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Last Sunday, we lost one of the most inspiring professors in Haas - Bill Sonnenschein.

When we just arrived to Haas, we could sign up for two modules in the pre-school summer camp. One was math/finance/accounting introduction, and the second was Communication Workshop. We didn’t really know what exactly to expect from that second workshop, but I decided to take it anyway in what turned out to be one of the best experiences I could have before Haas.

Bill was the professor leading this workshop and he immediately captured us with his unique approach to communication, public speaking and people in general. The workshop was full of activities that allowed us to get to know each other better, while improving our ability to communicate regardless to our country of origin.

Bill was also our professor in the Leadership Communication course during fall A, and here too he managed to create a learning experience that was unlike any I’ve had before. He built a wonderful team of GSIs (Graduate Students Instructors), which were second-year students that practically led the class and I don’t think there is even a single person in class that didn’t become a better public speaker by the end of the semester.

Bill spent the last few months in Madagascar as a communication consultant for the government there. He was extremely excited about this opportunity and told us lots of great stories in class. unfortunately, after only few hours of intense gastric illness, Bill passed away last Sunday in the small village of Maronsetra on the East coast of Madagascar.

We will all miss him at Haas, his great sense of humor, his unconventional way of thinking, his ringtone (Hendrix’s solo in All Along the Watchtower) and most of all his genuine passion for people and for experiencing life to the maximum.

Unbelievably, yesterday was our last final test of this semester. Yes, as weird as it may sound, a quarter of the academic part of this journey is behind me. This half semester we studied Accounting, Finance and Strategic Marketing (fascinating!). And now we move on to a 5 week break which will be mostly dedicated to preparations for the internship search that will actively start on the Spring semester.

I mentioned it is a quarter of the academic part, because from a calendar point of view there is tons of activity happening during breaks as well. For example, during this winter break there are academic trips to India and Brazil and student organized trips to Israel and China. During spring break there is a student trip to Japan and an academic trip to Vietnam, and on summer break we all hope to work for our internships, and about a third of the class also participates in IBD - a course which involves consulting to a real company, mostly in developing countries, with a trip of 3 weeks during summer break to finalize the project on the actual company’s location.

Since I haven’t written in a while, I carry a heavy debt to you guys (I’m tempted to say that this is a risk-free debt, but that’s a joke that only finance students will understand, and even than it’s debatable how funny it really is). So my plan for winter break is to make sure I write here retrospectively on all the major events that happened in the second part of last semester, together with updates on activities during he break itself.

I conclude this post with the immortal words of our accounting professor (as can be also seen on our t-shirts in the picture below): In this world, first there’s sex, then accounting, then everything else.

Prospective students at Haas hear a lot about how the school is highly student-driven, and that there are numerous opportunities to get involved even from day-one. I can now testify first-hand that this is absolutely true.

DMEC & >play
One of the most exciting clubs at Haas is the Digital Media and Entertainment club, which brings together people with passion for technology and specifically its impact on the consumer world through digital media, such as TV & cinema, computer games, web applications, the living room and even your car.

The club organizes the >play conference, which brings together industry experts from all the areas mentioned above and more, to create an unforgettable annual event. The event provides a unique opportunity to meet both the newest startups in the Media and Entertainment sphere, as well as the latest innovations from the well established players in this market. The main attractions of the event are traditionally its great keynote speakers, the expo that demonstrates the hottest new technologies and the panels who bring in industry leaders to hold fascinating discussions about the latest trends. This year, the >play conference takes place on November 15th.

Getting Involved
When I applied to Haas, I knew I wanted to take an active part in the DMEC activities, I just didn’t realize how fast this would happen. Even before arriving at haas, the >play committee published a message in the new admits Google group, inviting first year students to volunteer in helping organizing the event. Truth is, I assumed that we will get mainly administrative or logistical tasks. Nevertheless, I’ve expressed my interest in helping with the panels. Only a weeks after arriving to Haas, we had a first meeting with the second year student who is responsible for the panels, and he told us about opportunities of getting involved with existing panels. However, he strongly encouraged us to come up with ideas for new panels and suggested a few topics that we can follow up on.

Making it happen
One of the topics suggested was a Gaming Panel. I’ve long ago marked the gaming industry as one of the most exciting and innovative ones, and looked for ways to getting involved in it, and this was a great opportunity to do so while also helping >play becoming even better. I joined forces with several classmates, and with the help of many students from both years we gradually started forming the list of participants for our newborn panel.

New business models in gaming
The main theme of the >play conference this year is Disruption, so we examined several ideas for our panel that could fit this theme. We eventually came up with a list of companies who are redefining the ways in which games are delivered to customers - from live online game servers through episodic gaming to user-engagement games, the panel started to include an amazing list of people, and they were all extremely responsive and excited to take part in >play.

