Cycles

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With almost a month going into the 16 month MBA program here at the Asian Institute of Management, I'm starting to get a better feel of the working cycle of an MBA student. What seems to be an unending cycle of "case-discuss-exam-rest" is starting to emerge and like any other cycle, there times when you up there and there are time when you are down and out.

At this point in time, I think I'm starting to go to the "up" phase of my cycle:
  • I just received my score for the QA quiz last Friday and I'm glad to say I got a nice score in that one. (20/20)
  • As I've mentioned in a previous post, I got a decent grade in my LOB quiz.
  • On the first WAC, I got a decent HP-.
  • The AIM Blogger is rising up the Google search engine rank for the keyword "MBA Blogger" (Rank# 17 as of this writing).
  • I've also been able to find the time to play basketball with the other MBA guys.
However, there seems to be looming challenges, which would be the "down" cycle:
  • The Economics quiz is coming in two weeks. I've been having a lot of difficulty with Economics and I really need to step it up.
  • The second Language of Business (LOB) quiz is also coming soon. Four more chapters and more studying. A classmate once quipped that you only get one chance to study the topics before the exams. I'm starting to believe him.
  • There's a rumor that the third WAC would be on LOB. (This rumor seems to persist every week.)
They say what goes up must come down. I guess that "down" time maybe coming sooner than later.

--

Speaking of downturns, my group in Marketing Management (MM) received a beating during a presentation on case about gaining insight from market research data. Here's our dilemma: What value should a food product (in this case, a do-it-yourself pizza) that (a) appeals to kids and the whole family, (b) is perceived to have high quality and (c) is rated to be very convenient have for a the customer? We missed that one terribly by saying that it is its freshness. As soon as one of us blurted that out, our MM professor, Jun Miranda, was all over us.

We learned our lesson collectively and definitely would do better in the next marketing presentations.

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