Wharton West Week 1

Before my aging memory fades, I want to capture Wharton West week 1. Maybe it will help future Wharton WEMBA West or East classes, or maybe not. Still, for those wanting to gain an understanding of the "Wharton West" experience in a short summarized manner, here you go!


Sunday: no classes, just meeting and greeting. each classmate's intro was funny, creative, and (broken record) impressive. dinner with the partners and it was great to meet the "better halves."

Monday: first day of class! for future wemba classes -- make sure you do your Management reading and relate theories to cases clearly in your pre-term work, the pace is fast. 6+ hours of sitting is rough and it was definitely one of the "drinking from the fire hose" experiences that continued through the week. Also note, no matter how prepared you are (I think I did most of the pre-term work), there will be additional class assignments and work to do the first week. Let the fun begin.

Tuesday: Living in the hotel the first week is pretty cool. People are always out and about. More group dynamic sessions after class, which were surprisingly helpful, even at the end of a long day. I met with my study group and other classmates to knock out some of our assignments and went to bed late.

Wednesday: Early morning run (missed my husband and dog, my usual running partners) and ran into some classmates along the way! I skipped early morning Math Camp (thank you UCLA Engineering). Fatigue started to set in...cure = soda, candy, caffeine. I know (tsk tsk tsk), my body punished me for those. Wednesday afternoon around 4 PM it seemed like the morning was days ago. Class dinner at a local restaurant/brewery was awesome. I met people from the other section (the class is broken into study groups of about 6 or so people, and study groups are assigned to either section 1 or 2) and started to get comfortable with everyone. Go liquid bonding!


Thursday: There was obvious hurt in the class from last night's partying. Boy I'm rusty at this late night partying thing. A few more sessions and our end of week toast was followed by more meet and greet time, and finally returning to our normal lives.

The week went by FAST with things to fill up every second of the day, and as I said before, I'd done most of the pre-reading so there were some who were even busier than I was during the week, prepping for classes. It was a (good) shock to be back in a classroom, and an equal (good) shock to return home at the end of the week.

Wharton stood out to me because of the strong class camaraderie and full-time-like experience. Those two things held absolutely true this week, in addition to amazing work experiences that people shared to help bring concepts to life. That's when I realized that I have the best of both worlds - real world exec wisdom/knowledge + full-time program-like bonding - at Wharton. I'm grateful to be here and can't wait for the next two years.