Thinking in Bullets

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  • The Economics classes under Prof. Macaranas have been deep dives into economic concepts that even the case discussions have been centering on theory. I can't blame him though-- his personal mission is to help us become fundamentally sound with Economics and make us appreciate the economics forces around us. He has even required our MBA class to read the Wall Street Journal and try to make sure we understood the headlines and business sections, not just the features section.
  • Who would have thought?: The intensive and rigorous handling of Pre-MBA program a couple of weeks ago is turning out to be a masterful move by AIM. I personally feel that the Financial Accounting and Quantitative Analysis boot camps toughened me up mentally and, in a way, prepared me to the workload of the MBA proper.
  • Observation #1: I also realized the use of weekends during my MBA: catching up on my readings.
  • As of this writing, the CAN groupings have not yet been assigned. (CAN Groups are the learning teams each MBA student is assigned to discuss cases and do projects together for the first eight months of the program.) I think this is a good thing and a bad thing at the same time. It's bad because you do not know who you would be dealing with and some classes already need the groupings (e.g. Economics). But it's also a good thing because still manage to have a life.
  • This week is our first WAC week. WAC, or Written Analysis of Cases, is the time-honored AIM class and tradition where we would be given a case on 5pm Friday and submit our analysis on Saturday 8am. Prof. Ricky Lim before mentioned how each generation would bitch about how they had it before. He went something like this:
    • Early 1990's MBA: We didn't have the internet
    • 1980's MBA: We worked with WordStar with our WACs
    • 1970's MBM: We only had a typewriter when we did our WACs
  • Observation #2: Only MBA students from AIM would say "L-O-B!" instead of "Cheese!" when getting their group picture taken.

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