Yesterday, was one of the best days of my MBA

Yesterday was one of those days where everything just seemed to click into place. If only Butler had beat frickin' Duke, the day would have been perfect. Yesterday's highlights:

• Managed to pull together a financial negotiation with another team in hours after we found out that our results were due a day earlier than what we had scheduled for, stuck to our guns based off of our financial evaluations, and walked away from a pretty good deal (that probably did go down in real life) when the other team wouldn't budge and we thought they were taking advantage of us
• Really started to understand venture capital term sheets after having written our own as an assignment this past weekend, and negotiated with a team representing the entrepreneurs based on a real life deal. On presenting our results to the class, the VC who actually made the deal cut all of us to shreds when we'd done something stupid... I started to get it, and realized how little I had actually understood this entire process - learned more from one assignment and the subsequent class than I had the entire preceding semester
  
• Started to grasp the underlying methodology for alternative investing (PE, Hedge Funds) in a mindset that had never occurred to me in the slightest before in a seminar taught by the guy that started Goldman Sachs' PE practice. As a bonus, he told us how he'd gotten to that position in what ended up being a pretty fascinating life story... Also provided a mantra for a mindset on life:

  "you never know where life will take you, so don't be afraid to go there"

• Went to a meeting with Sloan's IT division to find out that a lot of stuff I'd been pushing for for a year will get done soon, and even more cool things that I couldn't have foreseen
  
• Post-MBA plans got a lot more solid, and in a very good way
  

Independence Day

Nevermind that it's 15F outside, today, we celebrate our Independence Day! Done with Fall Semester 2009, despite yesterday's Finance II final being way tougher than expected. On to a little DC, NYE, and finally Vietnam!

Taking a breath

So, for the first time since I went to Iceland in what feels like a year ago, I took 1.5 days semi-off from projects, problem sets, and etc. This all makes me feel thankful for Thanksgiving, but also made me start thinking... what have I given up? I'm trying to maximize everything that I'm in school for - learning, networking, clubs, projects with companies, being successful overall... but there are only 24 hours in a day.

For the longest time, I've rolled out of bed, started to work, and been doing that until I put my head back down on my pillow. Even on the off chances I go out for a bit, my mind is still on what I've just spent the past 14 hours on. I don't have fun. Luckily, my friends still care enough to send me happy Thanksgiving emails or texts despite the fact that I've fallen off the face of the Earth. What happened to going to the gym, reading for pleasure, playing musical instruments, recording, and generally enjoying life. I have three more weeks to hold on for, less actually - and then back to the drawing board.

The MBA Life Equation