A Day in the Life of an Babson MBA Student
We in admissions like to provide soft and hard data about the life of a student in our programs. The hard data, for example, is all about number of courses and credits per semester, number of faculty, faculty/student ratio, the cost of housing, FAQ’s. The soft comes to you in the narratives we tell about why students chose our school—what adversity they overcame, what funny things happened to them on the way to the interview (or in the interview), what amazing partnerships developed between students and how a business grew. But isn’t it just fun to actually live, through words or pictures—what a student does in a day at his school?
This week’s post is devoted to Sid Surana, our student worker, One-Year MBA student, native of Mumbai, and really busy fellow. Here is his log, including pictures (which I took, so no reflection on Sid). Enjoy! Any feedback, feel free to post a comment, contact me at bselmo@babson.edu, or contact Sid at ssurana1@babson.edu!
Good luck. Think Big.
Best, Barbara
This is Sid. The following is a log of his day on April 10, 2012.
8:00 a.m .- Up and running around. Multi- tasking from reading cases to working on assignments to getting ready.
9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. – Arrive at Olin Hall for the first group meeting of the day (for the Strategy Execution class). People are still recovering from their night’s meager sleep, so meeting is very dull, with no discussions.
This is Olin Hall.
10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. – Arrive to work at Graduate Admissions. Meet a potential student and share my experiences about Babson. Take him to the Blank Center for Entrepreneurship.
11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. – Stroll down to Pandini’s (Olin’s café) and, read cases for the afternoon’s class, catch up with a few friends. Also keep thinking about my business idea (am trying to build a model that will help the medium scale industries in India install solar power for their own use with subsidies and bank loans).
12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. – Have lunch and complain, as usual, that we eat the same food everyday!
1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. – Attend the Strategy class. Sitting through it is a challenge because I am trying to keep off caffeine and haven’t had a lot of sleep.
4:30 p.m.- 5:00 p.m.- Meet with a Prof. Marty Anderson for guidance on my future goals and business idea.
5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. – Attend a speaker series put up by the General Management Club then head down for MBA Tuesdays to network with folks from Fidelity Investments this Tuesday’s sponsor.
6:30 p.m.- 7:30 p.m.- Another interesting group meeting for the Extended Enterprise Management course. (Lot to learn as most of the group finally hit their highest level of productivity).
7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.mm – Hang around on the couches by the stairs in Olin. Talk to friends and friends of friends about future goals and business ideas.
These are the couches, looking down from the stairs.
8:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. – Head back to Wood Side graduate housing and cook dinner. Dinner turns out to be for me and about 10 others who are around. Discuss sports / countries / cultures / ideas / professors / events / holidays among many other topics.
10:00 p.m. – 1:00 a.m. – Work on different submissions for the next day, write papers with other students. Overdose of caffeine to finish the Strategy Execution paper due tomorrow.
1:00 a.m. – Realize that I have been doing more talking and less work. Give the work up at this hour. Plan to wake up the next day early and finish it. (Which mostly NEVER happens).
1:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. – Waking up every couple of hours thinking it’s time to wake up. Fall back asleep mumbling. Sleep-talking all night about the work.
8:00 a.m. (Next day) – Realize that I have been repeatedly switching off the snooze button on my 7:00 a.m. alarm. Get up with an urge to finish work right away.