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.

And so, after more than 6 weeks of male bonding (between me and our two cats Nimitz and Fry), the girls (Daphny, my wife and Noozie, our dog) joined us boys here at Berkeley. Yay!

This is definitely a day for celebration, and the girls found the perfect way to do so together.

Now let the real fun begin!

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.

Around 5am last night, deep into my (short and unsatisfactory) sleep, I started hearing noises coming from the area of the cats door - which is installed on one of our walls that heads to the porch. As our cats are new to Berkeley they are not going out yet. Still, they are extremely interested in opening that door and take any opportunity to try and do so. Naturally, I assumed they are simply trying to open it again.

I woke up all dizzy and went there to make them stop so I can go back to sleep. To my surprise, both cats were sitting in front of the cats door, giving it their “hunt look”, all charged and ready for action. I was even more surprised to hear the noises continue even though the cats were not causing them.

At this point I became a little scared. I was pretty sure there’s a thief trying to break into the house (well, not a very talented one considering the level of noise he was producing. Coming to think of it now, he had to be a really tiny thief if he tried to break in through the cats door). I turned on the light on the porch and looked out. I was amazed to see a beautiful animal staring right back at me - a raccoon! A real raccoon at my porch! Here’s one thing that would not have happened to me in Israel…

We stood there for about 20 seconds, just staring at each other, not sure what to do next. After recovering from the shock I ran for my camera, but when I came back he was already gone. My landlord explained to me that the raccoons learned how to open the cats door and were using it occasionally in the past to sneak into the house and steal some of the the cat food. Quite impressive, isn’t it?

Finally, the day has arrived. After 3 weeks of living at my extremely nice and welcoming neighbors’ place, I moved this weekend to our permanent rented home in Berkeley.

UC Berkeley has a really nice place where married graduate students can live. It is called the UC Village, and it’s a huge neighborhood of town houses owned by the university, with large apartments for such students to come with their families. Living in the village is way cheaper than any other alternative, and it includes all utilities (electricity, water, internet, cable-tv etc.). It also has a great community of students as your neighbors, which is great.

Unfortunately we couldn’t live in the village as we were bringing our pets along, and pets are not allowed there. We quickly discovered how crazy the real-estate market in Berkeley is. People actually have to dress up and bring financial history, resume and recommendations to the meeting with the landlords. Situation is even worse when pets are involved, as there are literally no places that allow pets.

That’s why we were so lucky to find our home, which is owned by a lovely Israeli couple who are also pet-friendly. There aren’t enough words for me to describe how wonderful our new home is. It is an old Berkeley home, with 3 bedrooms, wooden floors, a flourishing garden, a nice deck and lots of light and green all around. It really is beautiful and we were extremely lucky to get it. Naturally, I was looking forward to the day the house becomes available and I can move into it.

When that day arrived, the first challenge was to move the cats. While Nimitz went into his moving cage unaware of any surprise awaiting for him, Fry was much more reluctant to cooperate. It took me about an hour, lots of treats and a few scratches on my arms to move him to his new home as well.

Sagy from my class and his wife Moran joined me then to start moving my stuff from the old place to the new one, and make sure we leave the former basement clean and tidy. They were absolutely amazing (thanks, guys!) and with their help we could finish the move in less than an hour.

Since then I’m arranging stuff, and helping the cats (and myself) get used to our new home. As you can imagine, they were not happy with the move, as it was their second in less than a month (cats don’t like changes). The first night here was a nightmare of Meowing, but I think they are gradually getting used to the place. Each found a spot he enjoys and they are more quiet and relaxed. We’re now all looking forward to Daphny and Noozie (our dog) joining us next month.

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.

Today was my 5th day in Berkeley, and although it’s a bit early, here are some first impressions:

The city is absolutely lovely. Green, sunny and clean, but still keeps a feeling of a place that’s a bit off the standard. It’s the beginning of August and the days are sunny, but not extremely hot, and the night are rather chilly (which is quite a shock coming from Tel Aviv at this time of the year). The most appealing thing about the whether is that there is no humidity, so even after a long bike ride (and there are many of those), you don’t sweat too much.

Everyone rides bicycle here, and there are tons of stores that sells professional bicycle equipment. I think yesterday I rode more than I did my entire life.

There is also an extremely high sense of ecological awareness that can be seen not only with the city recycling program, but also with the amount of hybrid cars and solar houses.

People wake up early and go to sleep early. Most coffee shops in one of Berkeley’s main streets were closed by 9:30 (!) on friday (!!) night.

And there are also spiders. Tons of house spiders (the small ones with the little tummies and the long legs). They’re everywhere.

Expect a dedicated post for each of these impressions in the near future, but all in all, it seems like an amazing place to spend the two years of my MBA degree in.

After a day or two of recovering from the flight and the shock of realizing that this is not a two-week visit only, the time has come to start getting things done.

Making things done in America is quite easy IF you know the rules and follow them strictly. If something goes wrong, however, things start crashing like a card tower. So I carefully planned my Friday - First a Student Card, then a Bank Account and finally a Cell Phone.

Unfortunately (and after waiting for an hour for nothing), I learned that I can only issue my student card starting next year.

Opening a bank account was quite easy, but the cell phone required a huge deposit since I don’t have any US credit history.

Now, let’s talk a bit about credit history - one of the vicious inventions the human mind ever came up with. It basically gives each person a rating based on his history in meeting payments. In order to start building a credit history you must buy things with your credit card and pay for them on time. To get a credit card, and this is the really nice part, you must have credit history, or at least a Social Security number, that will allow you to apply for a pre-paid credit card that will allow you to build your credibility until you have proved you’re worthy of a credit card.

All this happens in America, where personal confidentiaityl is one of the most important values, right? But your financial history seems to be above that, so it’s available to everyone by demand. Without a credit history, no one will give you anything here, unless you bring substantial guarantees that you will pay your bills.

Anyhow, I simply gave a really large deposit, and got myself a new cellphone plan (which seem to be cheaper then in Israel in terms of what you get in return for your money, specially around cellular web access). And as the nice lady that served me felt really uncomfortable with this deposit, she went an extra mile trying to arrange me a really nice number, so not all was bad after all.