Its official…I have survived my first two weeks as a second year. Refreshed and rejuvenated from the summer, I am back in Austin and ready to learn.

Everything is going great so far, although my 2-inch binders on my bookshelf are quickly overflowing with course packets and HBS cases.So far, I expect my favorite classes this semester to be Nonprofit Management and Gathering Resources and Launch. Nonprofit Management is a class that I am taking outside of McCombs in the School of Social Work. I am the only non-MSW (Master in Social Work) student in the class and was quickly pegged as the “MBA” on my first day. The professor, Suze Miller, is great and is currently working in industry and running her own nonprofit. She has arranged the class so that the students will leave equipped with the basic every-day knowledge of how to run a nonprofit (i.e., how to establish 501(c)3 status, how to manage a budget, human resources legal issues, the art of fundraising, etc.). I think this may be the most practical class I’ve taken yet.

The other class I mentioned, Gathering Resources and Launch, is an entrepreneurship class taught by the MBA Assistant Dean, Christopher Meakin. I can already tell by the first few classes that this course is going to challenge my creativity and force me to think outside of the box. It’s so easy to get trapped analyzing cases with the same frameworks and analysis, but Professor Meakin pushes us to brainstorm and be as innovative as possible. He’ll make entrepreneurs out of us yet.