Posted 2:39 PM by Zachary (e-mail)
Michigan Football
Yesterday was the first game of the season, and it was an all-day affair. Tailgates in the morning, game at noon, tailgates in the afternoon, and parties in the evening--I can honestly say I've never been in such a community-wide festival atmosphere.

Because of the traffic, driving to the game was out of the question.

Luckily, I live only a mile from the stadium, so I could join the throng of people walking in that direction.

The game itself rocked. The weather was perfect Ann Arbor August weather: highs in the mid-seventies, blue skies, low humidity. Sitting in the MBA section was great, as I got to chat with a bunch of students in different sections. Attendance? 110,000+. Oh yeah.


The game itself, against Central Michigan, was a complete blowout, 45-7. It being the first game of the season, the Wolverines looked a bit disjointed, especially on run defense. Hopefully they'll get the kinks worked out before Notre Dame arrives, in a couple weeks.

The crowd was enthusiastic, but I'm sure they'll be ten times louder during the Ohio State (hated nemesis) game to end the season. The air was electric when we all sang the Michigan fight song after each touchdown:

Hail! to the victors valiant
Hail! to the conqu'ring heroes
Hail! Hail! to Michigan
the leaders and best

Hail! to the victors valiant
Hail! to the conqu'ring heroes
Hail! Hail! to Michigan,
the champions of the West!

Posted 3:04 PM by Zachary (e-mail)
Leadership Development Program
The Michigan Business School puts all incoming MBA students through its Leadership Development Program in the week before classes. The week broke down roughly as follows:

Monday - We kicked off our business school experience by attending presentations, engaging in dialogues, and going through workshops on corporate citizenship and ethics. The speakers, from P&G and GE, did a good job of describing situations where they faced decisions between profits and "company values", and how they handled them. Coming from four years on Wall Street, it was refreshing to hear about these two organizations that have been around a very long time, and how there values have contributed to that longevity.

Tuesday - The two themes for Tuesday were diversity and getting to know your sectionmates (the 420 students of the class of 2005 are divided into six sections, with whom all the core courses are taken together). The emphasis on the diversity of our class--the different educational backgrounds, career paths, interests, hobbies, nationalities, etc.--fit in with getting to know your section quite well. The afternoon was spent on team-building physical activities.

In the morning, we heard from Joe Liemandt, the President and CEO of Trilogy. He was a really sharp speaker, making the story of Trilogy's start, growth, and recent restructuring (refocusing?) interesting. One of his themes was that the ethical lapses of small companies trying to grow do come back to haunt them later.

Wednesday - Wednesday's focus was purely leadership. In the morning, we had presentations by the William George, former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic. Afterwards we gathered in our sections and went through various leadership workshops and exercises, under the tutelage of various corporate volunteers (our section had guys from Accenture and Best Buy).

Thursday - This was a day to give back to the community, with each section travelling to a different charity or community organization. I spent most of the day at the Salvation Army's Harbor Light Center in Detroit, doing food preparation for their homeless shelter and bagged lunch program. Other sections did sorting at donation centers, brownfield cleanup, and even demolition of derelict buildings.

Friday - The orientation week wrapped up with section elections in the morning. Each section chose its president, social chairs, global citizenship representatives, career center liaison, and many other positions. The week ended with a Dean's Luncheon.

Posted 6:31 PM by Zachary (e-mail)
New York to Michigan
Before I get into the full swing of business school, I wanted to record my experiences moving from New Jersey to Ann Arbor.

Driving to Ann Arbor is not too big a deal. It took me exactly nine hours to go from the George Washington Bridge (New Jersey side) to the State Street exit of I-94 in Ann Arbor, a distance of 616 miles (an average of 68.4 miles per hour). That time includes two brief stops to top off the gas tank, and would definitely have been shorter had I not been driving a fully loaded pickup truck.

Directions-wise, it's a no-brainer: take I-80 west across New jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, turning north at Toledo. The slowest bit is New Jersey, and traffic is slow crossing the Delaware Water Gap into Pennsylvania. But I-80's pretty empty once you make it past the Pocono exits. In terms of time, the New Jersey bit takes about 1 1/2 hours, the Pennsylvania stretch takes 5 hours, crossing Ohio takes 3 hours, and it's less than an hour to Ann Arbor once you're in Michigan.

The scenery on the drive is neither spectacular nor boring. New Jersey and Pennsylvania are hilly and, in parts, mountanous, and densely forested. The landscape flattens out in Ohio, with farmland becoming more prevalant.


The most interesting site on the drive was an Amish horse-drawn carriage parked at a gas station in Eastern Pennsylvania. The rest of the drive was remarkably unremarkable.

Posted 7:06 AM by Zachary (e-mail)
Orientation Begins
Today was the first day of the Leadership Development Program, UMBS' week-long orientation program. There are several goals for the program:

1. Encourage incoming students to think about leadership topics, such as dealing with diversity, building good teams, and ethics in the workplace.
2. Introducing students to their sections. Nearly the entire first year at UMBS is spent taking the core curriculum (accounting, marketing, finance, etc., etc.). Each incoming student is assigned a section, with whom they'll take all of the core (430+/- students, 6 sections, thus about 70 per section). Much of tomorrow will be spent doing team building exercises with our sections (whom we've just met).

Most of today was spent in lectures and discussions on the meaning of corporate ethics/citizenship. Several executives from P&G and GE discussed their corporate values, and gave examples of where their firms' ethical standards directly conflicted with the profit motive. Given the immediacy of last year's corporate scandals, seeing that all companies aren't Enrons or Worldcoms was refreshing, and made for lively discussion.

Last week most students were either on MTreks (student-led trips around the world) or in QSW (Quantitative Skills Workshop--i.e. math review camp), both of which were optional. Next week, classes begin. And, of course, Saturday is the first home football game.