Birkenstocks, Gotye and the First Day of Classes

The first day of classes finally came. The wedgies were pulled out and the drool was dried up - so began this UF MBA. My first three classes were Critical Perspectives on Decision Making, Corporate Finance and Professional Writing. 

I’ll start with Dr. Pekin Ogan, the coolest old guy ever. Watching him teach Decision Making in his worn-out Birkenstocks, high-hemmed pants and charming smile was a gift from the Lord. What a great way to start the program. Pekin did what I presume is the hardest part of professing – he engaged. 

In his first class, I was taken off-guard. I thought it was going to be a qualitative look on Managerial Decision Making, but when I was thumbing through his self-authored text book, it was more of an accounting class. Ugh – accounting makes me about as ill as downing some not-cherry-flavored Pepto Bismol. Also, Pekin’s syllabus was just plain intimidating, or “top-heavy,” as he called it. He jumps right into the workload, and you reach deep inside your soul for the reason behind why you were going back to school.

Pekin though, just by being Pekin, makes everything better. He’s an intellect, which the business world lacks, and which I was scared would be void in the program. In the first class, Pekin was ranting, raving and pontificating about hospital beds. To demonstrate, he dragged his old self up on a table, laid down and pretended to be sick on a hospital bed in the back of the room. Pekin wasn't afraid to be awkward, which is what made him memorable. And there's UF MBA lesson #1 - Do things a trifle differently.

Later in the first class, Pekin made everyone fill out a little piece of paper stating their name and a ‘fun fact’ about themselves. Daniel wrote, “6^th grade Southeast chess champion.” I wrote, “I like to eat King Salmon in the summer.” Dang – I need a better fun fact about myself.

I don’t think Pekin ever ended up doing anything with those 70 cards of fun facts, or from looking at the lack of scars in the room, boring facts, but I always wondered. Later, Pekin gives you a pop quiz. I won’t give it away, but all I have to say is if Pekin ever called me and wanted to go talk for a few hours about the inconspicuous flowers on the Cornus florida, I'd be there in a second. More to come on him and "Managerial Accounting", which ended up being my favorite class in the UF MBA program.

We had Dr. Evan Dudley, a young, wicked handsome professor (don’t take it from a dude who can appreciate another dude’s good looks. He was rated “hotness” on ratemyprofessors.com). He started Corporate Finance class like most professors would – review of the syllabus, a ten minute answer to the deep question about what size font should be used in the case studies, and an overview of the grading. Then we dove into the wonderful world of corporate finance. Not going to lie - I was scared.

The classes were broken up with the half-class called Professional Writing, taught by Dr. Jane Douglass. She wears tank tops, tight jeans and talks like a sailor. She’s fun and funny and sometimes offensive. It’s fantastic. She talked about poking herself in the eye with a sharp object when she has to read crappy papers. She has little patience for fluff and a strong passion for quality writing and nuns. Her class starts off with reviewing some basic styleguide rules and watching a video with a little girl holding a flower with a nuclear bomb exploding in the background. 

After the first day of classes, I was overwhelmed. We already had assignments due next class, a quiz to prepare for, and some writing to do. I was driving home to St. Augustine, Pekin’s smile wearing off and reality setting in. I turned up Gotye’s Somebody that I Used to Know, and belted it out the window, not because I have weird relationship problems (like having friends collect my records), but because I was hungry to relate to something familiar for the first time in a week. I'm sure the guys boiling peanuts on the side of State Road 20 probably thought I was a weirdo. Eh - they're right - I am a weirdo (and hopefully a trifle different).  

It felt good to be done the first week of school. I stopped and picked up some Pasta Carabba To-Go. Catchy break-up songs and heavy intakes of carbohydrates were going to be the fuel to get me (and my wife) through this program.

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?

Trusting Strangers and Weird Wedgies

6:00am came early, thanks to the dark shades at The Paramount. Teambuilding Day, the most anticipated day of orientation, was finally here. I peeled the roaches off my face, threw on my TJ Maxx found Paper Denim jeans and American Apparel t-shirt, and me and the new roommates were off to Hough Hall to meet up with the cohort. Of course, we had to stop at IHOP to fill up on cardboard waffles before the day’s adventure.

We arrived at the campus, now regretful of having UPS boxes sitting in our stomachs, and our group of 70 students piled into a few old yellow school buses. All of a sudden, our pants turned into skinny jeans and we all just started talking about Bieber’s Christmas album and how our parents never let us do anything fun. 

We arrived at a beautiful, ancient oak spotted estate that had a pool, ping pong tables, conference rooms, and of course, rope obstacles that look random when dormant. We went into a big field and collectively played shoot-the-volleyball-80-feet-in-the-air-and-watch-it-knock-someone-out-when-it-returns-to-earth with our group leader and life philosopher Simon, who told us ten times that the secret to life is to remember people’s names (in this case, I can’t recall if his name really is Simon. I’m so screwed).

