Semi-truncated Thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving weekend offered SOM students such as myself a small sample of the legitimate vacation that will come in a few weeks. It wasn't a worry-free break because of all those darn assignments ... and cover letters ... and general anxiety. Booze and turkey certainly help one forget, temporarily, about things like that. Nevertheless, I returned from the weekend around dinnertime Saturday because there will be much to do tomorrow.

But I had a nice few days with my brother and his family (younger nephew pictured above). It's been nice to see the boys (5 and 3) often enough that they recognize me when I come over and remember games we've played and jokes we've made. After that family time, I swung by to see my best friend from high school, Shiri, who recently moved to Scarsdale.

It's hard to believe that our second of eight quarters at SOM is drawing to a close. Exams end on Dec. 18. We recently had an info session for choosing spring electives. First-year students all have the same three core courses in "Spring 1" and another three in "Spring 2," and we can choose either a semester-long elective, or two quarter-long electives, or a bigger load if we want one. The process works by bidding; we have 300 points to divvy among classes, and then spots in the class are awarded to the highest bidders. Fortunately, there's a favorable professor-to-student ratio at SOM, so it doesn't seem to me that it's too problematic to get the classes you want.

My strategy is to bid for challenging, quant-heavy classes so I can get as many hard skills as possible before my summer internship. Second-year students' schedules consist entirely of electives, so at that stage, it will be desirable and necessary to mix hard and soft skills. We'll see if things to my way.