I proudly present the >play 2008 gaming panel:

Quite exciting, isn’t it?

A little about the academics part of the first year.

Our first semester is split into two 7-week quartiles (so we have Fall A and Fall B). On each such quartile we have 4 courses, so by the end of the first semester, we’re past 8 courses.

The first semester is comprised of core classes, which means that we don’t choose our classes but rather the entire class is assigned to the same core courses so that all of us have the same business fundamentals.

This semester we take
- Data and Decisions (also known as Statistics)
- Economics for Business Decision Making (aka micro economics)
- Organizational Behavior (which I find fascinating)
- Leadership Communication (learn how to speak in front of people)

Each of these is taken twice a week and is tightly crammed into a dense period of 7 weeks.
Now, unlike in Israel, the American high education system is based on a unique assumption that students actually prepare stuff for class. This means that before each of those classes we have cases to read, which can take from 30 minutes to 3 hours per class.

In addition, the first two classes on the above list also require us to hand in a weekly problem set, which take about 1/2 a day each. Doing the math, this sums up to quite a lot of work, and that’s before mentioning the extra-curriculum activities (on which I’ll write in a separate post).

Since it’s a seven week period, we already had our mid-terms (the mid-course tests) a week ago, and finals are approaching in two weeks. Believe me when I say, this is intense. But it’s also really interesting and exciting, and we do learn lots of material in a short period of time, which brings a great feeling of progress and satisfaction. Just remember that if it’s the easy life you’re looking for, an MBA here is probably not for you.

After 6.5 years working for SAP I was quite sure no amount of work overload can catch me unprepared. After all, I was getting hundreds of mails per day, working crazy hours and facing unrealistic deadlines as my daily routine.

I was caught unprepared.

There are several categories of activities that fill our days: academics, career-related and social activities. And I’m only taking the personal/family category out of this list since Daphny is not here yet. Looking at each of these separately looks quite OK - each can easily fill a tight working week. But combining them together - we’re talking real challenge here.

Our days are filled with cases to read and analyze for each class, tons of long problem sets to solve, study-group projects (including observation of a real company of our choice in Organizational Behavior course), mid-terms that are approaching REALLY quickly, Speaker Series where people from different industries come to speak on their daily work (some examples include Product Mgmt, Consulting, Corporate Strategy, Entrepreneurship, real-estate and many more), brown bag introductory sessions to various professional industries, company presentations (starting next week!), club activities, football games, bar-of-the-week night outs, theme costume parties and that’s really only a partial list.

(my calendar for next week - not final)

So I sleep very little, trying to catch up on all these activities while not missing any of the opportunities that really matter to me and still stay sane, but it is so exciting and full of promise that I couldn’t be more happy with the choice I made of coming here and doing this.

I thought after two weeks of pre-school camps, I had quite a good idea of what this is all about. I was wrong. Big time. On Monday the real thing started with O-Week (Orientation Week). This amazing week was organized mostly by second year students and was an unforgettable experience both professionally and socially.

Cohorts
The first day started by announcing the cohort and study group of each of us. This is quite important so I’ll probably dedicate a post to that. For now I’ll just say that I’m an Oski (which is naturally the best cohort) and have a really great study group.

Speakers and sponsors
During the week we had some remarkable guest speakers (listed by order of appearance):

• Richard Lyons - our new dean who came back to Haas after serving as Chief Learning Officer for Goldman Sachs
• Bob Haas - Former CEO of Levi Strauss
• Priya Haji - Haas Alumnus 2003, CEO and Co-Founder of World Of Good
• Tom Kelley - Haas Alumnus 1983, General Manager of IDEO
• Bill Jasper - Haas Alumnus, CEO of Dolby Labs.
• Barbara J. Desoer - Haas Alumnus 1977, President of Mortgage, Home Equity, and Insurance Services, Bank of America Corporation

This was a unique opportunity to meet managers who leads organizations of billions of dollars and ask them any question we could think of. In addition to these amazing speakers, we solved a Dolby Labs business case in marketing and worked with Adobe, Deloitte Consulting and Chevron on finding innovative solutions to real challenges they are currently facing.

Outdoors
Today (Thursday) was all outdoors. First half of the day was dedicated for community work. We drove to the Alameda Point Collaborative, a unique neighborhood in alameda where amazing activities for the community are being done. Some of us went gardening, some went landscaping, and my group was helping at a unique bicycle shop that runs some wonderful projects within the neighborhood.

The second half of the day was dedicated for the cohort olympics. All four cohorts raced each other in games such as volleyball, ultimate frisbee, soccer, Beiruth (yes, it is a game) and more. Whenever possible, beer was added to the game as a requirement. Each cohort was also required to come up with a cheer, a poster and a skit. Since Oski was last year’s winner of the olympics we were under quite a pressure to repeat this achievement, and I’m proud to say we did!

