A bitmoji’s take on life in business school and enduring Chicago’s weather fluctuations.

It is unclear if people knew that this was reality, or if they’d constructed an elaborate delusion believing that they were witnessing a TV show. Either way, what they did know is that it was free, and a constant source of fun.

Long revered as a sex guru by her classmates, Betty Booth, class of 1945, has been advising classmates for the last 30 years. Believing she has advice that can be passed on to the millennials of the Booth generation, she has kindly agreed to join the ChiBus team as guest advice columnist.

The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business today announced that it had hired the Sorting Hat to join the Career Services team with immediate effect.

The ski trip gave us enough sample size to categorize the participants into a number of different groups. Now, contrary to everything that MCG has taught most of Booth, this list is definitely not MECE, but similar to popular news channels - none of this is based on any kind of actual fact or reality

It’s news to most Boothies that, just like the secret menu at Chipotle (Quesaritos and Burritodillas, yes please) or Shake Shack (Shack-cago dogs: worth a try just to pay homage to the Windy City), there is actually a secret menu of classes.

Winter is always coming in Chicago, and Business school is all about money, sex, and leadership struggles.

After we graduate from Booth, most of us are going to spend at least 75,000 hours working. As tomorrow’s business leaders, for ourselves and for those we will work with, I strongly believe we are also responsible for answering the ethical question of, “what role should work play in our lives?”

The 2018 year-end survey noted that the Class of 2019 is highly interested in developing leadership skills: 60% say it’s essential… Communicating persuasively was one of the most common factors that students said they sought to do. However, once we kickoff our MBA at Booth, we forget that there are instances in our daily hustle-and-bustle that we could use to push ourselves to be better leaders.

A drive through an America suburbs calls to attention many of the aspects of daily life and business that have changed in the past 20 years with the advent of new technologies. One change that is especially salient is the downfall of the quintessential small business.

Viktor Frankl, a psychologist, Holocaust survivor, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, once said: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

The biggest issue in international development is not a lack of interest, funding or desire to drive growth and improvement, but a lack of coordination across key actors – governments, firms and nonprofits – to align incentives and drive real, maintainable change. Until we start to achieve that better, development will continue to happen in fits and starts as it has in the past.  

It’s a phenomenon we hear a lot about today, but is hard to define: populism. Depending on your perspective, it’s a word that could bring to mind union leaders or socialists to fascists and anywhere in between, and in its most radical forms is associated with some of the worst atrocities in modern history. But what exactly is populism, and is it inherently bad?

But I’m not all that worried about the technology of the future; what worries me is the technology of the present. For a few years now, one of the biggest trends at CES has been smart-home technology. This means taking all of your appliances - from doorbells to mattresses and everything in between - and connecting them to the internet and your smartphone.

Globalization has broadened the market, meaning that Americans now compete with workers from around the world. Yet our educational system has failed to keep pace. In the middle of the pack or worse on international test scores, the US ranked 30th in math and 19th in science out of 35 countries total within the OECD, an organization of mostly rich nations.

Steve Levitt, U Chicago Economics Professor and Freakonomics guru, argues that “everything is data, it’s just a matter of [whether or not] I am clever enough to figure out how to use it”. As we move into an era where data about every action we take will be captured, the combined forces of economics and computer science will allow us to use that knowledge to create impact and change.  

Markets this week continued a downward spiral spurred first by trade war concerns last month and egged on by the Federal Reserve raising rates. These strong market forces have obscured some of the fundamental growth companies may have announced in their earnings leading to an overall mixed market uncertain investing environment. Ahead, we discuss the three major factors at play.