Gandhi, Meet Sam

Well! We've received our first homework assignment (outside of the pre-MBA prep some of us are scrambling through: stats, accounting, intro to finance).

The assignment: background reading to prepare for our Careers course. I'm a little surprised to learn that there is a Careers course, though it is a hopeful sign that the school intends to put its immense resources behind helping its MBA grads do what they want to do.

Anyway, the summer reading list: autobiographies of Sam Walton and Gandhi, plus a biography of Warren Buffet.

And here we enter the first round of what I expect to be/worry about becoming a major struggle throughout the MBA program: learning everything useful that I can -- even from practices and businesses I'm completely opposed to. Walmart, for example. Terrible labor practices. Destroying local economies across the country by driving small local retailers out of business. Swallowing up hundreds of acres of open space to build a sea of parking lots around a new Superstore. Pretty much soulless.

I wonder if Walmart will be venerated when our reading comes up in the fall. Will there be as much criticism as praise? Or will the mountain come to Mohammad, and I'll discover something to change my pointblank anti-Walmart stance?

Either way, I think I'll start with Gandhi.

The Debt Monster

Remember that episode of the American version of The Office when Michael buys a condo? He's about to sign the 30-year mortgage and, choking on the obligation, has to go out in the backyard to get his breath. Hovering by his side is Dwight K. Schrute (my favorite character) who points out that given Michael's age, he's pretty much buying a coffin. "And if I were buying my coffin," Dwight says, "I'd get one with thicker walls."

The scene came back to me today when I took a hard (and probably overdue) look at the loans necessary to pay for SOM and, using the calculators at Access Group, figured I'd pay about $1040 a month for the next 20 years (though after the first, oh, decade, when the Stafford loan is paid off, that number drops to a cool $622. The scenario is based on borrowing about 90% of the total 2-year budget of $122K, drawing on both the max Federal Stafford loan and then on the new Graduate Plus loan. To choose the latter is to gamble that the interest rate on a private loan will rise about the fixed 7.2% rate on the Plus (I've included the discount offered by at least on Plus lender).

It's not so much the $1040 as it is the 20 years. I can see why Michael had trouble breathing. The internal Yale-admit boards are alive with the same kind of worry. And mutual reassurance.

One route is Yale's unbeatable loan repayment program. Given that non-profit work has been the central and consuming theme of my short professional existence, that program is a comforting option. It's a life raft stored on the deck of a towering freighter of debt.

The other choice, of course, is to harness the MBA's vast earning power - that's right, earning power - and simply earn enough to manage the loans. I'm skeptical there is a private sector job out there that a) I'd want and b) pays enough, though expect the next two years will open my eyes (and the doors) to all sorts of possibilities I'm not even considering. The worst and most dreaded outcome is to be forced into this route not because I love the job but because I need the money.

Last Sunday's New York Times reports that the average first-year salary of an HBS graduate is $100K and goes on to debate, inconclusively, whether the tuition and attendant costs are worth it. Probably not coincidently, the same day's Magazine devotes itself to debt, with an entire article on student debt.

The cover is a red ink drawing of some kind of debt monster waving its many frightening arms.

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.