Thoughts While Leaving the Wharton Mother Ship

(I write this while sitting in the dinosaur position on United Flight 189, so it’s going to be short because it is way too cramped on these airplanes. Especially once the guy in front of you hits the recline button. Credit goes out to Andrew for using the term for this…I love it! It’s so descriptive of what happens when you try to type on your laptop when your forearms are pressed into your chest and the laptop is too high up on the tray table. Let’s just say it’s not that ergonomic.)

Wharton West Class32 is on the way home from Philly after our trip to the East Coast. WOW, what a four day experience! I’m exhausted and ready to catch up on some rest. I think I’ll lock my books in my attic for a few weeks. I am sooo ready to return to my family and be at my own home! But don’t get me wrong, it was a fantastic trip. This was my first trip to Philly, and I really enjoyed it. I can’t believe what happened in such a short amount of time. A LOT happened, so much that it’s overwhelming. It’s kinda like that feeling when you return home after summer camp when you are a kid…it was a total bonding experience.

Words don’t really do it justice, so when I get back I’ll post some photos and YouTube.com videos so you can appreciate what it’s like on the WEMBA East Meets West trip to Philadelphia. (Update: Because of a bug in YouTube.com with group permissions, I AM sharing them on YouTube with the whole world. So you do not need to email me if you’d like the password. And go vote for best performance!) Links to photos and videos can be found on the right panel. Enjoy!

Wharton Karaoke Contest Nominees:

Pretty Woman - Sean
Imagine - Ken Lennon
Unknown Chinese Song - Enoch, Jenn, Judy, Alice
Careless Whisper - Chinese Rock Star Enoch
Call Me - Eyal "The Bachelor"
Singing It - Judy and Manuel

Let me go down the mental checklist of stuff we did: Dinner in City Center, check. (Oh yeah, good thing I didn’t know what the crime rate was when we went there...Waterman covered that in STAT.) Gourmet French dinner, check. 40^th b-day party at Irish pub, check. Consuming Philly cheesesteak at 1am, check. Meeting a lot of our WEMBA East comrades, check. MGEC Prof Smetters sighting while walking to campus, check. Meeting some full-time MBA students, check. Tour of the Penn campus, check. Twenty two hours of class, check. Purchased too much Wharton merchandise, check. Too much class when I was way too tired, check. Passed out around 30 business cards, check. Karaoke singing, check. Videos of classmates singing, priceless!

Some observations:

• Visiting the Mother Ship was really great for us WEMBA West folks. I’m glad we came out here. I’d be willing to do it again in Year 2, since it sounds like it’s a non-starter for WEMBA East to come out West for classes.
• WEMBA East student satisfaction ratings are about 1-1.5 points above WEMBA West students on a scale from 1 through 10. My hypothesis is that being at the Mother Ship is a definitely advantage. Don’t bother to ask me i what my confidence interval is or what n is. Let’s just say that if you survey over a glass of cab, you throw stats out the window and just go by instinct, which is what I did. But I think I talked to enough people to validate my hypothesis. I’ll leave the rest to the powers that be.
• West is very diverse. I had a loooong discussion with a few classmates on the way home, and we agreed that when your class is 1/3 Indian and 1/3 Chinese plus a ton of other nationalities it makes for a richly diverse class. It’s certainly representative of the Silicon Valley technology industry, which is what most of our class is. But what affect does it have on the overall experience when compared with, say, the East Class 32? It’d be interesting to find out what other people think about this issue.
• There is definite interest in meeting up again with WEMBA East. Who knows if it’ll really happen, but a few of us in each class were talking about an unofficial Napa Valley wine tasting trip. Everyone agreed that we didn’t get to spend enough time together.
• WEMBA East is more organized than we are with respect to social activities. Out West, we use cell phones and text messages to find out where everyone’s going out after class. But the WEMBA East folks have flyers printed up with maps, directions, etc. Really organized! We’re more flexible about it I guess.
• Hot breakfast rocks. We want hot breakfast! Cereal and hard-boiled eggs just doesn’t cut it. East has it and we don’t. I made a mental note to lobby John for this one. If you agree, post a comment.
• Snacks keep us going in the West. West gets snacks, East doesn’t. You have to appreciate those cookies, beef jerky and candy bars mid-afternoon during classes. There’s fruit and Cliff bars for the health-conscious, which I try to eat too. But after a full day of class I need the caffeine and suger injections to keep me going. It would be awesome if we could get some mid-morning “second breakfasts”, in the immortal words of Peregrin Took from Lord of the Rings. Extra bagels, donuts, and fruit would go a long way. We gotta go lobby John.
• Having undergrads and FT MBA students around is both a good and a bad thing. The bad: it’s way more crowded and the bathrooms are almost twice as backed up. And twice as messy. You guys know what I mean. What is the problem, anyway? And we don’t get to be the sole focus of attention like we get in the West. The good: having the vast resources and all the incredible stuff going on at campus is really energizing. Those FT students made me feel really great about our tuition when someone said: “At least in the exec program you don’t have to quit your job and pay $120K!” The WEMBA tuition looked much better to me after I heard that! Another good thing: the feeling like you are back in your undergrad days is priceless!
• We need more bloggers. WEMBA East 32 doesn’t have a blogger. Looks like I am the only WEMBA West AND WEMBA East 32 blogger in the MBA Program for Executives. If any of the rest of start, let me know and I’ll cross link over to you. BTW<, I’m planning on creating a Wharton diary on the main page that links here shortly.
• Why blog? #1: it’s great for networking. Well, maybe not great, but at least it’s good in the sense that people have heard of you. I can’t count how many conversations I had where someone said “oh, you’re The Blogger, I’ve heard of it”. Now if they remember your name, then that’s a great thing.

That’s it…. out until after the OPIM final….hey, we got three weeks between sessions? Let’s head out to Poppy Ridge for 18 holes. Anyone in?

-Ron aka “Chairman P”