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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.

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.