Transition Memo: The little things you won't find in the brochures

As we start wrapping up the year here at the Owen School, those of us who are second year OwenBloggers have been asked to write a transition memo to try and record some of the tacit wisdom that lives only in the heads of those who are about the walk out the door and scatter to the 4 winds. And as Professor Dilts will happily tell you, tacit knowledge is, in a word, bad.

Some of these might be obvious, some esoteric, and some just downright inane, but here are a few of the things I think a new MBA might benefit in knowing:

Everything I need to know I learned in LTO.

OK, so this isn't exactly true; I did learn a thing or two in my finance, marketing, and healthcare classes. But a lot of classes come back to those central tenants of LTO, including: always remember what you or your organization does well, remember those things you don't do well, play to your strengths, and make sure the team can do many different things. for me, a surprising number of questions have looked a lot like whether Erik was the best choice to run Green Mountain Cellular, what the Fire Chief did right, why did the astronauts rebel, and how Josie should have handled her situation. Surprising and yet, at the same time, not so very surprising.

Its never as big of a deal as it seems.

First year is an exercise in sensory overload. From day one things begin to pile up, one after the other. Assignments, readings, team projects, job search, social events, and personal life - things can (and most likely will) get out of hand very quickly. The trick for me wasn't in the doing, it was in the figuring out what was really important to me.

You buy expertise and grow from within

There were a few good take-aways from my Healthcare Venture Capital class (which you'll find listed in the catalog under the relative misnomer "Healthcare Technology"), but the one that stood above the rest was this one. Many companies rely on M&A to grow top line revenues and bottom line earnings, while others try to grow from within. But this line really resonated with me, to buy the ability to do things but figure out how to do more of it by yourself.

People learn in different ways.

Quite a few column inches in the glossy B-school brochures I thumbed through were devoted to the team-based learning environment. It seemed like most of the schools in which I was interested used that as one of their key selling points. If team-based learning is your thing, then you can definitely find a group of like minded people with which to make your way through the material. On the other hand, if you're more of a "study by yourself" type of person, then you can do that as well.

"By committee" is often the most inefficient way of getting things done.

For most of my first year, many of my teams would try to complete projects together, scheduling 2 and 3 hour marathon meetings in which we were to talk through every aspect of the case and our answers. What they don't tell you in the glossy b-school brochures is that this process, while at times rewarding, does have a tendency to take ever so slightly longer than a comparable solo attempt might.

The line at Starbucks will always take 10 minutes.

It should come as no surprise that the Starbucks directly across the street from school services a variety of traffic streams. 7:45 in the morning sees a preponderance of parents who have just dropped their children off at the University School. Noontime sees a rather large collection of kids walking down from the University School. 6pm sees an abundance of undergrads, tapping happily away at their laptops. Regardless of the time of day, or the apparent length of the line, service at Starbucks always seems to take about 10 minutes. Whether there are 2 people ahead of you in line or 20, you'll most likely be back on your way in about 10 minutes. Plan accordingly.

Oh, and the University School parents like to stand around and chat rather than figure out what they're going to order. Getting upset with them is a lot like shouting at the rain: entertaining, but ultimately not destined to change much.

You can't do all the reading, but you can't do none of it.

For the most part, professors are reasonable when making assignments. The one place where a select few falter is in their judgment is in exactly how much reading to assign. If sleep makes it anywhere on your list of life priorities, then you're going to have to pick and choose. It won't take long to figure out what to read, what to skim, and what to ignore.

Its takes about 6 months to realize why some things made it on the syllabus.

There are those things that make their way on to syllabi that, at the time, don't make the most sense. I can't speak about other disciplines, but some of the early healthcare classes spent time discussing things that I didn't always see the immediate value. It wasn't until a few months later (somewhere near middle of the summer) that I found myself saying "Oh, so that"s why we learned that!" In addition to those things that are obviously valuable yet incredibly painful to learn (DRG's, anyone? How about the theory of insurance?), all I can advise you to do is suck it up and learn as much as you can of what they're teaching you; there's a good reason for it, even if its not always apparent.

Professors mean well.

In 35 classes at the Owen School, I don't know that I've had a single professor that didn't care whether I "got it" or not. They've all been very open to questions during class, after class, or after a random knock on their office door. The same goes for questions about case assignments, although its definitely to your advantage to take some time to work on the case before going into the professor's office.

The printers take about 5 minutes to warm up in the morning.

If you find yourself running late for your 8am class with an assignment left to print, about 5 minutes in the minimum you should budget to get the printers cooperating. Ranier and K2 (downstairs, by the front door) are a little bit more persnickety, Denali and Matterhorn (upstairs, outside and inside the library, respectively) are a little less.

You can always find parking at Terrace Place.

Its been my experience that the garage at Wesley Place (Breugger's Bagels is in this building) fills up by about 9:30am or 10am. The surface lot across the street from the law school is full by 8am. But the parking garage at Terrace Place (just behind the Catholic Church on West End) should have spots for the better part of the day. Sometime you can get lucky during at one of the other two, but if you're in a hurry, your best bet might be to go straight to Terrace Place.

"Lunch will be provided" usually means either pizza or Otter's chicken tenders.

If you like pizza and chicken tenders, you'll be in heaven. For everyone else, all I can say is just be sure to pace yourself.

Join as many clubs as you can stand, but only pay for one year's worth of dues.

While a "time value of money" reference might be appropriate here, the truth of the matter is that while I joined a good many clubs in my first year, I only really kept up with one of them in my second year yet prepaid 2 year's membership dues for nearly all of them. $35 per year per club starts to add up. I suppose the corollary could be to only join those clubs with which you know you'll keep up. Either way, I'd advise you to be as judicious as possible.

Don't be afraid to ask for help.

This is one of those "easier said than done" pieces of advice that I'm sure everyone has heard many many times before. Whether it be your team members, friends, classmates, professors, administration, IT, or anyone else who calls this place home, I have yet to run in to someone who wasn't eager to help in whatever way possible. For that matter, I have yet to run in to anyone who has at any time called this place home that isn't eager to help in any way possible. And perhaps it makes it easier to remember it this way: they help you now so you can help someone else later.

Very few people take "business casual" seriously.

During orientation we were quickly introduced to the mantra of business casual. It took about two weeks to for most people to realize that jeans are perfectly acceptable. Some are more sartorially adventurous than others (*ahem*Ed*ahem*), but jeans and a nice shirt tends to be the norm.

I'm sure there's more rattling around in my head, and if there's any interest I might commit a few more to paper.