I’m an MBA student!

Today was Day One of our two-week orientation period, during which we also complete two classes intensively. Showed up at 8 for a half-hour welcome session, which actually meant “people will filter in between 8 and 8:30, when things actually begin”.

(Specifically it did not mean “We’ll have coffee available”. I was up at 6 am and didn’t get a coffee until 10:30 or so.)

The morning was all introductory talks and icebreakers, followed by splitting up into teams. The department tells us what team we’re in, and we stick with the same people for the entire semester regardless of personal conflicts — sort of an interpersonal relations class built into the structure. Four of the six in our team were there. I’m not sure where the other two are; they might be international students who hadn’t arrived yet.

After lunch was our first real class, although it was introductory too: the course is Management Skills and today was all team-building exercises and administrivia. My team is promising: Mike, with whom I exchanged email months ago after he found a blog post of mine in Google; Carolyn, a former production assistant (I think?) with Vision TV in Toronto; and Elise, an exchange student from France who formerly worked in sales at Danone.

It was a long day and it’s going to be a crazy week. I don’t think I’ll have the energy to blog every day’s details, but I had to get the first day in.

I’m really excited about the program, though. I was a little bit nervous toward the end of last week, second-guessing myself, but it’s a very “business leader”-oriented program (which I knew, but a lot of MBA programs are investment-banking oriented, so I scared myself a bit reading about others’ experiences). But this is right up my alley.