À la recherche du temps perdu

Wow, it’s been a long time and some bad and some good things happened to me since my last post. So I am afraid this one will be a bit hectic. Today was officially the very last day of the term – we needed to submit last take home exam, microeconomics. The deadline was noon, guess when I submitted it – at 11.59, this is the second take home exam and the first time I did much better – 10 minutes before the deadline. I actually had to take a cab to be able to do it and for the first time was not wearing make up to school (girls will understand it’s a really serious crime…), but I had those 10 minutes. You can imply we had very little time for those take home exams – wrong we had 10 days. What was I doing? Many extremely important things apart from the exam. And when I finally started to do it, I could not stop… I have this terrible tendency to “fall in love” with things (not only with things though); so I read about 30 scientific articles and 3 books in order to answer question that required 800 words. Have I just a bit overdone? Well, that’s me…
And because I am not very good in managing time, as you probably noticed, I had 1 day course dedicated to that matter. And I even managed to be on time from one of the breaks – you see, I am improving. The course was actually great – I finally was able to admit the fact that I need self-discipline, because before that I was kind of sure it’s incompatible with my “creative nature”. Wrong, wrong, wrong – it’s just the poor excuse we are normally ready to rely on.
Another course we had was “Influencing and persuading” and this one was great as well – we practiced different persuading styles – asserting, attracting, bridging and proposing (and guys proposing is not about marriage, you normally don’t need a master of persuasion to make the girl accept your offer). I am quite good in manipulation, but I guess this is not the skill, future leaders need to possess, so I decided to leave “the dark side of the force”. I think I was completely miserable in asserting, because I tried to sound strong and authoritarian, but was looking to other person’s eyes like a lost dog. But I liked it – I wish I had more practice.
The other thing was that I met Patxi and it was great. I was nervous, because you know, he had those very nice posts about me and I was worried that the real “me” will not be the one who deserves those posts. But Patxi is extremely interesting and easy to talk to, so I have not noticed how the time passed. The same day I was at the St. Nicolaus party at Angie’s place – the party was fun, I enjoyed it a lot and I met Patxi’s wife, who is also nice and enjoyable person. So you see, bloggers’ world somehow made my real world a better place.
What else, we had Santa Claus Pub Crawl – a big school tradition, but I think many people have written about it already, so just go to the link and watch.
And I guess that’s it for today. Sweet dreams boys and girls..

Christmas is in the air

This week I had a cold and fever, so I missed a lot of classes and stayed in bed. My dream came true, but in a somehow twisted way- as you all know it's not much fun to stay at home, when you have 39... So, by the week-end I started to operate in a stand by mode, which means I have done nothing in terms of home tasks and exam preparations, nada... Which is bad, taking into account the fact that I need to submit accounting homework tomorrow in the morning.
Yesterday, I was going home in the evening from the party (yes, now I feel much better) and saw a Christmas tree in somebody's window. I was standing and watching the tree and suddenly felt great (surprise,surprise)- somehow London is not my prison and LBS is not my term in jail any more and probably I am not lost anymore as well. I don't know, whether it's because Christmas is one of my favorite holidays or because I found new friends, but it's just pure magic.
These weeks I had 2 mock interviews - one is with consulting club and another with finance club. This is a great practice tool and I really appreciate the effort of second year MBAs, who are organising them for us. I have several feedbacks, first is that I can think (though I still doubt :-)), second that during the interview I look like I am ready to faint at any moment (probably not the best tactics) and third that I am looking at the interviewer like he is breaking my heart (still in doubts, about this one - normally it works with men, but am not sure about employers:-)).
And the last but not the least thing - there is another new blog, King Myles, a great guy from LBS MBA 2007 has started, so I definetely recommend you to read it.