preparation. Then, as things began to get more tense and strange on the desk (I'll not belabor the details), I was shocked to discover one summer evening that I was pregnant. (I thought all the free food was just making me fat!) When I returned to work the next day the firm had just instituted the first layoffs in its history. My little team of 4 was now a team of 2. I knew I would not be coming back.

I've begun to wonder if my abrupt turn against IM was a way to protect myself from the reality of job hunting as a pregnant woman in a collapsing market.

As I return to some semblance of my pre-maternal self, I realize my metamorphosis is not only physical but also mental. It's nice.

Happy Thursday!

2009-06-04T17:27:00.002-05:00

Thursday is my favorite day. Almost almost the weekend.
The sun has finally arrived in Chicago.
Tomorrow is the last class of my MBA career
Baby X is starting to notice the world
Baby Y is obsessed with the alphabet ... that's what Sesame Street will do you apparently :)
I am watching Wall Street as a homework assignment ...

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Dealing with MBA Entitlement

2009-06-03T11:03:00.004-05:00

I was catching up a few weeks ago with the alumnus who hired me last summer. (He is still at the fund but confirms that it's still brutal in IM land.) Towards the end of the conversation we discussed the fact that a sense of MBA entitlement was counterproductive these days and yet it is awfully hard to escape.

Last autumn I wasn't ready to compromise as I saw many of my classmates doing. I wanted to keep my options open. Now, I hugely regret that stubbornness. I wish I had just taken any old corporate job and been done with it. I've been job hunting more or less for 3 years. I have no more enthusiasm for this game and no more faith in an ultimate payoff.

It's final dawned on me that the reason I was so resistant to returning to Seattle is that it felt like the ultimate admission that I had just made full circle without anything (yet?) to show for it. After all, one of my primary reasons to get an MBA was to get out of Seattle. W/o the MBA my husband and I would both be gainfully employed homeowners, enjoying our children, getting exercise, taking the occasional vacation. W/ MBA we are roughly half a million poorer (tuition, childcare and foregone earnings for both of us), hoping we can get something roughly as good as what we had before, unsure of what we can afford in rent and too busy getting our lives together behind our laptops to pay attention to our children.

Hopefully with time the value will become apparent but the point is to say that MBA entitlement arises not just because the folks who get the MBA are just schmucks (though you can't rule that out entirely ;) but when you pay such a price you really want something big in return. And while the advice to humble oneself and get to work resonates with me, (after all that's what I was doing pre MBA), having spent so much money and time already and having two little ones that I'd like to spend some time with, makes this an increasingly bitter pill to swallow. If the qualities that will make me successful post MBA are just those that I possessed pre MBA - what was I paying for?

I went into this degree with eyes wide open to the financial risks that it entailed and the potential ramifications to my family. (And the '01-'02 MBA job market was still a fresh reminder.) I thought it would be worth it as my ticket to hedge fund land. And it may never be. Which is frankly the best lesson of all. I did not sufficiently hedge my risks* and I let greed blind my inner Eeyore.

In investing and in entrepreneurship losses are to be expected, so hopefully I'm more prepared for that reality than before. And I do believe that things are more likely than not to get better for me from here. But even more than before, I concur that for a happier life, shake off your misplaced optimism. (Passed on by the alumnus just before our chat.)

*Such hedges would have been applying to a broader range of programs and choosing the lowest cost provider. Applying to programs earlier before children. Doing a part-time program. Taking my employer up on sponsoring me for an executive or part-time program. Compromising on employers for the sake of security/stability. Etc.