Microeconomics, HR, The MBA Ultimate Challenge, and The MBA Bug

Last Sunday morning we had an MBA mini version of the amazing race, where teams signed up to complete a series of physical and mental challenges, ending with a BBQ lunch and prizes. Everyone who participated had a blast. The school really goes out of their way to try and make the MBA experience as fun as possible, and events like this are a big part of this experience, so it's definitely worth it to take part. These are the things that stay in your memory.

This week we kicked off the other two courses of the module: Microeconomics and HR. Microeconomics is taught by Professor Bo Pazderka, who's an excellent teacher and makes the material interesting and easy to understand. Up to this point there has been quite some overlap between the materials in this course and the previous module's economics course (supply/demand diagrams, elasticity, etc.), but for someone who's not very strong in the subject, it doesn't hurt to go through things a second time.

HR is being taught by Professor Shawna O'Grady, who also spent three extensive days with us on team building back in the first week. Shawna presented some interesting materials, and the class has also included a couple of mock interview prepared and conducted by students whose names were drawn out of a hat, which were entertaining to watch. Thus far we have covered recruiting and selecting talent and employee retention.

In addition we continued with our accounting and modeling courses.

For the past couple of weeks, more and more people have become sick, with either what's known as the "MBA Bug", or something else. Today we learned that the "something else" included something rather serious. The administration has been taking huge precautions in terms of having people stay home if they're sick and doing everything they can together with the faculty to ensure that those who miss classes don't miss too much. This includes videotaping all lectures, having profs run extra review sessions, and securing tutors. Desks in lecture halls are cleaned daily, and we're getting individual teamroom desks cleaned today. Hand sanitizers are everywhere. Hopefully we've really constrained the spread of the bugs.