About This And That

By: Vas Adusumilli

Posted: 5/27/04

I still remember the admit weekend two years ago. Reading my first Chicago Business at that time, I thought I should make it a habit to write articles for Chi Business. Two years passed and I never motivated myself to even write one article. So, once I learned that this was my last chance to write before I graduate, I was motivating myself on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

With a feeling of graduation coming soon and no desire to do any class work, this quarter became a period of excessive drinking, dinners, sleeping, summer planning and basically doing everything else except school work. This also provided a chance to look back at the two years I spent at school. Though hesitant of my choice entering into GSB, today it makes me feel what a great choice I made coming to GSB.

Coming from a pure engineering background, my view of a Finance person is a "Bean Counter" who cares for every nickel and penny. I viewed Sales and Marketing as someone trying to sell a product not knowing what the hell it was and promising things not knowing if they can be delivered. Until I started living with a fellow classmate, Ryan Lynch, who is a CPA I stereotyped an Accountant as a short nerd with glasses and a big ledger book in his hands. Yeah, and I dreaded Excel spreadsheets too. Now you all know my state entering into GSB.

Then came career counseling, resume and interview preparation. What a painful experience that is. I felt a loss of words to explain my previous experience. Believe me, I had several sleepless nights trying to explain my engineering experiences in business lingo. Assuming that I had a decent resume I met career advisors. While trying to explain my resume, I was bombarded with many questions. So, how does that engineering design help the company? How much did the company save from the project? Hmm, I am not a bean counter...I don't know. Finally, it hit me that I am not trying to convince a person from the engineering community to hire me. I am in a totally different world. It's all about $ and % savings. Attending company presentations added pain to the wound. But, I loved the free beer and food at the presentations and usually settled near the bar as a loser while my classmates struggled to talk to that one banker or consultant. Some smart asses talked about derivatives, current state of the economy, etc and made me think if all these people know so much, why the hell were all the analyst reports so wrong about telecom and dotcom during the downfall. Then it hit me, the very basic reason I came to business school.

Why tell all this? If we look back we all realize how much we learned during these two years and what a great job our professors and this institution did in shaping our lives. What a great student community we had and how much we support each other. It also brings us to reflect on our experiences and see what more can be done for the future generations. In the previous Chi Bus articles, people spoke on diversity and wished of a tighter cultural integration within the GSB community. Something both the student groups and Dean's office should look into in the coming years.

I would like to focus this article on other soft skills I wished that I experienced more at GSB. One is presentation skills and an opportunity for students to present in classes. When we enter into the business world it is not only important to have a great foundation in business skills but also important to convincingly present them to peer groups. While we do a great job in teaching these presentation skills in LEAD, we ignore fine tuning these skills during our two year program. Case and point; out of the 20 classes I took so far only professors in three classes (New Venture Strategy, Commercializing Innovations and Strategy & Structure) pushed the student teams to present before the class. May be this is one of the reasons for the high demand for these classes. Looking back, even in my previous master's degree in engineering I had to present before class four out of 10 classes (not to mention the thesis presentation). By making a student team present before class, one is making them work hard and be prepared to be attacked by other 57 students; a typical scenario one will foresee once entered into the real world. Also, this provides a chance to listen to other peoples' views (right or wrong) besides the views of the professor himself and all it takes is 10 minutes out of every 3 hours. These presentations can be on a case that would be discussed in the class or on a special topic related to the class (like Euro and its affects in a Macro Economics class).

One thing I also loved last year is Brats & Brew every week. This event developed a sense of community and provided a chance to catch-up with classmates that you don't see at TNDC's and other events. The frequency of Brats & Brew decreased and I wonder its impact on the GSB community. One reason for this may be the budget constraints to run these programs. But, who said we have to order costly food to have a Brats & Brew. All we need is two kegs of beer and a big grill to barbeque. I think the rest can be done by the students. I wish, in the future, that the tradition of Brats & Brew every week will continue. If the student participation is any indication for the success of the program the two most popular events at GSB are the Brats & Brew and TNDC.

I also wish to see more of our professors participate in the social events. With the grade non-discloser in place, we are not going to bug you for a grade. I used to see some professors during Brats & Brew last year but not any more. It is okay to hang out with us sipping a beer at some of these events.

One other thing I hated the most is taking a weekly quiz, especially on a Friday morning. The whole GSB community knows how popular TNDC is and how much we get drunk at these events. Fighting a Thursday night debating on whether to go to TNDC or prepare for a quiz is the worst thing. Can you PLEASEEEE give us a break on the weekly quizzes....:)

As a final shout, please do not forget to pledge to the Class Gift Campaign. It takes less than a minute and it is on-line. So, my dear fellow second years, don't be too lazy and procrastinate.