Juxtaposed Mondays

My brain usually feels like it's going to explode on Mondays by the time I am finished with class at 9:30 pm. I feel SO drained - like I can't possibly utter another intelligent phrase. Totally tapped out. I do have two 3-hour classes on Mondays, but the sheer time spent in class isn't the factor causing my brain drain, as I see it.

You see, it's the completely opposite ways of thinking that my brain has to shift gears into during the one-hour break between said classes. I start out my afternoon with a class about social policy and social change. Taught by a professor who completely challenges the world view that I hold. Who challenges everything I think I have learned during the past 3 semesters. Who thinks that we, as a country and society, are headed for self-destruction if we keep up living the way we are living. I tend to agree with him. But, his extremeness is refreshing. He challenges me to think outside the confines of capitalism that pervades everything we do on a daily basis. That dictates the work available to people in our country, that dictates how resources are allocated and who has power and privilege. Can I even articulate how overwhelmed by the thought of all of the progress our society needs to make in order to survive after I leave this class? GOSH. Do we have some work to do!

From this class, I head to class about corporate governance. That's a good thing. But the feel of the class is completely different. Instead of challenging currently held beliefs, we talk about ways to live within the system that exists and how to make sure that people aren't getting duped by Corporate America. Man oh man.

From a socialism to capitalism, all within the span of an afternoon. This is why my brain feels like it has been sucked dry on Mondays. It's awesome and really challenging, all at the same time. I see it as being the beauty of being in grad school. I spend my days thinking about ways to make the world a better place. I get a taste of so many of the viewpoints that are out there. My beliefs are constantly challenged. What better preparation for a life of creating social change is there?

TIME CHANGE for EXCITING Net Impact Event!

So, we at Brandeis Net Impact have been working since April to organize one of the most exciting events that our chapter has ever been responsible for: Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation fame is coming to speak at our campus in just one week!

An Evening with Jeffrey Hollender:
Creating a Game Plan for Business to Transition to a Sustainable Economy
Shapiro Campus Center
Thursday, September 24, 2009, 4:00 pm

Can a for-profit company really be profitable, strategic and benefit the environment at the same time?

Jeffrey Hollender, Co-Founder and Chief Inspired Protagonist of Seventh Generation is a well-respected leader in the socially and environmentally responsible communities. Jeffrey led Seventh Generation from its humble beginnings to its current position as the leading and fastest-growing brand of household and personal care products for your living home. He is also a leading authority on issues related to making a positive difference in the health of the planet and its inhabitants through our everyday choices. Seventh Generation is committed to becoming the world’s most trusted brand of authentic, safe, and environmentally-responsible products for a healthy home.

Check it out Facebook: http://tr.im/ybcR

We're pretty excited about it, as you can tell. So, I thought I'd post it on here - the event is open to the public. If you're in the Boston area and this is up your alley, please come!

EXCITING Net Impact event!

So, we at Brandeis Net Impact have been working since April to organize one of the most exciting events that our chapter has ever been responsible for: Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation fame is coming to speak at our campus in just one week!

An Evening with Jeffrey Hollender:
Creating a Game Plan for Business to Transition to a Sustainable Economy
Shapiro Theater in the Shapiro Campus Center
Thursday, September 24, 2009, 7:00 pm

Can a for-profit company really be profitable, strategic and benefit the environment at the same time?

Jeffrey Hollender, Co-Founder and Chief Inspired Protagonist of Seventh Generation is a well-respected leader in the socially and environmentally responsible communities. Jeffrey led Seventh Generation from its humble beginnings to its current position as the leading and fastest-growing brand of household and personal care products for your living home. He is also a leading authority on issues related to making a positive difference in the health of the planet and its inhabitants through our everyday choices. Seventh Generation is committed to becoming the world’s most trusted brand of authentic, safe, and environmentally-responsible products for a healthy home.

Check it out Facebook: http://tr.im/ybcR

We're pretty excited about it, as you can tell. So, I thought I'd post it on here - the event is open to the public. If you're in the Boston area and this is up your alley, please come!

