Chapter The First, In Which We Meet Our Narrator

Navigating the treacherous shoals of B-school applications last winter, I wasted invested lots of time checking out blogs of MBA students and prospective MBA students.

This was a big part of my application research. For real. You know, getting a feel for the landscape and the people. Business Schools and the Students Who Love Them, that kind of thing. The stuff I bet the books on applying to B-schools suggest applicants do. Though the books probably say nothing about spending hours at thesuperficial.com or Wonkette. And they surely don't include warnings about You Tube.

I liked a handful of MBA blogs, but mostly I found them too wooden, full of stuff I could just get from the school's web site. Or, alternatively, some are just a hodge-podge of complaints about everything under the sun. High plane fares over Christmas break. Some guy who didn't call back. And the postings were sporadic. Waiting for news from these bloggers, I felt like the British probably did waiting 3 months for news from the colonies during the Revolution. King George didn't even find out about the Declaration of Independence until October or whatever. Which is when some of the blogs I've been reading would have reported it, too.

So, I'm striking out on my own. Boldly. In fact, full of cockiness that will no doubt evaporate when my own postings slow to a trickle or angry comments force me into silence.

Until then, my goal is to give an unflinching look at the SOM experience in all aspects. I expect many of these posts to be positive, if not glowing. And I'll cast a broad net. My background. Loans and more loans. Housing. Classmates. The new curriculum. Quantitative ability: am I screwed? If my roommates turn out to be a pack of zany misfits, maybe I'll chronicle that. And no doubt some romantic (mis)adventures will crop up too.

But I'll work hard to describe what it's like, day by day, through a student's eyes -- starting before we even turn up on campus. The kind of blog I wish I'd found a year ago.