My Last Class at Marshall

Before I knew it, another 2 months passed, and I just finished my last class at Marshall. Still a couple of projects and finals to be done, but I am basically in graduation mode...


The two years were a blur, it seemed like it was just a week ago that I arrived in LA. I still remembered how hot the day was when I first moved into my then barren apartment. The international student weekend when we were getting a first taste of a Harvard business case. Then the welcome weekend, the core classes, PRIME, internship, 2nd year classes.... Just like a snap of fingers, I am getting my MBA degree in two weeks, getting married in a month, moving to Japan in two months.... It seems like my life has been on the turbo mode ever since coming to Marshall. How do I describe my 2 years of MBA life? I find that I am asking myself these days. If I need to describe my experience in just one word, what would it be? The only thing I can think of right now is "Confusion." Seriously, I am confused.

I am confused about what exactly I did do in these 2 years. I know I did something. In a result-oriented perspective, I figure I did pretty well. A lot of people came to MBA looking for higher career aspirations... be a consultant, be a IBanker, travel the world, lose the mediocrity and the frustration behind. Yeah, in that sense, I did well. I pursued an internship I liked, I had a wonderful intern experience. I got a full-time offer with the same company, doing something I know I will love. I had a generous package. I am even moving to Japan, for god's sake. All these things I could not get had I not gone to MBA. But I am still confused. Was it just the luck of the draw, was it something that I always had in me? Questions beget more questions... I guess that's why I am confused.

Warren Bennis: On Becoming a Leader

Erik Erikson sees our development as a series of resolved conflicts, one for each stage of life. he further postulates that until each conflict is resolved positively, we cannot move to the next stage or conflict:


Conflicts -> Resolutions

Blind trust vs. Suspicion -> Hope
Independence vs. Dependence -> Autonomy
Initiative vs. Imitation -> Purpose
Industry vs. Inferiority -> Competence
Identity vs. Confusion -> Integrity
Intimacy vs. Isolation -> Empathy
Generosity vs. Selfishness -> Maturity
Illusion vs. Delusion -> Wisdom

Our lives are made less of small truths and falsehoods than of great truths and the truths that are their opposites, which is why the resolution of these basic conflicts is so difficult sometimes. It's almost never a choice between a right and a wrong. For example, hope lies somewhere between blind trust and suspicion, but so does its opposite, despair. Once you have learned to reflect on your experiences until the resolution of your conflicts arises from within you , then you begin to develop your own perspective.

MBA in Review: 2007 Term 1: Global Strategy

This is probably the class which I skipped the most but learned the most as well...


The course teaches some frameworks which you can use to evaluate companies in an international context, and then the cases are mostly related to developing countries, such as BRIC and a few others. The professor stresses a quantitative approach to case analysis, and we often need to examine the exhibits carefully to find supporting data. This is probably one of the more dense classes in Marshall, but it was definitely worth it.

What I will remember from this class:

International, Global, Multi-domestic, Transnational
Different modes of entry

If I have money.....

I will buy Apple Stock today:

Price today: 169.04

Let's check back in 1 month or so...

MBA in Review: 2007 Term 1: Applied Statistics

Statistics was the only course that I got an A in the first year, so naturally I wanted to take the follow-up course to keep my streak going...


The course covered a lot of advanced statistical methods, such as Cross Validation, LASSO, Splicing, Neural Network, and many others. It is about 50% lecture and 50% lab. Since many of the methods require complex modeling and calculation, we also learned to use a statistical package called R. The final project is about looking for interesting data sets and use the learned methods to look for trends and predictions. Overall it's a good course to learn to grasp trends through looking at data and identifying relevant variables. It's a good way to validate one's business intuition with numbers