Guest Post: Bad Dancer gives it the old college try

In my 1st, and only, post, I talked about how much fun pre-term was and how I was getting fat from drinking so much beer. Well, needless to say, 1st semester wasn’t quite the same party as pre-term, at least for her.

Now don’t get me wrong, the social scene at Wharton has been fantastic - between half-dressed pub crawls, happy hours, Thursday night parties and the Wharton Prom (at least I called it that), I had a great time. The major difference was how freakin’ hard Tiny worked, day-in and day-out. Not only was the rigor of schoolwork quite overwhelming, but between extracurriculars (Tiny has joined an MBA record 38 clubs), applications for internships, a variety of other random activities…man she worked her a$% off.

For example, Tiny and I are die-hard Phillies fans and we’ve been waiting for a season like this past one for almost 30 years. During our World Series run in October, it took everything in her power to take a 3 hour break from studying to watch each game. Tiny was even studying at a local bar before game 3, with dozens of other hammered Phillies fans around screaming and yelling and carrying-on! (note: she did take a few extra hours off to drink champagne on Broad Street when we won).

So, let’s get to me. Even though Tiny was working herself into a frenzy, I had a great 4 months. I played football with her Cohort and felt really welcomed by her classmates, we went to some great parties, had couples dinners with a lot of really interesting old, married people like ourselves, and I even started hanging out with a few of Tiny’s friends, even while she was home studying.

My experience was so good, I decided to apply. Last Wednesday, I hit submit and sent in my application for Fall 2009 admittance. Of all the great things I witnessed about Wharton these past few months, I’m not totally sure what made me decide to apply. Of all the excellent aspects of Wharton I’ve seen, #1 has to be the quality of people that Tiny is in school with. The amazing variety of personalities and diverse backgrounds, the good nature and intense bonding between classmates and how ridiculously brilliant most of them are, were all inspiring reasons to try and be a part of that culture (disclaimer: I am geographically challenged since Tiny will be in Philly for at least 1.5 more years and our long term plans are to stay in Philly, I couldn’t exactly explore the similarities of other great programs).

Now unfortunately, my GMAT score is nowhere near what Tiny’s was and falls slightly outside the Wharton middle-80th percent. Maybe I have a 5, 10, 15% chance of getting in? But I’m not worried – If I get in, amazing. If not, I’ll still get to share another year and change at Wharton with wifey and personally get a ton out of it.

By the way, the other reason I want to get in is so I can go on the Antarctica trek. I don’t give a crap about Finance, I want to hike across our southern pole and bring home a penguin as a pet. I’m sure it’d do well in the bathtub of our Center City apartment

What a Year

Wow. So much has happened in the last year that I can't believe how far I've come. Last year at this time, I had just found out I'd been admitted to Wharton. I was trying to figure out what to do with myself for the next 6 months. Today, I'm savoring a much-needed break and trying not to worry about whether I will score an internship offer and how hard the next semester will be academically. Night and day. Let's do a little year in review, shall we?

Wharton: Since I didn't post much about Wharton at all this semester, it's difficult to sum up. But I'll try to summarize the highlights:
I drank a lot. Maybe even more than I did as a Penn State senior. And I dressed in silly outfits more than a person probably should.
I passed MGEC and Accounting! Still waiting on a lot of grades, but I think I managed not to fail anything (fingers crossed).
I dropped 13 resumes and so far have 1 interview (that I won in bidding).
I became hyper-involved. So much so that I probably overdid it, but I wouldn't change a thing.
I challenged myself to step out of my comfort zone.
I blew off way more than I'd typically be comfortable with. Being that busy meant a lot of things just didn't fit in. Like sleep. And laundry.
I discovered Zipfizz
.
I realized that even a somewhat scaled back social life is still pretty expensive.
I finally started to get the hang of this networking thing.
I learned a lot about business, which is what I am here for in the first place!

Sports: This year has been, by far, my best sports year ever. My co-ed softball team won the championship for the 3rd time last summer (although I missed the championship because I was taking the math test!). My cohort won the flag football championship. I won in fantasy football. Penn State finally beat Michigan and won the Big Ten Championship and is playing in the Rose Bowl tomorrow. The Eagles, despite a somewhat wretched season, managed to pull off an unlikely historic win against Dallas to sneak into the playoffs (and send the Cowgirls home). And of course, the Philadelphia Phillies ended a 25-year drought for Philadelphia to become the world champions of baseball. Ah, I loved 2008!

P.S. Hi Arthur!

Finals

I just don't have the motivation I used to have for taking finals. I feel similar to maybemba, who said exams feel juvenile at this age. I definitely feel too old to be doing this. I am trying not to stress too much. I reached a high level of stress last week when I finally reached the end of my resume drops, only to realize that it was 7pm and I had an Accounting final at noon the next day (and had not studied at all yet). From that point I realized that stressing is not going to help me. Truthfully, grades mean little to me now with grade non-disclosure. I came here to learn and proving I've done so on an exam is just not important to me. So I'm just trying to do enough to pass. Or at least, I'm trying to get myself to treat studying that way, but I invariably stay up too late or start to get upset at points when I realize how much work I have to do ...
The nice thing is all my hard finals (accounting, linear programming) were last week. The remaining ones are open book or take home, so I just need to make sure I understand the concepts and get organized enough to be able to find stuff in my notes during the exam. My biggest obstacle is just getting myself to sit down and do it! I want to watch football and drink hot chocolate!

Applications

Wharton has a cool system that allows us to apply to jobs online. Unfortunately, there are only a few days when applications are due, which means that they tend to clump together. Plus, many of the applications require filling out another application on the companies website. And we all know how un-fun those are. Ugh, I am not happy right now!

New Book Review

The nice people at MBA Admissions Strategy sent me a copy of their book a long time ago, but I haven't had any time to post a review. In my opinion, this book is really great. I wish that I had it when I was applying. It has some really great insight into the strategies that you should use when creating your applications. It goes into everything from identifying your themes to approaching the most common types of essay questions. Other books are great for tactical advice (what to do when, how to go about it, etc), but this book mirrors my own personal philosophy about how you need to think about each step in order to create the best application for yourself. Highly recommended. In fact, I gave this book to a special someone that is applying this year. Check it out (link below to amazon where you can see the 5 star rating!)