CBS Orientation Week 1

Wow, I can't believe that I've finished my first week of grad school! Many second years have told me that orientation week is possibly one of the best parts of the entire business school experience and I can certainly see why -- awesome people, fun activities and free food... what more can you ask for!

Without further ado -- here's my recap!

Sunday, August 21
The night before orientation officially began, we had a student reception at Lerner Hall. The event was the first time that many of us all our entire class, squeezed into one reception hall (all 549 of us!). Walking into the building, I had no idea what to expect but I was blown away by the shear number of people in the room. I thought I had done a pretty good job of getting to know some of my classmates during the week I had been in town, but there were so many new faces!

The highlight of the evening was hearing Dean Hubbard and Mary Miller speak about our class and about the great things to come. We also got to hear from our GBA president and PA Chair. Everyone did a wonderful job getting us all pumped up about the school year. After hearing them speak, you couldn't help but feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. CBS has produced a ridiculous number of outstanding and influential alums and hopefully, maybe 10 years from now, it'll be us that the school brags about!

Afterwards, we headed to Pourhouse for the afterparty. Pourhouse is a bar near campus and supposedly a CBS tradition. The bar was packed and filled to capacity before I even got there so I never saw the inside... but the overflow bar was poppin' and I'm sure I'll have many other chances to visit in the future.

Monday, August 22
WOW. This was my first jam-packed day in a while and it definitely wore me out! Our day began at 8am and we had our schedules full until basically 3am the next morning. Arriving at school, we received our CBS swag (woohoo!!) and confirmed our cluster assignments (Cluster E, baby!). After a networking breakfast, we were shuffled into one of the main lecture halls in Uris for a presentation on diversity.

Diversity is one of those issues that I feel like gets brought up a lot in the workplace and in schools (and was even the focus of the non-profit I was involved in over the last two years). Typically, it results in a PC conversation about how we need to accept and be open to the culture/perspective of others. CBS hired a company to come in and talk to us about this issue and they did not disappoint. The facilitator warned us that she wanted frank conversation and boy, did she get it. The level of honesty in the room was so great, it both thrilled and terrified me. The conversation kept going to places that I never heard spoken aloud. All in all, it was a really eye-opening experience that brought a lot of key questions to light.

One thing that did happen was during that conversation, we were asked to break up into groups. My class at CBS is about 35% women, which is pretty good for a b-school but still means that women were outnumbered in the audience. Each group was required to have at least one women so we all became hot commodities! It was really interesting to be put in a situation where I was the sole "woman voice" during our discussions. A little uncomfortable at first, I soon really got into it and in the end, felt like I learned a lot and brought questions to light that I had never considered before. How do you become a women of power without becoming perceived as a bitch? Is it possible to get to the top without compromising who you are? Are women on top held to a higher standard? What do you do about it?

After that, we had our first meetings with our clusters. Man, it was like being back in high school again... and I loved it. There was a lot of cheering and chanting. It was great to switch gears after such an intense morning session. My cluster seems pretty awesome - lots of Texans and Californians and a whole bunch of international students. I'm really excited to see how we bond as a group over the next few days.

After lunch, we had two additional sessions on group dynamics and on the academic program in general. For the group dynamics seminar, we were challenged to create a product aimed at "improving the life of the ordinary NY public" using just duct tape. We only had 5 minutes to brainstorm and idea and then an additional 8 minutes to execute. My group ended up making a "MetroMit" -- basically a little mitt you can put on to wear on your hand as you grip the subway poles (which are really dirty). We even included a sleeve for your MetroCard! I thought it was actually quite clever and wouldn't be surprised if the idea caught on someday :)

Finally, we had a cluster wrap up session and we were introduced to our learning teams! My team is super diverse and includes a Spanish consultant, a Taiwanese PE guy, a finance girl from LA, an engineer from Belgium, and a former member of the military.

Tuesday, August 23
Tuesday was equally if not more insane than Monday. We had our first case study class and also our first actual assignment to complete as a learning team. It was really fantastic to see how we all interacted with each other. All learning teams are carefully crafted based off of your background and a CUTRI test that we were all required to take over the summer. The CUTRI test is one that helps you understand which team roles you naturally gravitate towards -- kind of like a personality test for teams. According to the test, I strongly gravitated towards the "team unifier" role (basically a team cheerleader). I can definitely see that in myself, but it was funny to see it on paper.

In the morning session, a professional team coach was brought in to teach us how to work in a team. We did a fun team-building exercise that required us to use our collective brainpower (and physical ability) to solve a problem. Afterwards we recapped and analyzed our performance as a team, so that we could better understand the natural process that we went through and what we could have done better/should continue to do going forward.

Today we also had our first case study class, taught by Professor Jick. In this case, the protagonist (a business owner) had to make a decision about an employee, his top salesman who work style is disruptive to the established work norms. Going through the case, we analyzed the situation from a 360 perspective and the professor even pitted people against each other during the discussion. The experience was so different from anything I had experienced in the classroom before. In my UG days, class was an easy thing to sit through -- you just had to stay awake enough to take notes. In business school, class is an active engagement, where all the students assume some responsibility for contribution and insight. It was a pretty cool experience and made me pretty psyched for what was to come.

