Surviving...

Finished the first 4 weeks of classes. Got 6 classes this term, excluding my daily Spanish classes. I don't know how I am going to handle them. Accounting is plain hard. (Don't laugh, it is.) Decision analysis (my favorite) got too many stats/probabilities/judgment/"act of god" variables. Marketing has long cases. OB, not bad, basically like social psyc and behavior economics. Managerial communication, pretty laid-back. Analysis of Business Problems, the wild card.

During my first few weeks I have been diligently following my promise of a cultural/historical/tourist thing once every two weeks. But once the case load started kicking in, hehe, "Houston, tenemos un problema."

Academic life is quite hectic here. I got backlogs of email that I need to reply to. Then I got my internship stuff I need to work on. And most importantly, Spanish. I'm getting myself a tutor. I don't want to leave Barcelona only able to say "queria este". Oh yeah, we are on our 4th past tense now.

I actually got a pretty bad cold now (my third once since getting here) and the timing isn't any better. I'm suppose to write a script for one of our movie project by tonight. Actually, I promised to have two different versions. We are meeting at a friend's place for dinner and discussion. From last night to today, I have been gulping Tylenol like crazy. Well, not that crazy, I'm still within the max. of 8 gelcaps within 24 hours limit. At least I'm doing something fun. Script-writing is one of the few theatrical thing I haven't done yet. Pretty surprised when during our group meeting, a group member very seriously said that I should be the script writer. Reminds me of my dad who told me to write a book. Ha, me write? I can barely write in complete sentences. For now, I actually have the perfect scenes in my head. Now I need to put them on paper.

Last night I went to a friend's place for dinner. Her girlfriend is such a great cook. Nice to have homemade Taiwanese food. I just kept on eating and eating. (Yeah, me a piggy.) Wednesday is a holiday and I'm meeting up with a few friends for lunch. Originally I was going to cook, I even wrote a menu. But, considering that I don't think I'll feel that much better after only 2 sleep-deprived days, we will probably eat out.

Okay, I need to work on the script. Hopefully I'll become the next Stephen Gaghan.

The Start.....

This past Tuesday, official start of the MBA program. Actually, it was the first day of the orientation week, and everybody (in all 3 sections) came. (I think.) For some reason, my eyes started hurting (eye pressure shoot straight up) and then my head started hurting, and then I started feeling noxious again. Don't understand why. This used to happen when I was working or when I was studying for my GMAT. But these few days, I weren't even really looking/reading/staring at anything too long. Guess that this is a sign for me to go see a doctor here in Barcelona.

I meet with my group this week. Among us, there is a British, a Japanese, a Indian, 1.5 Americans (I'm the .5, but on record, I'm counted as a whole American), a .5 Taiwanese (yeah, that's me), two Spaniards, a Portuguese, a Polish and a Dutch. Quite an interesting group. People with different background. And only two women. (Quite a change from Wellesley and from Deloitte.) We already worked on a case study together also on a class activity (making paper planes). They will be my study/project buddies for the entire year. Going to be quite an experience I think.

We just had two days of career workshop, working on our CV and receiving advice on how to go about figuring out what we want to do. I-banking and consulting recruiting is starting right now. And after all those banking and consulting presentations, I remember exactly why back during my junior year at Wellesley I decided that banking wasn't my thing. And I remember why I really REALLY love consulting. But after a talk by a professor (former consulting executive, headhunter...) I remember why I left Deloitte for Spain to get a MBA. Need to talk to a few people to help me find my path.

This weekend, I have been trying to finish the cases we are going to discuss in these few days. Reading them is okay. I read much longer and denser papers back in college. But brainstorming ideas and coming up with solutions is quite a new thing for me. (Well, not that new. I did that all the time at work.) I like the cases. It's weird reading things for academic that aren't really academic. I mean, man, those poli-sci papers I read in college were like foreign language. So dense and so abstract at times. These case studies I have now seems like short stories. Me very happy. We have assigned seating for the entire term. And I was assigned to sit on left (professor's left) which happens to be many professors' blind spot. Didn't really want to move until I realized that I have a hard time seeing the far right blackboard (professor's right, my left). So, asked if anybody wanted to switch places with me. Now, I'm in the middle (a bit towards the professor's right). Good, because if I raise my hand the professor will see me. (About 50% of my grade is dependent on class participation.) Bad, because if I start dozing off, the professor SURELY will see me. Let's see how it goes.

Remember me saying that I'm going to do a cultural/historical/touristy thing at least once every two weeks. Seems like I'm doing a good job with it. Friday night a few of us went to a Mozart's Requiem concert. The music was okay, but the building (La Palau de la Música) was amazing. No wonder it is an UNESCO World Heritage site.


My mom called me yesterday saying that Sunny was bit by a stray chow-chow. Poor girl, she must be so traumatized. She had to get stitches and I won't be able to see her until next April, the earliest. I tried talking to her via webcam but she wouldn't really respond. Looked quite depressed.