One Eighth the Wiser

I'm one eighth the way into my MBA. And knowing how much work it takes to not want to crawl into a hole come exam time, I'm really trying to get ahead and stay ahead. I have a fresh set of professors, a fresh set of classes, and fresh set of issues to be named later. I'm taking World Economy, Operations, Marketing, and Finance and the best part is that on Mondays and Wednesdays I'm done at noon which means I have time for the gym. I felt rejuvenated just walking to the gym on Monday. I felt like my arms were going to fall off on Tuesday though but it was worth it.

My Finance professor is awesome. He waxes poetic about love and finance and how the two are related. He insists that instead of writing out decimal points such as 43.88 you just write 43.love. What are decimals anyway in the scheme of life, he says, life is about love. This guy loves Finance and he loves to teach and it's kind of inspiring. In fact, if you aren't inspired by this guy I'd say you probably have a lump of coal for a heart. All around business school you see people pouring themselves into the things they love, whether it be Accounting, environmental issues, strategy competitions, saving the whales, or even getting drunk at Thursday happy hours. I've never ever met a bunch of people so damn passionate about what they do. Sometimes it scary.

...And then the Recruiting Machine rolls through. It's a big machine, with lots of fancy guns that spit out fancy appetizers and tote bags. The Recruiting Machine lures people with the promise of huge salaries, signing bonus, and shiny blackberries, and best of all the Recruiting Machine comes to you. Right to your door in Ann Arbor.

"Sorry Optimus, but unless that gun is shooting out mini crabcakes you are yesterday's news"



And don't get me wrong, the Recruiting Machine is a beautiful thing. It offers opportunities that you really could not get (or would have a very hard time getting) anywhere else in the world. The Recruiting Machine says "Hey man, you want to work in Hong Kong for the summer, I can make it happen. You want to do a product launch for Apple, come talk to me." And not only that, the Recruiting Machine is going to take you out for dinners and tell you about these awesome opportunities. You're going to trade in that Top Ramen for some tuna tartar over soba noodles. But here's the rub. While we are stuffing our faces, telling "our story", and walking around in our suits 3 days a week we start to forget about what we really love.

Okay, I'm not sure where this post is going but I'm going to propose what I call the "Good Life Test". Kanye West has a song out called "Good Life" and every time I hear it I think of doing the things in my life that I love the most. Now I admit, I can't make a career of standing on the beach in Amagansett and throwing fly patterns into the ocean (or can I?), but this song makes me think of my perfect future job, which I'm hoping allows me to be happy and thus live a...everyone together now..."good life". I'm going to recommend you check out the video. Just listen to the song first sans video and then watch the whole thing together. Hopefully you'll have the same mini-epiphany that I had after hearing it. If you hear this and you think you should be, I don't know, a magician, then I say abracadabra. If you hear this and it makes you want to be a trader then I hope you get up every morning and pour yourself a big bowl of Wall Street Journal and go kill it on trading floor.

Here's the link to the song and video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmX9ci9Fczw

(I'd embed this video if I could. Sorry)

I guess the half-assed moral of the story here is that don't let the machine dictate who you are and what you can do. Pursue your own "good life" whatever that may be. Clearly on Thursday night my brain is fried from the week of class. So if you've stayed with me this far, thank you. I've struggled to write this so I can only imagine reading it. Hopefully I'll be back later this weekend with something more coherent.