Q1 Ends, Q2 Begins

The whirlwind that was Q1 ended yesterday, and now the whirlwind that is Q2 begins. The focus of Q1 was squarely on academics. I got through it, but it wasn't pretty (not that it needed to be). Accelerated accounting was the toughest class, but also, surprisingly, it was the most interesting. I'm no fan of accounting, but the cases we did illustrated that general managers need to know enough about accounting in order to make informed management decisions.

My other classes varied in quality but were generally good. My heart just wasn't in Finance. I did finance in undergrad and having worked in it, I view this subject as too theoretical. Statistics was interesting and should be especially useful for me, though the pace was slow. Marketing was fun and well taught. Healthcare Systems is a full semester class that often seems too high level to be practical.

All in all though, I was pretty impressed with the classes in Q1. Most of my classes had cold calling which I think is a great way to elicit class participation. The quality of discussion was high and few comments were extraneous. Lastly, people mostly showed up on time and were attentive, which was in stark contrast to a lot of my engineering classes, where there was very little classroom discipline.

Now Q2 begins, and the focus shifts from academics to recruiting. I am focused on industry companies and start ups with a preference for start-ups. Right now, I'm interested in product marketing positions because I think this will put me on the path to general management (having P&L responsibilities), and hopefully to CEO one day. In terms of classes, I will be taking Managing People at Work, Competitive Strategy, Healthcare Systems, and Medical Devices. This set of classes will be less technical / quantitative then Q1 classes.