Trusting Matt, Austin and Michael with your life.

To manage the day’s activities, the cohort was broken up into small groups of about ten students. My group wrote chants, balanced hula hoops with our pointer fingers, wore climbing gear that perfectly and inelegantly amplified our private parts, climbed 30 foot poles and jumped off the top of them (of course), and snacked on Frito products that are made with cheap corn filler and artificial (but delightful) flavoring. Aside from weird wedgies and having nasty, awkward cheese breath from eating too many crunchy Cheetos, the day was a ton of fun. 

After trusting strangers with my life and eating barbeque hosted by some locals that looked less interested in life than my IHOP waitress that morning, we were herded into a conference room to create our teams for the program. And this is what goes down: you’re given a dull pencil and a piece of paper that has space to write down your background, professional experience, and awesomeness, and you tape that paper onto a wall. I’ll repeat that – you put your life on a piece of paper and tape it to a wall. 

Then 70 strangers browse over your life and either think it worthy, or think it miserable, unemployable and just plain sad. You had students like Brad write, “I DON'T WANT TO BE CAPTAIN” in giant letters as life’s sole describer. You had guys like me who pretended to have an amazing leadership background, but who’s handwriting was so bad, passer-buyers probably wondered how an invalid child had accidently been admitted into the program. Then you had papers like Daniel’s - “CEO of 30 companies.” “Manager of a billion people.” “Everything I touch turns to Gucci shoes.” People like this became captains through silent vote, and after the peasants went outside to sow seeds on the farm, this bourgeoise browsed through the papers on the wall again and picked their teams. I remember playing Omar in ping pong for a long while during the team picking, and he killed me every match. My pride was getting eaten alive, and I just wanted to go in a corner, drink something corn syrupy or hoppy and watch Liz Lemon scarf down a sandwich. 

Angie, Director of Student Services, called the 60 or so students back into the conference room, and we listened intently to the captains announce the new teams. It kind of makes you sick. You scan the room saying to yourself, “please God, don’t put that person on my team,” and He puts them on your team, and you throw up in your mouth (later to find out that the person you didn’t want will carry your team, become the best man at your wedding and literally save you from drowning in a river. That's right - don't judge). The teams are picked, and you write your team charter (goals, mission, etc.) at a banana-spider infested picnic table, each person subtly sliding in comments that make themselves sound interested, smart and capable (this kind of talk dissipates after Term 1). 

Ahh - the day was finished. I walked back onto the yellow school bus, said hi to the Gainesville Sun reading bus driver, turned on Bieber's latest, and I sat down. I slouched, put my knees up against the seat in front of me and texted my wife, “Dang, I’m tired!” She responded a few minutes later, “You're just getting started.”

Orientation On the Floor

The night before leaving for Gainesville for orientation, I was getting a bit discouraged. I researched the heck out of Gainesville area State Parks, and I couldn't find any good prospects to pitch my green, two-man, REI tent for orientation week. Despite my hesitations, I stuffed my tent and sleeping bag into the trunk of my little Honda Civic, and I was on my way. 

Floating Canoes

When I first arrived at the bright, open and obviously LEED certified Hough Hall (pronounced Huff Hall), I finally figured out where that $36,000 tuition price tag was going. There is a giant news-ticker screen in the lobby, a room filled with a dozen Bloomberg super computers worth like $800,000 a piece, and there are printers and nice couches and nice everything. There are also glass canoes floating in the air with colored glass balls stuffed in them. My favorite find, though, the one that put me at ease for the rest of the day, was the shower on the 3rd floor. I wasn't going to smell like hippie for the week when everyone else was taking baths in Acqua Di Gio. 

I texted my wife in excitement, "They have showers!" "Awesome" she replied. Then I discovered break out rooms on the 2nd and 3rd floors. "They have rooms I could sleep in," I texted again. "Schweet!" 

For the record, my wife is amazing - I know I'm a tad strange and she appears to be calmingly cool with that. Like good ol' Dr Seuss said, "We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” 
   
Anyway, after the Hough Hall tour and sitting in room 240, I pretended to be glued to my iPhone, tending to all of those important messages important people get when they're in uncomfortable social conditions:
   
A friend from highschool (that I don't really know) posted up a picture on Facebook of her friend (that I didn't care about).
  
A tweet from Cabot came through my Twitter feed on how to make apple cheddar pie. Re-Tweet.

The first day of orientation was kind of fun. You begin by collecting branded laptop bags and nice Nike UF MBA polos that you'll be paying back for the next 30 years (with interest), and then you meet the UF MBA staff. The admissions team, or as the Director of the MBA program calls them, the SNL crew, gives a presentation on the demographics of your class. It sounds boring - they make it fun.
  