After class, my cluster decided to hit the town and we brought the party to Parlour. I had my first official (full!) glass of beer here, lost a game of ping pong and assumed the very important role of "judge" in many games of flip cup. It was fun to hang out with my clustermates and bond with everyone. I ended up getting home around midnight and got a good night's sleep in preparation for the craziness that was to come on Wednesday.

Wednesday, August 24
To be honest, Wednesday was a complete blur. On Wednesday, we had two main lectures - one on values-based leadership and the other on corporate social responsibility. The theme of the day was very clear -- learn what your values are and who you are as a leader, then make sure to live it out, even during tough situations. At CBS, the community is very committed to the idea of responsible leadership. It's really refreshing and exciting to see how positively and warmly the students are embracing this concept.

Wednesday evening was truly an evening to remember! After class, CSB had chartered buses waiting for us to take us to the Lighthouse, a restaurant just off of the Hudson River. The event was downtown so we got to see a lot of NY on the drive down. Dinner itself was superb and probably the best meal I had so far. Free drinks abound, great music and awesome people made for a really wonderful dinner.

After dinner, we headed next door to 300 New York, this really hip bowling alley. Even though it had bowling lanes, it had much more of a club feel to it. The lights were dim, music was pounding, and the bar was poppin'! Even though I'm an avid bowler, I didn't bowl too much and spent the night dancing and chatting up a storm with my new classmates.

After bowling, the school hosted a clubbing event. By the time we were headed out of the bowling alley, it was pushing midnight. A few of us ended up cabbing it home early, and I'm so glad we did because I was POOPED by the time I got back to my apartment.

All in all, an awesome night!!

Thursday, August 25
The theme on Thursday was effective communication. In the morning we had a section about communicating in the team setting and how flexible teams are able to improvise to adapt to whatever challenges come their way. We had an improv group come in and show us some of their techniques as artists and teammates. At first, hearing that there was an improv group coming in, I was excited, scared, then nervous. Excited to potentially see a comedy skit, scared that I would have to be in it, then just nervous about the uncertainty of what was to come. It ended up being pretty awesome. A lot of the exercises that we did reminded me of when I took an intro to acting class at UCSD. It was fun to be silly for a bit and, of course, to hang out with my new clustermates.

In the afternoon, the class was all about communicating when giving a presentation. Mackenzie Brown, the company that lead the session, trains a lot of different clientele, including major firms that we'll probably be recruiting with. We went over all the different nuances of presentation style. Much of what you communicate is through your body movement and facial expression, so we went a LOT of time going over and practicing techniques that focused on your physical expression. I'm naturally kind of a perky and bubbly person and so I really had to focus on not being so fidgeting and controlling my natural gaze. To be honest, I feel like this is an area where I could really use more practice so I was excited and happy to have this opportunity to work on this area.

Thursday night was a late night, but for academic purposes (see, I told you I was going to school!). We had to put together a paper and a presentation on the case study that we had been going over the entire week. It was the first time our learning team had to put together a deliverable and it was a good dry-run to see and understand how we'd work together as a team. I know that it sounds kind of menial (like something we've all done since we started school), but after all the discussions this week, we really did take the time to analyze how to approach this project and how we'd interact with each other. Understanding team dynamics is a really important skill as a leader and, personally, I find team psychology really interesting!

Friday, August 26
Friday was a long day, spread out across the day. In the morning, we had to present our case study to our peer advisor. Our team did a pretty kick-ass job. As we all worked together, it was really interesting to see how everyone really did bring something different to the table. We had our finance whiz, our industry expert, our McKinsey guy... everyone had a different area of expertise and it was cool to see how it all worked together to help us complete this first project.

In the afternoon, we had a long break and a couple girls and I decided to use that time to hit up a happy hour :) It was fun chatting with the girls to share our initial impressions on orientation, the cluster and the experience overall. It was very SATC and got me really hopeful that I'll end up with a few good girlfriends after business school!

The afternoon class was all about self-awareness. I feel like this lecture was really timely and honestly, could have been really helpful when I had graduated undergrad too. The primary purpose of this lecture was to understand how you want to live your life -- on your own scorecard or on the scorecard of others. It's really easy to be swayed by society but for something like your career and life goals, it's important to really try to listen to your heart and do what makes you happy. At CBS, it sounds like the bulk of people try to go into banking or consulting. That's great and really cool, but it's important to stay grounded and remember why YOU came to school, so that at the end of this we all end up with our dream jobs :)

Friday night, we had our dancin' shoes on!!! CBS organized another clubbing event at 230Fifth, a super nice and trendy club/lounge in Union Square. The venue was really nice and its rooftop had unbelievable views of the city and the Empire State Building. It was PACKED with CBS'ers and their S/Os. We danced the night away and did some inter-cluster mingling. My cluster (cluster E baby!!) met up at several points throughout the night and did some cheering (though I'm pretty sure we got drowned out by the music). It didn't matter though -- we were having a good time :)

All in all, orientation was truly an awesome experience. Honestly, before coming to school, I got really nervous about moving to NYC, going to business school, making this huge career leap, etc. But now, I'm actually really excited about the challenge. I think the next two years are going to be a huge growing opportunity for me and I'm really excited to step up and run with it.

I'm humble but I'm also really hungry. The world better watch out!!

(Also during this week, there was a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Virginia and a hurricane. You know, just in case the week wasn't crazy enough...)

Till next time,
xoxo