Various Updates

School Preparation
I am kind of thinking of waiving “Applied Business Statistics” in Fall A and taking “Analytical Finance” instead. Therefore, I will have the option of taking 2 electives in Fall B and would be more prepared for the summer internships in Winter A. So, I am kind of brushing through “Statistics for Managers” and “Accounting Basics” (a leisurely activity for now).

I also got the MBA View book a few days back and started panicking after seeing the initial schedules – well, I can see Cumulonimbus in the horizon. And the Corporate Presentations starts from the very second week of September – so an added pressure of intense focus before I jump in.

Laptops
I am kind of dwindling between the Dell Latitude D600 and the IBM ThinkPad T42, available through UMBS Website. IBM will be around $200 expensive – but it will have a better processor (not much, a difference of 0.1 GHz), lighter and better battery life. Whereas Dell has the upside of SXGA screen with 32MB Video Card. (T42 has XGA screen.) I am more leaning towards T42 since the laptop weight and battery life is more important than screen resolution. (Who has the time to play “Spiderman-2” in school?)

Leadership and Management
For the last few weeks I have been doing some read-up on some of the great business leaders like Jack Welch (“Jack Welch and the GE way”), Sam Walton (“Sam Walton” by Vance Trimble) and John Chambers (“The Eye of the Storm”) and I realized one single notion – Leadership is one heck common sense. One does not need an education to develop some of the traits shown by these great management innovators; it is somewhat inherently present or probably a congenital factor. Coming back to the age-old debate – Can Leadership be taught? Or can it be inculcated through years of experience and practice? Or is it genetic? My presumption is that “great leadership” is a human characteristic, which can neither be developed, nor inculcated…

But what about Management Science? Probably it makes sense to go to business school to learn accounting, finance, business strategy theories, and statistics… But not leadership…

Path
I need to kind of come up with a strategy for this blog – what I exactly want to write? How much time will I be able to extract in fall? Do I give it a specific theme? Or shall I keep it impersonal? Need a direction…