You meet Jim, the maintenance guy that pretty much runs the program. You meet Angie, who has the dismal task of following up to Sean Connery telling Trebek about the noises his mother made last night. Then you meet Alex, the skinny, well-spoken and witty Director of MBA. Alex told us that we are all now part of the UF MBA brand. In other words, "If you get drunk and sloppy and act dumb over at the Swamp, please don't wear the new Nike shirts we gave you." 
  
For the rest of the afternoon, you drink enough little bottles of Pepsi and Mountain Dew that the garbage you produce negates any of the carbon footprint that Hough Hall tries to reduce. After thinking about potentially a dozen simple ways to reduce this massive waste (bigger bottles? - now that's a smart MBA student thinking outside the box) and thinking about the gallons of corn syrup that were in the bellies of that room, I thumbed through a binder of colored papers.

As I was reading a pink paper that had a space for me sign my life away at the next day's team building ropes course, I couldn't help but think about my lack of sleeping arrangements. And then I met Josh. 

Josh manages some of West Palm's massive wealth, and I bet he's dang good at it. I would imagine that rich men appreciate Josh's conservative (but assured) investment suggestions, and that rich men's wives appreciate Josh's perfect jaw structure and youthful smile. Josh is also from a tiny little mountain town called Felton, CA, where my older brother lives - we instantly connected. We talked about Santa Cruz's waves and how his mom works in the same hospital as my sister-in-law. 
  
After lunch and eating some amazing peanut butter filled chocolate chip cookies (Fact: These peanut-butter filled cookies are the best part of the University of Florida MBA program. I take that back - these cookies are the best part of life.), we walked upstairs and Josh discovered I was a homeless transient who just put four peanut butter filled chocolate chip cookies in his pocket and didn't have a place to sleep that night.
  
Being the nice and open guy that he was and being scared that I was going to invite myself over anyway, he mistakingly asked me, "Hey man - you can stay with us tonight if you want." I jumped on this lead like a hungry salesperson who's got nothing in Stage 3 - Proposal Development, "That would be amazing." 

My spot at the Paramount

Josh hadn't thought this invitation through, or maybe he didn't expect to see homeless people in the MBA program. Either way, his hotel room at the elevator's-always-broken Paramount was already over-booked with three tenants, and I can only imagine what his conversation was with his two gracious roommates, Michael and Jason - "Umm - hey guys that I don't know yet. Mind if we have a questionable transient I found on the street sleep on our floor?" 
  
Needless to say, that night, me and a dozen cock roaches that were on growth hormones slept on an I-don't-want-to-know-what-those-stains-are-from rug between two beds. I slept like a log, but I'm pretty sure Jason slept with a knife clenched in his hand, just in case this homeless guy was going to pull a fast one. 

New Balance Sneaks and the Application Process

As a marketer, part of your job is to try to think like other people. It’s a fun exercise. Instead of going into Factory Brand Shoes looking at a pair of white, New Balance old-person sneakers and saying, “Who would buy those?”, you start saying to yourself, “I bet about 30% of men over 65 would be interested in sporting those around The Villages.” 

Just about everything is a brand, and everything has value to someone (except AOL, Kmart, the majority of the airline industry, and anything not Apple). MBA programs have brands, and I’ll never forget the inspiring introduction Alex, Director of the MBA program, gave about this intangible value on the first day of orientation. The University of Phoenix is the Honda Civic of the MBA system. Wharton is the Bentley. The University of Florida… I would put them at the BMW X5 M (color: Monte Carlo Blau Metallic). 

The Economist ranks the University of Florida's MBA program as having the 3^rd best MBA faculty in the world, US News and World Report ranks the UF MBA as one of the country’s best valued programs, and UF’s online MBA is ranked by The Economist as one (of two) of the world’s best programs. Either someone at UF is paying an editor at The Economist a lot of moolah, or this program is legit. I won’t get into how these ratings are achieved, frankly because I have no idea, but I promise you – it’s a laughable process.

Nonetheless, an MBA from the University of Florida has a good brand, especially amongst Floridians. 

The UF MBA application process is like any other admission process, I’d imagine. Enter in a bunch of fields into an online form that you’re nervous will not save your entries, and then write some essays. Oh yah – UF also requires you to take the GMAT. I remember listening in on a virtual recruitment session, and Andy, the SNLish, sometimes-sounds-like-he-just-woke-up-but-seems-like-a-really-cool-guy Director of Admissions said that one of the only ways to get out of the GMAT is to be a doctor. 