"in-between" time

Our summer semester officially ended last Friday with our team consulting presentations - win! But really, I just handed in my corporate finance take home this morning and classes resume for me again tomorrow morning at 9am. So, on paper I had about 7 days off; in reality, I took about 3 days off this past weekend to go biking and beaching. We presented our consulting project to our classmates and one member of our client organization's staff last week, but this Friday we get to present our results to the entire organization. It's very exciting, and something that we hoped we'd get the opportunity to do.

Doing the consulting project was probably one of the highlights of my time in the Heller MBA program so far. I learned so much not only about the consulting process and working with a client, but I also gained incredibly important lessons from my teammates and mentors throughout the project. I learned how to prioritize; when to let go of an idea; how to create constructive conflict; how to apply course frameworks to real situations; and how to stay within the scope of a project when there are so many intriguing possibilities to branch off into.

Perhaps my reflections aren't quite complete on this subject yet, given that it's so fresh an experience; I remain intrigued in consulting as a potential career given my experience with my team this semester. I'm going to dig deep in the coming weeks to try to figure out what it is that I most want to pursue when I graduate as I get in position to begin the big job search. I know that I enjoy big-picture thinking, mission-related work, and using numbers to back up my big picture ideas. I like thinking about how to make organizations perform better and have higher impact.

What's the point of this post? Just to update, since I've been gone for so long, and to make the transition to the last semester of my MBA program. You'll get to read a lot about this "in-between" feeling as I search for a job. I'll be hovering in the space between student and professional; in fact, I can already feel the job search pressure starting to mount. I'll be planted between carefree learner enjoying the last months to soak up as much knowledge as possible and realistic individual who knows that very soon there will be bills to pay and no more loans coming in. So, stay tuned. It should be an interesting few months ahead!

Could I be a consultant?

I had never considered consulting to be high on my list of career options, but I must say that it's moving higher and higher as I work on my consulting project this summer. I am LOVING this project and the consulting experience overall. My team and I have spent the past few weeks really digging in, getting to know the organization.

Now, we're in the heart of our work. We're strategizing, doing lots of big thinking, figuring out how the data fits and where it should lead our recommendations ... it's exhilarating to be able to take a "big picture" look at the organization, figure out where our project fits into the whole and hopefully deliver a high-impact recommendation. It's fun to be challenged and engaged in this way.

I have finally found some time during the last few days to immerse myself in reading, thinking & analysis for this project for large chunks of time, and it has helped my process immensely. My progress during the past week feels like it has increased exponentially, perhaps due to this extra time spent as well as finally having a very clear picture of the workings of the organization. I'm excited to continue working on this project for the next 6 weeks, and I'm most excited to think about delivering a set of recommendations backed by strong data that will solve a problem and create some change!

Summer classes are iNtenSe

We are just wrapping up our last week of the first module of summer classes. Let me tell you, they took a little getting used to. Only, we didn't really have time to get used to them ...

Our summer semester is broken into two modules, with two classes during the first half and one more during the second half. Our TCP spans the entire summer. The summer courses are only 6 weeks long, meeting for three hours twice a week. INTENSE! I must say that this is not my preferred course schedule. I didn't feel like I had the time to spend delving into subject matter that I found interesting. It was always a sprint to get work done for the next class sessions. I'll be happy to get back to our regular once a week, semester-long class schedule this fall. I'm also happy to be nearly finished with our first summer module, which will allow more time to spend on my TCP project.

Our marketing project was a good way to end the first summer module! I had a great group, and our project focused on marketing the use of locally grown produce to restaurants in a local Boston neighborhood. It will be interesting to see if our organization implements any of our suggestions. That is part of the fun of MBA projects ... sometimes they have a real purpose!

Innovation in tough economic times

Much has been written about this topic - innovation stemming from this time of economic hardship - but I continue to find it all very interesting. Here is an article about how recent grads are turning into social entrepreneurs and coming up with great ideas, partially due to the fact that they have the freedom to think about other options now that their prescribed potential high-power, high-money career options have dried up. My take-aways from this article:

1. the importance of finding work that "feeds your soul";
2. and the potential of my generation to learn lifelong lessons from experiences such as these when we are forced to think of new ways to do things and new paths to carve out

These new adventures don't necessarily involve all of the things we "should" be doing with our education , but I'm pretty sure they're going to have good results for our world overall. My question is how to continue to support and encourage opportunities like this for recent grads when the economy begins to recover and the potential for great wealth from traditional career paths returns?