B-School Blues

I managed to get sick over the Holiday, leaving me tired all the time, stuffed up, and drained. I nodded off during the rabbi's talk Sunday. He was a good sport about it, came over, asked me with a smile if I were tired, and I had to apologize and assure him it wasn't him. If I go back to that shul on Yom Kippur, he's going to wonder why.

I did finish Peter Robinson's Snapshots from Hell: the Making of an MBA this morning, and his experience was completely different from mine. Not only did I not recognize much of his school in mine, I didn't recognize much of myself in him, or even in any of his "composite characters." Am I the only one who's glad this trend of "composite" characters and mixing up timelines to create better stories has passed from "non-fiction?" It may make a better story, but you're always wondering how much of it is real, and since Robinson didn't find anyone particularly intolerable, there would have been little harm in telling it straight.

Robinson was a full-time student in the best business school in the country at the time. I'm a part-time student in a top-fifty program. He was taking five courses a quarter, I'm taking two, sometimes three. He was a "poet." I came in with a little business understanding, and a physics and math degree. What really struck me, though, was the difference in the curriculum. Even in 1988, and now in 2003, Stanford is much a more mathematical program, even for the non-finance specializations. Also, they required economics, and offered a History of US Business course. Since I'm a great believer in history, I'd love to see such a course instituted here. As it turns out, I'm sufficiently put out by not having at least a micro-economics course here that I'm reading an online Cal-Irvine textbook on the subject in-between quarters.