It has been a while since my last post and a lot has changed.  School is winding down and students are getting ready for their summer (or life after business school).  Overall, I have been really impressed with the entire job search process for my classmates.  Whether it was one friend who came to school to do consulting and is working with a top management consulting firm in Dallas, another friend who only came down to trade commodities and is doing so in Houston and New York, a roommate who wanted to work in corporate finance in the Bay Area and is doing just that (while receiving five other job offers), or two other friends moving to New York City working in sales and trading and commercial real estate investment banking respectively, the Texas brand (and economy) is alive and well.  The process has been very encouraging for my classmates and anybody going back to school.

A few high (and low) lights from the past four months:

- MBA Golf Scramble:  Organized by the MBA Golf Association, 21 teams of four went out to the beautiful Roy Kizer Golf Course for an MBA Golf Scramble with 1st and 2nd-year MBA’s.  Although windy, Jenner, Scott, Vimal, and I gave a valiant effort but were not victorious in the end.  From Scott’s rock-solid chipping to Jenner’s ability to successfully distract me on every shot, we had a lot of fun.  Special shout-out to Vimal for his 25-foot birdie putt from the fringe followed by a face first dive down the side of a fairway and hysterical screaming from the rest of us.

- Entire Job Search: Meet-and-greets into informal interviews into cover letters into thoughts of “My parents basement wouldn’t be THAT bad” into first-round interviews into final round interviews into “Wait he already heard back from Company XYZ?”  In the end it all ended up just fine and I’m looking forward to living and working in the Bay Area this summer in an energy finance role.

-  Advanced Corporate Finance: While the class name itself may not sound very exciting, Professor Jonathan Cohn was so good the class became one of the favorites for myself and a lot of my friends.  Professor Cohn’s ability to keep students interested and engaged on a range of topics (tracking portfolios, capital structure, leveraged buyouts, and corporate governance) while displaying a sense of humor made this class one of the most useful (and relevant) classes during my first year.

- Intramural Basketball: Speaking of screaming hysterically (see MBA Golf above), our MBA Intramural basketball team won the Graduate School League in dramatic fashion.  Our team, which was made up of five 2nd-year MBA’s and three 1st-year MBA’s (including me), finished the season undefeated.  In the championship game we were down by two with five seconds when our class president Kyle Beste dribbled the ball up and hit a three point shot at the buzzer.  We won by 1-point.  Chaos ensued.  Winning this game may have been the proudest of my athletic achievements since I graduated high school.  And by “may have been” I mean “was unquestionably.”

 

- Spring Break: Another perk of being a student are the breaks.  I chose not to go on a global trip, but I still took a road trip down to New Orleans with my classmates Scott, Jenner, Vimal, and Ryan.  We had lots of laughs.

- MBA Formal: Over 400 1st- and 2nd-Year students with their significant others went to the new W Hotel in Austin for our MBA Formal.  We had good fun that included everybody telling each other some version of the following by the end of the night:

• “I love you man!”
• “I love Austin/McCombs/Texas!”
• “When this is all over, we should get a place together”