Alcohol
Everywhere and all over the place. Every day ends with an event that includes alcohol. Whether it is a reception, a night out at the Bear’s Lair (the campus pub) ot a consumption function, beer and wine are available (usually for free) and in large quantities. not to mention the olympics which included beer all day long. And to conclude the week tomorrow (Friday) night the entire class is going on a bar trip where we will tour San Francisco’s finest bars one after the other.

All in all, everything is more than amazing so far. Next week school starts, and it’s a whole new opera then.

The best school-related tip I can give those of you who plan to earn their MBA here, is to prepare yourself before school starts.

We are currently in a pre-school camp which is supposed to bring us all to the basic level in quantitative methods (math), finance and accounting that is required later in the real MBA courses.
It seems that most of the stuff isn’t that hard, but the teachers assume you have some kind of a background on it, so the pace of teaching is quite fast. For people who have seen this content for the first time, or for those who need a slower pace to grasp math related topics, this can be quite challenging.

Preparing is your best way to avoid confusion and keep your confidence up before school starts. The best way if found for doing so is by using one of the several available MBA preparation kits, which summarize only the needed content in a very clear and effective way (at least based on my very limited experience with them).

A cheaper alternative is to simply contact your school and ask for the materials you should prepare for, and make sure to cover those topics you don’t already know. Coming prepared can really make a huge difference in the way you start the degree.

This monday, pre-school camps started. There are two modules - Math/Finance/Accounting and Communication Skills, both intended to allow students who need to strengthen these topics to get the required starting level before classes begin.

Actually, about 70% of the class registered to at least one of the modules, since it’s a great way to both make sure you still remember stuff - even if you already learned it at a university level - and also a wonderful opportunity to socialize with your new classmates before the real pressure starts as the semester begins.

If these two days are representative of the next two years, I can already say that the MBA experience is going to be just as good as promised:
First, and most important - the people in our class are the most wonderful group I could think of - with tons of experience, diversity in backgrounds and an amazingly open spirit. I met so many exciting new people, and with such classmates this experience simply can’t be less than remarkable.

Second, the professors are really great. I met two so far, and both were very accessible, welcoming questions (even silly ones) and really funny. And that’s before mentioning their teaching skills, which were far beyond what I’ve met so far at most of my teachers.

Third, the social experience is extremely vivid and fun. A night before school started the incoming class got together at Jupiter - a really nice Berkeley pub, and yesterday we had a BBQ on a lovely garden in the UC Village, which is a neighborhood of lovely houses owned by the university and used for housing graduate students with families.

With all the excitment around, it’s easy to forget (or repress) that there’s also some studying to do, but after today’s calculus class (which dealt mostly with differential math…yay…), reality came right at me - it’s really happening, and it will require a completely new set of mind.

Every university presents this question in its application essays in one way or another. Sometimes it is accompanied by “why now?” and always by “why at our school?”

Actually, it is a good question. Why MBA? Why now? Why in the USA?

Well, as always with good questions, there is no one simple answer, but if I have to sum it all into one word I would choose “opportunities”. It’s an opportunity to learn from the best teachers in this field; an opportunity to sit for two years in a class that is comprised of amazingly talented and unique people, who have done a thing or two (or twelve) in their lives; an opportunity to brainstorm innovative ideas with students of other faculties (let’s say, computer science for example), and when talking about top 10 schools, it usually means that these other faculties are also among the top in their field globally; an opportunity to reach out to alumni of your school who are on assuming leading position in every industry one can imagine; an opportunity to meet with some of the world’s leading managers as they come on campus to lecture, present or participate in conferences; an opportunity to open up to global ventures and mindset; and the list goes on and on…

Sounds quite promising, doesn’t it? I’m still at a point where this list is theoretical, but from many talks I’ve had with current students, I get the impression that is their daily realty. Worst case, I’m going to learn in a place that is REALLY good in marketing. I guess that’s not a bad thing when you’re majoring in business.

Personally, I can’t wait to start.

Next week it’s happening. I’m traveling to Berkeley to pursue an MBA degree from the Haas School of business at UC Berkeley.

I guess that saying that I’m excited would be somewhat of an understatement, but hey, we love understatements, don’t we?

I’m traveling with our two cats, and my wife will join me with our dog during September. The house here is almost packed, housing in Berkeley is arranged, I registered to the necessary pre-school courses, flight arrangements are done, and yet, somehow tons of bureaucracies are still to be covered before departing. I guess changing continents is not that simple (not that it seemed so at any point, but still…)

In this blog I will share my personal MBA experience, which promises to be a once-in-a-lifetime one, along with my impressions on the culture shock which is bound to happen with such a move. You’re all more than welcome to read and comment.

Yours,

Elad