Drool and Foundations Review

My 18 month-old daughter sucks on everything, and it's absolutely disgusting. Drool infests our house, from the expensive wood toys my daughter never plays with to the the ugly plastic toys she's obsessed with, from the chairs around the kitchen table to the toilet seat in the guest bathroom (okay - maybe not the toilet seat). Combine 20 drooly toddlers in a daycare, and there's enough incoming stranger germs to keep at least one person in our house sick at all times.

In the UF MBA Working Professional "One Year" Program, after the initial weekend of orientation, you spend a week in Gainesville catching up on what you've already learned from your undergraduate business degree.

You take eight hours each of Operations Management, Statistics, Accounting, Finance and Economics. It's a pretty packed week, and at the end of each four hour session, you take a quiz to recap what the previous four hours were about (and to assure the professor that you aren't hung-over from the night before). Thanks to the drool my pillows were floating in the previous week at home, I was sick the whole week of "Foundations Review."

Flip Flops in the Shower

The thought of getting sloppy at the smoky and shady "Gator City" every night was replaced with getting my sleep on in my new bed at The Paramount, where I had coerced a fellow colleague, German, to split a room with me halfway through the week. Of course, the receptionist at The Paramount detected that I was homeless, had grace and pity on my apparent lack of ambition, and upgraded our room to a one bedroom suite. It was no Four Seasons and I still had to wear flip flops in the shower to avoid stepping on shady people's left over nastiness, but it was nice.

German and I flipped a UF ID card for the bedroom and I won (this time God Himself having pity on my sickness and homelessness). I was off to bed with a box of tissues, a glass of water and my Netflix app - when I'm sick, the only thing I want to do is watch re-runs of Jim playing pranks on Dwight. 

The week was surprisingly fun, despite my feeling ugh. We went to a Gator basketball game, ate greasy and marvelous cheeseburgers at the Copper Monkey, told our significant others that we were eating vegetarian pockets at Pita Pit, drank a ton of cheap plastic pitchers of cheap, watery Bud Light, told our significant others we were studying and drinking water, and we got to know our classmates.

I remember talking with Matt about how he lives in Southern California and is making the trip to Gainesville once a month for classes. I chatted with Daniel about how the quizzes at the end of each class gave me convulsions. I shared sweet potato fries and corn nuggets with a group at The Top (my favorite restaurant in Gainesville, besides Dragonfly of course). I told Jason I liked his huge sideburns. I went up to some students I hadn't met yet and introduced myself, "Big gulps, huh? ...Well, see you later." Yup - I was making friends.

(Side note - at Cantina one night, I was peeing in the bathroom, and I guess a young, drunk college student forgot his Depends, because he came up next to me and peed in the sink. I got splashed on. Aaaand I was in college again.)

By the end of Foundations Review, I was exhausted, although I felt accomplished. I smiled, blew my nose into a paper towel (out of tissues by this point in the week), and came to a realization. This UF MBA program wasn't just going to be about CAPM or WACC or balancing debt and equity levels. It wasn't just about Free Cash Flows or calculating break-even points or these more trivial concepts that anybody with a brain and desire for a mansion on the beach can figure out. This MBA program was about learning how to connect with people, the less predictable (but most important) part of an organization. And if business is all about focusing on the people, why should a quality MBA program be any different?