After googling ways to become a doctor and ending up on WebMD wondering if I had Fibromyalgia or Rheumatoid Arthritis, I realized that taking the GMAT was inevitable. I studied hard, took a few practice tests, and took the GMAT twice. When I take tests - especially multiple-choice - I sweat profusely, my mind goes blank, and then I sweat profusely some more. Then I shake, throw up (added for drama), cuss at myself, and I’m back in the game! This phenomenon is called test anxiety/panic disorder (just WebMD'd it), and I struggle with it like you wouldn’t believe. It’s funny, I don’t get anxious or stressed out about much, but testing makes me ill. Inevitably, my GMAT scores were not a selling point for my admission. In fact, the reason I took the GMAT twice was because UF asked that I try a second time to improve my scores. I was thrilled (and somewhat unsuccessful).

I was a little nervous about the essay too, because I knew it would have to overcompensate for my back-sweat that made its way onto my GMAT scores. The essay question was open: 

Describe how you would like to see your career develop. Explain how your academic background, prior professional experience and the Florida MBA degree will help you achieve your career goals.

I went into our guest room, dusted off a binder filled with my "career goals," and started typing away at my essay. I wrote about drinking too much wine, moving to Florida, and wanting to become a professor. Here’s a two sentence excerpt from my essay:

After nearly three years of marketing wind energy and carbon credits, my wife and I sat down on a cold, overcast and ugly Friday night at our favorite Italian BYOB in Philadelphia. We popped open a bottle of Pinot Noir, ordered the Antipasto, and had one of those talks that changes everything.  

Two things – (A) when it comes to wine, I really like Pinot Noir (if you haven’t noticed) and (b) I tried to be a tad fun in my essay. I pictured myself as an admissions team member, looking at hundreds of applications and being bored out of my mind, only wanting to think about whether I was getting Sushi-2-Go or a Chipotle burrito for lunch.

Alas, after the essays, the sweat I lost from both sessions of the GMAT, and thinking that the ‘save’ button on the online entry form was going to magically turn into a "Timed Out" screen, I got my little email from the admissions team welcoming me into the MBA program. That night, I stopped at a shady little liquor store near my house, picked up a four-pack of Burton Baton, an oak-barrel aged IPA, and clinked glasses with the wifie. Life was going to change for a little while.  

Next Post: The Beginning of Orientation

Thinking about Applying with a Glass of Pinot

I moved down to Florida a few years ago from the Philly suburbs. People in Philly like the Eagles. They also like stuffing fatty pieces of steamy red meat into bleached white-flower buns, and adding a chemical called Cheez Wiz to the top (or bottom - for the Geno's lovers). It's disgusting, and I love it.

Besides missing the artery-clogging cheesesteaks and the overcast afternoons, I'm glad we moved to Florida. It's sunny and happy, and although the combination of these two elements don't usually make for good indie bands, micro-breweries or coffee shops, happy is fun. Also, I like old people, so I'm in good company.

When I moved down to Florida, I noticed people really only cared about two things - college football, particularly the Gators, and college football, particularly the Seminoles. So, being the counter-cultural, beard wearing hipster that I was, I decided to choose World Cup soccer as my sport of choice. Games are every 2 years, they're only like, 2 - 3 hours, and some of the players look like I'd actually want to sit down and share a Dogfish 90 Minute IPA with. It's perfect.

So when I was accepted into the Working Professional 16 month University of Florida MBA program, I was shocked. Not because I didn't think I was smart enough to get in (although that's questionable), but moreso, because my ignorance of Gator football didn't somehow drip off of the pages of my application essays. I should note that the University of Florida calls this a one-year MBA program, which is plain and simply a lie, as my professional writing professor so elegantly put it. Perhaps the MBA staff has plans to change the world calendar to 16 month years, or maybe they just think they are marketing to sheep. Either way, they sold my whole class, so the UF MBA recruitment team is doing something right (and they're really funny and clever, which is a more attractive draw to the program than the 16-months-is-now-a-year thing).

I didn't do all that great on my GMAT, but I did really good in my undergraduate GPA. This is completely inline with my life story of being a not-so-smart guy that works really hard to catch up to the smart people. For you smart people that are reading this, I hate you. I hate that I have to spend long nights studying while you can go out drinking. I used to think bars were havens for dumb people, but now I know the contrary - bars are where all of the smart people hang out and bask in the glory of not needing to study.

I don't remember what urged me to apply for the UF MBA program - it was the only program I cared to apply to though, and I said if I didn't get in, then I'd have to figure out a new path altogether (or just continue living and working happily in sunny Florida as I had been doing). When I first called my wife and told her I was going back to school, baby crying in the background, she freaked out and told me I was selfish and didn't care about our family. Oh man - if I had a wife like that, I'd probably "stick a sharp object in my eye." Actually, she was amazingly graceful about it, as she always is about everything. She said we needed to get a bottle of Pinot Noir and figure this out. That night, during our 2 hour window of the baby actually sleeping, we made the decision to apply to UF.

Next post: On the Application Process