01.05.06

Orientation in Review

Posted in MBA at 2:03 am by Jason Permalink

A review of this experience will have to suffice, I only started blogging last week.

UCLA has a 2 week orientation that is split between a two unit course entitled ‘Leadership Foundations’ and what most people would consider a true orientation (where you learn how grading works, where the library is…).

The orientation experience starts off with Leadership Foundations. This class was devised to help students start off on the right foot as they begin their MBA. We engaged in many group dynamic experiences from A Ropes Course to working with an improve troop. I’m sure the designers were well intentioned when they included these activities in the program. An MBA is most certainly made up of MANY group exercises and this was supposed to get us warmed up to that, I guess. I found it to be a little bit of a waste of time. Most of the participants were clearly doing their best to get out of their shells and participate. However, as the week wore on I kept wondering when the rose colored glasses would come off and reality would be restored

Well, though I kept waiting we really never did return to reality that week, or the next for that matter. We all kept on pretending to be nice and pretending we cared about all our fellow students. It really started to get to me

The class is culminated with a final deliverable… They call it a Leadership Map. It is a written ‘Map’ to help guide us on our journey to be better leaders. During the week we kept a journal of the things we learned about ourselves and special insights we gained. Then we merged all of this into what we thought was the best course to turning ourselves into better leaders. While I would like to be a pessimist and say this was total crap and a waste of time, I can’t. I actually found it to be a good exercise in self reflection and introspective thought. I’m not sure that I learned much about myself that I didn’t already know, but it certainly brought these things into sharp focus for a short time.

After our maps were turned in we went on to week 2 where we actually started learning about what life would be like as an Anderson student. We were introduced to the library, the career center and the grading curve . We were also told MANY times that the first quarter would be grueling (for more on that see my “First Quarter In Review” - in short I found the curve to be WAY too forgiving and the quarter to be not that demanding).

In my opinion these two weeks of constant 7am - 7pm days could have EASILY been compressed (removing some of the time wasters) into 1 week. In doing this, it would both allow those people with other demands on their time (me) to better serve those needs and allow those new to the area to get acclimated to the environment with the comfort of the new friends found during orientation.

All in all I would rate it a 4 out of 10 While I did learn a bit about my fellow students and I did get some time to think on my issues, I felt that it dragged on and left me feeling burnt out just as i was about to start the “Hardest” quarter of my MBA. Oh, and the rosy glasses came off sometime mid quarter Reality is pesky and always weasels its way back into full frame.